Finding Vermont’s lost roads

In the slow-paced towns of Vermont, musty archive vaults are getting a curious amount of foot traffic this year.

With magnifying glasses to decode old handwriting and tissues for dust-induced sneezing, citizen volunteers are poring over record books with a common, increasingly urgent purpose: finding evidence of every road ever legally created in their towns, including many that are now impassable and all but unobservable.

The point is to comply with a 2006 state law that gives Vermont’s cities and towns until early next year to identify all their “ancient roads.” At that point, they can add the elusive roads to official town maps, ensuring that they remain public, or turn them over to owners of adjoining land.

Unlike many other states, in which towns automatically forfeit rights to roads that go unused for years, Vermont requires that they remain public until formally discontinued. That has brought fights between towns and landowners whose property abuts or even intersects ancient roads, with the towns eager to preserve public access for outdoor pursuits and the owners seeking clear titles and privacy.

“The state decided we just can’t have this type of upheaval,” said Alex Thayer, a retired lawyer who is helping catalog ancient roads in Plainfield, outside Montpelier.

In the most infamous legal battle, the town of Chittenden blocked a couple from adding on to their house, saying the addition would encroach on an ancient road laid out in 1793. Town officials forced a showdown when they arrived on the property with chain saws one day in 2004, intending to cut down trees and bushes on the road, until the police intervened.

That case and others made the real estate industry fear that the lack of clarity would scare off buyers. The industry pressured the legislature to act, as did hikers and snowmobilers eager to preserve ancient roads as public space.

Such opposing interests ensure that conflicts will keep rearing up as towns decide the fate of roads they identify, a debate that under the law can continue until 2015. But for now, the focus is on research.

Some towns, content to abandon the overgrown roads that crisscross their valleys and hills, are forgoing the project. But many more have recruited teams to comb through old documents, make lists of whatever roads they find evidence of, plot them on maps, and then set off to locate them.

Even for history buffs, the challenge is steep: evidence of ancient roads may be scattered through antique record books, incomplete or hard to make sense of.

“The description might be, ‘Starting at Abel Turner’s front door and going to so-and-so’s sawmill,’ ” said Aaron Worthley, a member of the ancient roads committee in Huntington, southeast of Burlington. “But the house might have burned down 100 years ago. And even if not, is the front door still where it was in 1815? These are the kinds of questions we’re dealing with.”

Still, Worthley and others in this outdoorsy state believe the payoff will be rich. Landowners here have traditionally let hikers and others cross their property, but more recent buyers, including many “flatlanders” from out of state, are often less welcoming.

“When I moved here 30 years ago,” said Paul Hannon, a surveyor who is helping several towns with their research, “seeing land posted was unusual, and now it’s a lot more common. If nothing else, getting towns to pay attention to what they own, what they have rights to, is a good thing.”

The research is taking so long, however, that many towns want more time, and the legislature is considering an extension. According to the Vermont Agency of Transportation, only 12 cities and towns have so far formally asked for ancient roads to be added to their official highway maps.

“There’s a lot of hard slogging,” said Paul Gillies, a lawyer in Montpelier who is advising towns on how to proceed. “There are hundreds of people around the state who are diligently opening up these old books, sneezing three times, plotting out roads and trying to figure out where they are.”

On the other hand, he said, many volunteers find themselves gleefully channeling Sherlock Holmes or Indiana Jones.

“You could be breaking a genetic code or opening a long-lost pharaoh’s tomb,” Gillies wrote in a training guide for volunteers, “for the exhilaration you will feel when you make that wondrous discovery.”

Peter Vollers, a lawyer in Woodstock who shares Gillies’ gusto, said he loved getting out and looking for hints of ancient roads: parallel stone walls or rows of old-growth trees about 50 feet apart. Old culverts are clues, too, as are cellar holes that suggest people lived there; if so, a road probably passed nearby.

Vollers heads the Vermont Expedition Society, a group of off-roaders who treasure ancient roads as a recreational asset. He recently started a company, Vermont Overland Guide Services, to help off-roaders navigate ancient roads and other rural byways.

“We’re in favor of the movement because it preserves our existing right to use our public highways,” he said. “But we don’t necessarily advocate the recognition and improvement of every ancient road that has been long forgotten.”

When asked for examples of ancient roads to photograph, Gillies made clear just how anxious the law had made some homeowners.

“I know a nice place where you could go and take a picture,” he said, “but unfortunately the landowner has been repelling people with firearms.”