Issues → March/April 2009 → Travel →
Maps Don't Show Vermont's Sleeping Roads
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Brace also questions the accuracy of the old surveys and their current interpretations, both of which could contain errors. "You'll have people, including me, wanting a separate surveyor to look at these roads," he notes, "because 50 or 100 feet could make a difference as to whose land it's on." Such surveys, not to mention lawsuits, could cost towns and landowners small fortunes all over Vermont. Brace is troubled by the issue's divisiveness and the feelings it arouses in him: "I'm a very mellow guy; I don't like controversy and arguments. But this raises my blood. I know some landowners who are going to go crazy."
The morning after the committee meeting, Mincar and Worthley take me on a brief field trip. A survey from 1850 notes that a road started "at the brook at the old wall south of Herman Gillets dwelling house" and proceeded southeast. The committee used old deed books to pinpoint Gillet's whereabouts in 1850, and Worthley plotted the road's shape from the survey measurements. (If a house has vanished, they look for signs of it, such as a cellar hole.) Sure enough, just south of the old Gillet place, an ancient stone wall still borders a brook.
The road, however, is now well disguised as woods. As we hike through the underbrush, Worthley points out that although the brook runs in a steep ravine, the terrain along one side of it is fairly flat, as if graded, mostly staying between two tumbledown stone walls: road signs. At several spots, he points to large, flat stones that once let wagons cross the brook: old culverts, now silted in and masked by leaves and brush. Farther on, a row of hoary trees runs straight as a plumb line along the brook—-obvious, once Worthley points it out. The survey describes the road as two rods wide, 33 feet. Mincar paces off the distance between the row of trees and the stone wall. "Thirty feet," he says.
Clearly, a road once ran here, long obscured until now. The question is whether Huntington and other Vermont towns should let these sleeping roads lie or claim some of them for the future. Landowners, hunters, hikers, snowmobilers, and conservationists are anxious about the answer. Once roused, some sleeping roads will become public windfalls; others, battlegrounds. Either way, Vermont's forgotten past will soon touch its future.
Reader Comments
Comment from You dont on February 27, 2009
It would be interesting to hear what a legal expert would say on the use of "found" ancient roads - my understanding is that even if a road is identified, it can't just be opened up to public use. See Act 178 -
http://www.leg/docs/legdoc.cfm?URL=/docs/2006/acts/ACT178.HTM
and specifically: (C) Unidentified corridors shall be open to use by the public, but only in the same manner as they were used during the 10 years prior to January 1, 2006.
I have checked this out a few times since I am a landowner and have many similar concerns to those quoted in the story. We do not post our land, we allow anyone who asks to walk, ski or snowshoe on our property, but a legally-declared public ROW is a very different issue. We would not have bought our property if it had included such a ROW, given the problems that come up. It does not appear that we do have any such ancient roads, thankfully. I'm afraid your piece seems designed to whip up fear in landowners, since it does not go into any detail about the facts about public use of such roads.
Kathy
Comment from George Betourney on March 18, 2009
Vermont is an excellent outdoor activity location whether for hunting, fishing, skiing, hiking or snowmobiling. It is shameful that every where you go all you see are No Trespassing signs. It is no wonder that people will try to find ways to legally traverse a piece of property that has been posted by hateful people. It?s like I have mine and I don?t care about anyone else but me.
gnb
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