Bellows Falls sits on the Connecticut River at a particularly interesting historical crossroads. It was here that the indigenous population came in the spring to fish leaving petroglyphs of the horned people carved in granite a millenium ago. It was here that the fur traders found their portage around the treacherous rapids, carrying heaps of beaver pelts to the hat-crazed Europeans. It was here that the British and French drew a line in the sand as the colonists from each country built homes in the frontier. It was here that the first bridge over the Connecticut River made simple passage of traders and soldiers alike. It was here that rural tourism took hold in the US, not in the 1960s but in the 1820s as the Island House opened in its park-like setting. It was here that early water-powered manufacturing hatched the industrial revolution in America. It was here that the first American paper mill made possible the published news of the New World. It was here that trains and barges met the road and nurtured the broad web of intermodal transportation of goods and settlers. Here was the richest town in America at the turn of the 20th century. It was here that a wildcat strike shut down the mills and began the slow and steady decline of American rural industry. It’s all here: beautiful Victorian mansions and nobel brick factories, the rugged green mountains on one side and the rolling passage to Massachusetts on the other. There’s so much to learn here as well as recreation, entertainment, food, and cocktails from the quaint and carefully-branded red barn Vermont to the gritty and bygone milltowns to the up and coming green living post-cosmopolitan style.

If you haven’t been it’s time you came. Vermont: it’s not what you think it is. It’s better.

LODGING

Readmore Inn

Halladay’s B&B

The Inn at Valley Farms

The Bellows Walpole Inn

The Holiday Inn Express

River Mist

Williams River House

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