Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Fairfield, VT
The site preserves a reconstructed house long promoted as Chester A. Arthur's birthplace even though later research showed that the exact birthplace remains disputed and the replica is not on the original house site. That historical uncertainty is now part of the interpretation.
Waterbury, VT
Forest trails in Little River State Park pass cellar holes, stone walls, cemeteries and other remains of settlements that once occupied the Ricker Basin. Flood-control projects and changing rural life eventually emptied the area, leaving a walkable archaeological landscape in the woods.
Graniteville, VT
Rock of Ages operates one of the world's largest deep-hole dimension-granite quarries, where sheer gray walls descend hundreds of feet into water. Seasonal tours overlook the active quarry, and the visitor center even includes an outdoor granite bowling lane.
Shelburne, VT
This enormous former Vanderbilt-Webb country estate was laid out with landscape work by Frederick Law Olmsted and includes monumental barns, an inn and more than a thousand acres along Lake Champlain. The scale and theatrical design make the property feel closer to a self-contained Gilded Age world than an ordinary Vermont farm.
Stowe, VT
The narrow mountain pass is filled with enormous glacial boulders and a twisting road so tight that large vehicles cannot safely pass through. Its name comes from stories of nineteenth-century smuggling through the Green Mountains, and the road closes seasonally when snow makes the notch impassable.
Montpelier, VT
A small granite monument memorializes the seven astronauts killed in the 1986 Challenger disaster despite Vermont having little direct connection to the shuttle program. The understated memorial has survived relocation and remains an unexpectedly space-themed landmark in the state capital.
St. Albans, VT
A historical marker recalls the 1864 St. Albans Raid, when Confederate operatives crossed from Canada and robbed local banks before fleeing north. The attack is remembered as the northernmost major land action associated with the American Civil War.
Springfield, VT
Amateur telescope makers have gathered on Breezy Hill for the Stellafane Convention since the 1920s. The site preserves the clubhouse and observing traditions of one of America's oldest organized communities devoted to building telescopes by hand, with access centered around scheduled events.
Shrewsbury, VT
A life-size marble figure appears to creep eternally up the steps of the Bowman family mausoleum in a rural cemetery. The strange composition is part of an elaborate nineteenth-century family memorial and gives the crypt a far more theatrical appearance than the surrounding graves.
Burlington, VT
Small brass markers embedded in the sidewalk commemorate Lavinia Parker and her son Francis, who were enslaved in nineteenth-century Burlington. The memorial follows the concept of European stumbling stones, using an easily overlooked street-level marker to force attention toward a difficult local history.
Isle La Motte, VT
A marker identifies the Fisk home where Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting when word arrived that President William McKinley had been shot in 1901. Roosevelt soon left Vermont as the national crisis deepened, eventually becoming president after McKinley's death.
