Duxbury, Vermont: At the Foot of Camel's Hump
Near Stowe, Vermont
Duxbury is one of the smallest and most mountainous towns in Washington County, chartered as a New Hampshire Grant on June seventh, seventeen sixty-three. The first settlers, Walter Avery and Stephen Tilden, arrived around seventeen eighty-six, followed quickly by families with Dutch Knickerbocker surnames like Schuyler, reflecting proprietors who had held New York land patents before Vermont sorted out its sovereignty.
Most of Duxbury's land is too steep and stony to farm, which is one reason the population never grew much beyond a few hundred. What the terrain gave instead was Camel's Hump, Vermont's third-highest peak and one of only a few Vermont summits with true alpine tundra at the top. The mountain rises from Duxbury's eastern edge, a landmark visible on clear days from as far away as Lake Champlain.
