Cultural Landscape: Village and City Landscape

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Almost every one of Vermont's 251 towns has at least one village, and often several. Villages played an important role in the European settlement of the land by serving the predominantly farming population with civic and commercial functions. There was usually one established near the geographical center of town at the earliest stages of settlement for the site of the town hall and church. Other villages grew up around particular resources in town. The character of the village depends on its origins.

Villages were often centered around the best mill sites in town. Every town in Vermont had a sawmill and probably every town had a grist mill, too.

Grist mill in late 1800s

The life the early settlers came to create required both a sawmill to make lumber for the type of buildings they favored, and grist mills to grind the grains upon which their economy was based. Many town charters made special mention of waterfalls for mill sites since they were key components to a successful farming community. Small businesses catering to farmers became associated with these mills, too, such as tanneries, blacksmiths, and small general stores.

Later on in the nineteenth-century, the best waterpower sites also supported small industries that marketed their goods outside of the immediate farming communities, often via railroad to urban areas. As electricity became available in the early twentieth century, some mill villages were abandoned and some evolved into residential areas or other uses.

Villages were also established around transportation hubs. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, turnpikes and stage routes had periodic stopping places to feed, water, and rest passengers and horses. Some villages grew up around these stagecoach stops. Later in the nineteenth-century, railroads were built and the area around the new depots often developed into villages.

Cities in Vermont grew from villages that had some unusually good feature that attracted growth. The landscape patterns of cities are actually very similar to those of villages, just on a much larger scale.

The location of Vermont villages is no accident, and to understand the village landscape, you need to understand the village's origins and how its functions changed through time.

Shelburne Village

Map of the Two Villages in the 1850s

Shelburne village as it is known today actually began as two very distinct villages with two different functions, and only grew together to be one large village in the late twentieth century. Vestiges of the original villages can still be seen today.

The village of Shelburne Falls began around 1785 at the large waterfall on the LaPlatte River in the southeastern part of town. It was a mill village, with a sawmill and a grist mill running on the water power. (These two types of mills were critical to the early development of virtually every town in Vermont.). Other types of mills operated at the falls later on, but the two core mills remained into the twentieth century, primarily supporting the farming community of Shelburne and environs.

Map of the Two Villages Grown Together in the 1980s

Shelburne village (northwest of Shelburne Falls) started in the 1790s as a stagecoach stop on the road from Middlebury to Burlington. An inn (which is still there), a store, blacksmith shop, distillery, and other businesses related to stage travel were established. Later, this village became the civic center, and the town hall, churches, and a merchant's row were built. The railroad was routed through this village in 1849, further cementing the village's central role in town life.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the population in Shelburne increased almost seven-fold, and the villages grew together. The core areas of both original villages have eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings, and the housing that filled in between the villages is mostly ranch-style of the late twentieth-century.

Other Resources:
Look at your local library or historical society for:

• Walton's Vermont Register and Almanac from 1818 on
• Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from the 1880s to 1940s
• birdseye view lithographs from the late 1800s
• local newspapers, town histories
• Henry F. Walling's maps from the 1850s
• F.W. Beers' atlases from the 1860s and 70s
• Hamilton Child's Gazetteers from the 1880s
• electrification maps from the early 1900s
• old photo and postcard collections, aerial photos from the 1927 flood
• diaries or account books from local business people