Killington Peak and the Naming of Vermont
Near Killington, Vermont
High above you rises Killington Peak, at roughly four thousand two hundred thirty feet the second highest summit in Vermont, taller than everything in the state except Mount Mansfield. The peak carries one of Vermont's most romantic origin stories. According to legend, the first recorded ascent came in seventeen sixty three, when a traveling clergyman named the Reverend Samuel Peters climbed to this summit, which was then known as Mount Pisgah.
Standing amid the sea of green ridges rolling away in every direction, Peters is said to have christened the land Verd Mont, a French flavored phrase meaning green mountain, and to have declared that the whole region should carry the name. From Verd Mont, the story goes, came Vermont. It is a wonderful tale, and you will hear it told all over these hills.
But honesty requires a caution. Most historians consider the Peters account apocryphal, a colorful yarn told long after the fact. The credit for the name Vermont more reliably belongs to Doctor Thomas Young, who in seventeen seventy seven urged the settlers to adopt it as they broke away to form an independent republic.
Whichever version is true, the view that supposedly inspired it is real, and on a clear day it stretches for many miles.
