Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
Vermont’s experiment with urbanism started more than two centuries ago. But outside of the central cores of the state’s nine cities, the experiment hasn’t really taken.
Vermont got its first city in 1788, when Vergennes was formed. Unlike every other Vermont city, Vergennes didn’t start out as a town and later become a city. Its original settlers decided to found Vergennes with a city form of government. So residents elected a mayor, who ran the executive branch of government, and a board of aldermen, who served as the legislative branch. (In towns, residents elect a selectboard to run what is essentially the executive branch, and they themselves serve as the legislative branch on issues of finance and governance, gathering annually on Town Meeting Day and at other specially warned meetings.)
Vergennes is, in fact, the third oldest incorporated city in the United States. Only Hartford and New Haven, both in Connecticut, are older.
The decision to incorporate as a city demonstrated the ambitions of Vergennes’ early settlers. They must have figured: Why bother with the baby step of starting as a town when Vergennes would clearly soon outgrow that form of government? Their confidence was based on the presence of a waterfall in the community. At the time, the falls meant steady power, which was needed by industry. After a series of mills and what was then the nation’s largest iron works sprang up around the site, the move to a city form of government must have seemed prescient.
The residents’ ambitions didn’t stop there. Since Vermont was still searching for a permanent home for its government, residents built an imposing building that could serve as the state capitol. After Montpelier was awarded the honor, Vergennes’ would-be statehouse was torn down. Over the past two centuries, Vergennes hasn’t really grown into the name “city.” But then again, from a national perspective, neither has any of Vermont’s other cities that have followed.
Vermont’s second city, Burlington, has come closest. Burlington began life as a town granted in 1763. It started out much larger than it is today in terms of total area, but much smaller in population. At the time of the state’s founding in 1791, Burlington barely had 300 residents. It cleared 1,000 residents sometime during the first decade of the 1800s. Steady growth made it Vermont’s most populous community by 1830 — before then, it hadn’t been among the top five.
Burlington’s original grant had created a town of 36,000 acres, but during the late 1700s the Legislature took about 9,000 acres from Burlington and gave them to Williston. That land soon became part of Richmond when the Legislature created it in 1794.
During the 1850s, Burlington business leaders promoted a plan to turn the town into a city. Under their proposal, the Legislature would take 17,000 acres from Burlington to create a separate town of South Burlington. The new city of Burlington would retain roughly 10,000 acres. The proposal proved unpopular with the Irish and French-Canadian communities in Burlington, who feared they would lose power under a city government. They preferred town government, with its direct democracy at town meeting, because those two ethnic groups constituted a slight majority of Burlington’s population. Burlington’s elite would control city government, they feared.
Supporters argued that a city charter would create a government that could bring needed services, such as water and sewer systems, and form police and fire departments. They argued that the new services would encourage business investment and development.
After several failed attempts, supporters finally won a majority of the vote in a public referendum, and the Legislature granted the city charter in 1864. The shift brought industry to Burlington and industry brought people. The city had long boasted a thriving lumber industry because of its harbor. Now manufacturers making furniture, doors, carriages and the like opened in Burlington to take advantage of that lumber, as well as the city’s rail lines to urban markets to the south.
Burlington’s population growth during the 1860s was staggering, especially when compared with the preceding decade. Between 1850 and 1860, Burlington’s population had remained basically unchanged, rising from 7,585 to 7,713. But by 1870 it had nearly doubled, rising to 13,596 residents.
Burlington has long held the distinction of being Vermont’s most populous community. It has been the largest in every census since 1830. That is, except for 1880, when Rutland held the top spot.
But what is today the city of Rutland grew to the top spot without first becoming a city. Rutland’s growth spurt started a decade before Burlington’s. During the 1850s, its population more than doubled, reaching 7,577 in 1860. By 1880 it had reached 12,149, nearly 1,000 more than Burlington, whose population had dipped briefly.
Rutland grew so rapidly because it offered access to natural resources and railroad lines.
Industries arose in the area to extract and process local sources of iron ore and marble. The town also served as a rail hub, with six lines running through it, serving New York, Boston, Montreal and states to the west. The arrival of the Howe Scale Works in town helped tip the scales in Rutland’s favor, pushing its population briefly above Burlington’s.
What is now the city of Rutland was just a thickly settled area of the town of Rutland until 1886. That year, the Vermont Legislature redrew the map, turning the populous core of Rutland into a village, thereby giving it some expanded municipal powers within the larger municipality of the town of Rutland. At the same time, the Legislature also carved off parts of Rutland town and Pittsford to create the towns of West Rutland and Proctor. The village of Rutland finally became Vermont’s third city in 1892.
Barre and Montpelier joined the ranks of Vermont cities in 1894 and 1895, respectively. Driven almost entirely by the granite industry and associated businesses, which drew immigrants from Italy, Scotland, Canada, and many other countries, Barre’s population grew tremendously during the 1880s. The town surged from slightly more than 2,000 residents to nearly 7,000 during that decade.
Montpelier began as a town, but became much smaller when the Legislature broke it in two, forming the towns of Montpelier and East Montpelier. As historian Esther Swift wrote, “Montpelier got most of the people, the seat of government and the choice river valley location; East Montpelier got most of the land and not much else.”
The state capital had a more diverse economy than most Vermont communities, offering an array of desk and industrial jobs. The city was home to machine shops; manufacturers making household items ranging from clothes mangles to clothespins; granite, marble and slate companies; state government offices; and a number of insurance companies, including National Life Insurance.
Four more communities became cities during the 20th century: St. Albans (1902), Newport (1917), Winooski (1921) and finally South Burlington (1971).
Today, most of the population growth is still connected with Vermont’s cities, particularly Burlington. The growth, however, tends to be in towns surrounding the cities, not in the urban areas themselves. Some would argue that Vermont has moved on from its experiment with urbanism, and is now dabbling in “suburbanism.”
