Vermonters search for roads of yore

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Boston Globe - March 4, 2009
Vermonters search for roads of yore

By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | March 4, 2009

MIDDLESEX, Vt. - Paul Gillies, a Montpelier attorney, traveled a slow and circuitous route on an unpaved mountain track until he reached a hairpin bend in the route. Nearby, where fresh snow resembled a dazzling white comforter, a gap between the pine trees appeared to expose remnants of an old, unused road.

Gillies, 60, was in his element. He studied the landscape, gauged the possibilities, and wondered whether he had stumbled on yet another of the thousands of forgotten roads that have vanished from the map.

In Vermont, the issue has become more than just a matter of curiosity about what once was under the pastures, buildings, and woodlands that have obscured the early roads and paths.

The state has set a deadline of July 1, 2015, by which all cities and towns must find and document their old roads, some dating back more than two centuries, or lose the public's right to use them.

"I think of it as reversing 200 years of neglect," said Gillies, who believes the project is the only one of its kind in the country.

As a result, small groups of volunteers and town employees are opening musty old vaults and struggling to read the penmanship of spectacle-wearing town clerks in an effort to decipher the metes, bounds, rods, and other archaic measurements once used to mark the location of the state's roads and lots.

Once the public rights are lost, many officials believe, towns will forfeit the chance to develop new recreational areas to attract outdoor enthusiasts and boost tourist dollars.

Joel Cope, the administrative assistant in Brighton, works with three volunteers who meet weekly to comb through the small town's records on a painstaking journey of discovery.

"I think it's a worthwhile thing to have a complete documentation of the road system and a good idea to have a history of the town as it was laid out," Cope said. "But whether the effort to find your old roads and then consider opening them is a good thing, it's not my call. It could be opening a can of worms."

Instead of a can of worms, many residents see a ticking time bomb. Jim Giberti, who built a working farm in Bethel and started a marketing and advertising company there, said he was stunned to discover, a decade after he bought his property, that a new town map showed a road running right through the heart of it.

"We've now got an encumbrance on our deed," Giberti said, because of a road that was not known to exist when he and his wife bought the farm more than 20 years ago. "Our life has been put on hold, our farm has been put on hold, and our business has been put on hold. It's the ultimate nightmare story."

In an effort to have the road discontinued, Giberti said, he has filed a civil suit in Windsor County.

Gillies, who served as deputy secretary of state for 12 years, said each town could have dozens of hidden roads awaiting their resurrection from the fading ink in leather-bound books. Indeed, the state's official mapmakers said they have seen a dramatic increase in their workload, specifically because of the "ancient roads" law passed in 2006. Now, instead of 50 to 60 new maps a year, the mapping unit for the state's transportation agency is producing 75 to 100, said Johnathan Croft, chief of the unit.

Still, Croft is not complaining. "I have a minor in US history, so the whole idea of how these roads were formed is interesting," he said.

Gillies does legal work on the issue, including some for Giberti, but he is clearly fascinated by the hidden history of how the hard-to-reach mountains and narrow valleys of remote Vermont were stitched together by roads.

The roads, he said, "are a reflection of a Vermont that once had lots of people in lots of places. It's a story of a state dealing with its topography."

The westward expansion of the railroads and the decline of Vermont's sheep industry in the 19th century made the state less attractive to newcomers. And with that turn in fortunes, some of the roads that scaled the mountains and traced the rivers were reclaimed by nature through lack of use.

To Gillies, squinting at centuries-old records has a reward not easily appreciated by many people.

"I can't tell you how thrilling it is to sift through records for two or three days and find a road," said Gillies, whose office is adorned by old maps that show a state in its infancy. "It's like discovering a gene in you that you didn't know was there."

By 2015, Croft's mapping unit will have brought Vermont up to cartographical snuff after officials in each town decide which roads are in and which ones are out.

"It's a pretty neat process," Croft said. "There's a lot that can be gained through this."

Such gains could include the discovery that a traveler in 1825 really could get there from here.
 

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