Coolidge State Forest and the President Sworn In by Lamplight

The vast wooded country south of Killington belongs to the Calvin Coolidge State Forest, at more than twenty two thousand acres. It exists thanks in part to Perry Merrill, the visionary state forester who as state forester helped Vermont to buy up cut over land and let the forest heal, and who later approved the lease that created Killington itself. During the nineteen thirties the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads, trails, and a campground here, work you can still walk today.

The forest carries the name of Vermont's own president, and just to the south lies the tiny village of Plymouth Notch where he was born and raised. Calvin Coolidge earned a place in history in the small hours of August third, nineteen twenty three. Word arrived by messenger that President Warren Harding had died, and Coolidge was staying at the family homestead, a plain farmhouse with no electricity and no telephone.

So at forty seven minutes past two in the morning, by the yellow glow of a kerosene lamp, his own father, a notary public and justice of the peace, administered the oath of office. Never before or since has a father sworn in his son as president of the United States.