BRUCE S. POST

Soil scientist W.C. Lowdermilk long ago described how “a civilization writes its record on the land — a record … easy to read by those who understand the simple language of the land.” Yet, he warned, “the land does not lie.”

Vermont’s record, chiseled on our rocky hills, is neither simple nor salutary. Twice in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed a Green Mountain National Park, but, given the chance to redeem its long legacy of destruction and despoliation, Vermont blinked. “And that,” as Robert Frost once wrote, “has made all the difference.” Our mountains have been under assault ever since.

Nominally, Vermonters voted 80 years ago, in a March 3, 1936, referendum to disapprove the so-called Green Mountain Parkway. To some opponents, the road was simply a guise; to them, it was a Trojan horse. Ludlow’s Ernest Moore, the House speaker — counter-intuitively — called it “an act of spoilation … in reality a national park… with the new highway only an incidental part.”

‘Great Wall of Vermont’

“There was almost immediate and massive opposition,” Deane Davis, an early supporter and later governor, recalled, “… most of it was on the basis that this was surrendering to the federal government.” He characterized many of the arguments as “silly.” Some even conjured up a fantastical delusion, an ersatz Great Wall of Vermont where the natives would have “no way around the ends except into another state at one end, and out of the United States at the other.”

Today, the flimsy public perception about the Parkway floats mainly on the gossamer wings of myth. Like an angler’s tale about “the one that got away,” the yarn spun about the national park that got away is so embellished it bears little resemblance to reality. One contemporary teller of the tale, for example, describes the Parkway as “an asphalt highway down the top of Vermont’s famed Green Mountains, every square inch of tar poured above the 2,500 foot mark” — erroneous factually and impossible geologically.

Contrary to the myth, the seeds of a scenic roadway and high-peaks conservation park were sown by Vermonters themselves, planted by the 1931 report Rural Vermont, A Program for the Future. They took root in 1933 when Ascutney resident Col. William Wilgus, the visionary engineer behind New York’s Grand Central Terminal, proposed a 1 million acre Vermont national park and accompanying park road, encompassing and protecting the Green Mountain range. Laurie Davidson Cox, a Bellows Falls High School graduate, honed the details, and the Green Mountain Club itself helped Cox flag the scenic parkway’s route.

Often portrayed as a rebellion by Yankee yeoman farmers, the Parkway’s opposition was led by the politically powerful and economically elite Proctor clan of Vermont Marble and its allies on the Green Mountain Club’s Board of Trustees. The Rutland Daily Herald became their megaphone. In the north, though, two founders of the same Green Mountain Club — James P. Taylor and Judge Clarence Cowles — were prominent supporters, and David Howe and his paper, the Burlington Free Press, championed their cause.

The GMC leadership expressed grave concerns. Trustee Wallace Fay charged that it would ruin the charm of the Long Trail. However, compromise was soon at hand. Wilgus emphasized his preliminary sketch was subject to revision after Club review. Under the headline “Green Mt. Club Does Not Oppose Parkway,” the Herald reported encouraging words by Club president Mortimer Proctor, proclaiming “there is plenty of room within the confines of the Green Mountain range for both a highway and the Long Trail, without the highway interfering with the natural charm of the trail. If such preservation were assured, he said, the club would welcome the parkway.”

Long walk of Laurie Cox

Laurie Cox must have taken Proctor at his ostensible word. In early 1934, the 52-year-old landscape architect was dispatched by the National Park Service to design the emerging Green Mountain National Park and Parkway. Beginning near Bennington in the snows of late March, he hiked northward for eight months, often accompanied by Wallace Fay, then the GMC’s president.

When Cox reached the snowy flanks of Jay Peak that October, his plat for the Parkway should have allayed the Club’s concerns and fulfilled Mortimer Proctor’s wishes: nearly 80 percent of the Parkway would lie below 2,500 feet, off the high ridgelines, and a mile to eight miles from the Long Trail.

No good deed apparently goes unpunished. The Club’s trustees, despite collaborating with the National Park Service, resurrected their opposition, even ignoring their Vermont members, who the Herald reported voting 155 to 126 in favor of the Parkway. In March, 1936, two years after Cox began his long walk, Vermont scuttled the national park idea.

What happened? Many things, but as the referendum approached, pernicious “dog whistles” were sounded about Jews and undesirables. Lt. Gov. George Aiken, who publicly was neutral, raised an ominous specter. Aiken empathized with Windham County newcomers who felt the Parkway “would cause the Green Mountains to go the way of the Catskills, bringing in the class of people they come to Vermont to get away from.”

Professor Arthur Wallace Peach, an implacable Parkway foe, also invoked the menacing Catskills, adding “We know there are certain types of people who are destructive of values we want to preserve in Vermont: why not be honest about it?” Apparently, the “Gentile Green Mountains” would be a Vermont counterpoint to New York’s “Jewish Alps.”

Roosevelt has a plan for Vermont

The Parkway’s defeat seemed the last word. It was not. In August, President Roosevelt came to Vermont to attend a flood control conference in Montpelier. UVM President Guy Bailey rode in the presidential car and later asked the president to declare a portion of the Parkway route the Ethan and Ira Allen National Monument. FDR went one better, proposing in 1937 a 130,000-acre Green Mountain National Park running from Mount Ellen to the Lamoille River, with a parallel parkway built to the west.

Roosevelt was heartened. “I hear,” he wrote his Interior secretary, “that Vermont people are now beginning to be sorry they did not give us better cooperation.” Gov. George Aiken appointed a five-member study commission. Congressional legislation authorizing the park was introduced. Ultimately, the idea faded as war approached, perhaps dealt a fatal blow when, in 1939, Aiken approved the first ski towers on Mount Mansfield at State Forester Perry Merrill’s urging. There would be no Green Mountain National Park, no Vermont rival to Yellowstone and Yosemite.

A Vermont national park would have assured both environmental protection and tourism. Just look south: the Blue Ridge Parkway is the most visited unit in the National Park system; the Great Smoky Mountains, America’s most visited national park. Ironically, given the population density of the Northeast, the Green Mountain National Park might likely have been even more popular.

What now of our mountains, about which Laurie Cox had warned:

“Without the parkway this despoiling of the Vermont wilderness is inevitable and only a matter of time and probably a rather short time at that …. The tremendous urban civilization at the very doors of Vermont makes the exploitation of the Green Mountains an assured fact if the area remains under private ownership.”

Today, all we need to do is “lift our eyes unto the hills” to see Laurie Cox was right.

Bruce S. Post of Essex, a longtime congressional aide, is an environmental historian and member of the Green Mountain Club’s History and Archives Committee.

Presentation on Green Mountain National Park

Environmental historian Bruce S. Post will give a presentation on the Green Mountain National Park at 7 p.m on Friday, March 11, at the Richmond Free Library. It is part of the James P. Taylor Lecture Series.

The Green Mountain Club/Burlington Section will present “Three Poems and a Parkway,” commemorating the centennial of the National Park Service. Post’s multimedia presentation will show how Richmond, Bolton, Huntington, Jericho, Underhill and Waterbury almost became major locations in what could have been one of the largest national parks in the lower 48 states.

•Green Mountain Club members, $5; Non-members, $8.

To learn more, visit gmc@gmcburlington.org.