Moonlight in Vermont...
The land of green mountains, maple syrup, dairy farming, and its own Stock Ness Monster.
Vermont (from the French verts monts, literally "Green Mountains") is the second-least populous state in the United States, ahead of just Wyoming, with a population of around 640,000 people. It borders the states of New York (to the west), New Hampshire (to the east), Massachusetts (to the south) and the Canadian province of Quebec (to the north). Originally inhabited by Abenaki Native Americans, it holds the distinction of being one of two states (the other being Texas) to be directly admitted to the Union from being a sovereign country, the Vermont Republic. It's a bit of a legal gray area, though, since New York and New Hampshire both claimed the area prior to Vermont's admission as a state in 1791, the first new state added after independence. Nevertheless, the state did have effective independent self-government and fought on the side of the Thirteen Colonies in the American Revolution, with the "Green Mountain Boys" militia, led by Ethan Allen, acquiring semi-mythical status in New England history.
Vermont is the most rural state in the Union, being one of two states with no cities with a population greater than 50,000 (with West Virginia being the other). Its largest "city", Burlington, holds the title of the smallest city that is the largest in its state in the United States — slightly under 45,000 people live in Burlington proper, though its metro area is home to about 220,000 or just over a third of the state's total population.note note 2 Burlington sits on Lake Champlain, which is purportedly home to the lake monster "Champ". The legend dates back to at least 1819, and whatever its veracity, locals and tourists alike adore him, and Champ lends his image to Vermont's collegiate summer baseball team, the Vermont Lake Monsters.
The proximity of Vermont's most populated areas to Quebec has influenced its culture greatly; even the local dialect of English bears some obvious French influence. The names of many towns, citizens, and indeed the state itself, are of French origin, and many of the early European settlers of the area were French or French Canadian voyageurs. The nearest major city to Burlington is in fact Montreal, about an hour and a half drive, much closer than Boston, the next contender, though the construction of I-89 in the '60s and the hardening of the border after 9/11 and the COVID-19 Pandemic have helped to draw the state closer culturally to the rest of New England. On the Quebec side of the border, Highway 35, the "official" highway between Boston-Montreal, doesn't actually reach the border, and the expansion to do so has been languishing in Development Hell for decades, though if everything goes right by the end of 2023 it should finally connect to Interstate 89.
In terms of entertainment, Vermont's best known export is the jam band Phish, who formed in Burlington in 1983 and became a touring sensation in the 1990s. The state is also home to the experimental Bread & Puppet Theater, singer-songwriters Anaïs Mitchell and Noah Kahan (who both have several songs about life in the state), actors Orson Bean, Sam Lloyd, and Damon Wayans Jr., writer Shirley Jackson, and comic artist Tillie Walden. Poet Robert Frost lived in Vermont for much of his life, was named Poet Laurette of Vermont in 1961, and was buried in Bennington.
Politically, Vermont has always leaned heavily progressive, bucking a trend of rural states generally leaning conservative. The Constitution of the Vermont Republic, enacted in 1777, banned slavery, before Pennsylvania became the first state to do so in 1780. The same constitution guaranteed suffrage to black men. Today, it's perhaps most famous in the political arena as the home of two-time presidential candidate, independent senator, and self-avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, who has been a major figure in Vermont politics since the 1980s when he was elected mayor of Burlington. Besides Sanders, the other most famous Vermont political figure is probably famous screamer Howard Dean or Fred Tuttle
, a retired dairy farmer with no political experience who gained fame during the 1998 Senate election. Tuttle successfully won the Republican nomination in a massive upset over frontrunner Jack McMullen, which he accomplished mostly by humiliating McMullen over his inability to correctly pronounce the names of several small Vermont towns, and famously stumping him with the question, "How many teats a Holstein got?"note He then proceeded to win almost a quarter of the popular vote in the general election despite openly endorsing his opponent, Democrat Patrick Leahy, who is himself best-known for appearing in Batman films. Nevertheless, despite its heavy progressive lean, it has bought into the trend of liberal New England states having popular Republican governors — Phil Scott won his 2020 reelection bid by 41% margin and broke his own record in 2022 with a whopping 46% margin.
Vermont's left-leaning politics are reflected even by the state's most well-known export: Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Vermont is a major dairy producer in general, though it is also a leading producer in granite and Maple Syrup. Their other most notable quirk related to business: they were the first state to ban billboards.
One place where Vermont bucks the tradition of other liberal-leaning states, however, is that it is also one of the most gun-friendly states in the Union, having zero laws at the state level. The only gun laws are federal.
Vermont is also known as the mecca for skiing and snowboarding in eastern North America. The very name of the state refers to mountains, it is home to numerous large ski resorts like Killington, Stowe, and Mount Snow that are typically ranked as some of the best in the East, winter sports are a central component of the economy in general and the tourism industry in particular, and the Army Mountain Warfare School, which trains ski infantry and mountaineers for the US Army, is located in Jericho. Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of the Burton Snowboards company and generally considered the inventor of the modern snowboard and the founding father of snowboarding culture, also got his start in the industry in Vermont. Of course, skiers and boarders from western North America would put a gigantic caveat on this and argue that even the best mountains on the "Ice Coast" are pale shadows of the smooth powder and epic terrain that the West has to offer. In turn, Vermonters, and East Coasters more broadly, have made a Memetic Mutation out of a paraphrase of Bane's quote from The Dark Knight Rises about having been born and forged in darkness that swaps out "darkness" for "ice", as if to suggest that Westerners are softies who have no idea how to ski or ride on less-than-perfect terrain.
Works set in Vermont:
Film
- Baby Boom
- Dark August
- Dead Poets Society
- Funny Farm
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
- Nothing Sacred
- September
- Shirley
- Spellbound
- State and Main
- Super Troopers
- The Survivors
- The Trouble with Harry
- Time Chasers
- What Lies Beneath
- White Christmas
- Wolf
Literature
Live-Action TV
