Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502240051
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: G8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEVE SILK THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: WOODSTOCK, VT. LENGTH: Long
\ Let's get one thing straight from the start: This is not the Woodstock. You know, the peace, love and music place celebrated again last year in New York.
No, this Woodstock is something else. And it's someplace else. This Woodstock is the embodiment of all those hazy notions you might have about Vermont - crisp white houses clustered around a village green; covered bridges; a landscape of gentle, forested hills dotted with quaint little farmsteads where strips of new-mown hay lie like corduroy in the fields. It's as quintessentially Vermont as a tin of maple syrup or a jug of cider.
It's sophisticated, too. The local general store, F.H. Gillingham & Sons, sells farm tools and fertilizer, sure, but it also stocks several varieties of caviar, beers from as far as Thailand, and a nice French Chardonnay. Some of the state's best restaurants can be found around town, and one of Vermont's most famed resorts, the Woodstock Inn & Resort, lies just off the green. In the hills of nearby Barnard you'll find tony Twin Farms, where rates for the cheapest double are $700, including dinner and recreation (on, for example, the hideaway's private ski slopes).
From the start Woodstock has been different. It became Windsor County's shire town, the seat of local government, in 1786, 25 years after the town's founding. The court was here, and a medical school. Professionals rather than farmers took up residence. Materials and labor were cheap in this part of the world, so they built lavish, handsome homes.
In this most patrician of Vermont villages, preservation has long been a virtue. The village lining the banks of the Ottauquechee River is a treasury of finely manicured Federal-style architecture, and the white steeples of its many churches pierce the treetops to delight the eye. Woodstock has what might be the newest old-looking covered bridge in Vermont, built just 25 years ago. Nearby Billings Farm & Museum preserves the farming lifestyle of the 1890s as faithfully as if it were frozen in amber. Overlooking it all is Mount Tom, a gentle tree-covered mound rising at the edge of town.
National Geographic once named Woodstock one of the 10 most beautiful towns in the United States.
Some of the area around the village of Woodstock has been set aside for the Marsh-Billings National Historic Park, which is not yet open to the public. This, the first national park in Vermont, will celebrate the ethic of conservation and stewardship, as practiced by some of the town's notable residents - from George Perkins Marsh (whose 1864 book, ``Man and Nature,'' was the first to examine humanity's impact on the natural environment) to Laurance Rockefeller (who has done much to preserve historic Woodstock).
The town is also a mecca for rusticators in summer, leaf-peepers in fall and skiers in winter. (The nation's first ski tow was erected in a field on Clinton Gilbert's hillside farm in 1934.)
It all seems so perfect. There's only one problem in visiting Woodstock: finding a good place to park.
Once that hurdle is crossed, you'll be on easy street.
The first stop in Woodstock might be the Billings Farm & Museum. Here you can see the farming techniques of the 1890s at work and visit a museum housed in an old post-and-beam barn that celebrates both the state's rural heritage and the simple utilitarian beauty of early farm tools. It also displays curiosities such as a dog-powered treadmill used for churning butter.
Kids, though, are more likely to go for some of the farm's other offerings. In another barn, they can try their hand at milking a Jersey cow or churning butter, step outside to watch draft horses at work in fields hemmed in by split-rail fences, or learn about the Wyandotte chickens that strut about the place.
The farm is the legacy of Frederick Billings, a man who did much to improve dairy farming in the state and who provides a conceptual link between Marsh and Rockefeller. Billings grew up poor in Woodstock, went west to find fame and fortune as one of the first lawyers to hang out a shingle in gold-rush-era San Francisco. He returned to Woodstock and bought the farm he had always wanted from Marsh, a man considered by many to be one of the pioneering environmentalists in the country.
Billings put many of Marsh's ideas into practice. He planted thousands of trees to reforest the heavily logged slopes around Mount Tom. He also employed newfangled farming techniques, importing Jersey cows from the isle of Jersey in Europe, using selective breeding and other techniques to make dairy farming more efficient and profitable.
Later, Billings' granddaughter, Mary French, married Laurance Rockefeller. Together the two did much for Woodstock. They opened the farm to the public, built and opened the Woodstock Inn & Resort and helped the village bury its power and telephone lines. They also deeded 555 acres of land and their family mansion to the government for the national park, which will officially open only after their deaths. Another 340 acres, the Billings Farm & Museum grounds, has also been set aside for protection.
You can explore some of that land from Faulkner Park, a patch of public grounds off Mountain Avenue, the dirt road that rolls past some of the town's finest homes. From the park, a trail winds uphill to the summit of Mount Tom. The half-hour trip is more of a stroll than a climb. The best views are off the North Peak, where a panoramic vista encompasses the town.
Back in town, you won't want to miss Woodstock's long elliptical green, perhaps the only common in New England with a vampire buried beneath it. Back in 1830, according to local lore, a series of mysterious deaths followed the burial of a local man named Corwin. Fearing Corwin may have returned from beyond the grave to wreak havoc upon the living, several townspeople had his body exhumed. The excavators noted his undecayed heart still contained liquid blood - the sure sign of a vampire. The suspect heart was removed and then burned in a kettle pot, thrown in a 15-foot-deep hole on the green and covered with a 7-ton slab of granite. The grave was filled in and the blood of a sacrificial bullock dappled over the earth.
A few years before that, in 1818, the green had been the site of another gruesome event. About 10,000 spectators showed up to watch a convicted murderer meet his maker at the end of a rope.
In spite of its sometimes grisly past, the green today exudes tranquillity. In the shade of its maples, artists paint village scenes as tourists picnic on its benches and passing cyclists pause to glory in the splendor of it all.
The green is the perfect jumping off place for a tour of the proud homes that have made Woodstock famous. Guided walking tours set out from the tree-shaded Chamber of Commerce booth several times a week in summer and fall, but exploring on your own couldn't be easier. Just amble on along Vermont 4 toward the stone church that looks like a castle. Then, cross the Ottauquechee and River Street, amble back down Mountain Avenue across the covered bridge and back to the green.
For a more commercial tour, head the other way, toward the two- and three-story brick and stone buildings that line Elm Street and Vermont 4. Stop by the Town Crier, a blackboard where town meetings and other events and activities are posted.
Downtown Woodstock has all manner of appealing shops and galleries. A dedicated browser can happen on anything from early American antiques and pricey garden statuary to Woody Jackson paintings and earrings from Indonesia.
by CNB