Derby, Vermont: Gateway to Memphremagog

Derby is the most populated town in Orleans County, tucked in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom just below the Canadian border. The Vermont legislature granted the land on October twenty-ninth, seventeen seventy-nine, to Timothy Andrus and fifty-nine other proprietors, naming it for the city of Derby in England. For a century the town held relatively firm boundaries, until the failed neighboring grant of Salem was annexed to Derby by the legislature in eighteen eighty-one, making it the largest town in the county by area.

Derby sits at the southern edge of Lake Memphremagog, a glacial lake that straddles the border into Quebec and has drawn anglers and travelers for generations. Today Derby Line, the village on the international boundary, still shares a library and an opera house with its Canadian neighbor across the street.