Norwich, Vermont

Norwich, Vermont sits directly across the Connecticut River from Hanover, New Hampshire, connected by a bridge so short that residents sometimes joke about which state they are really in. The town was granted in seventeen sixty-one and became a farming community that the presence of Dartmouth College, just over the river, gradually shaped into something more. Norwich University was actually founded here in eighteen nineteen before it moved to Northfield, Vermont, decades later.

Today Norwich is a prosperous bedroom community for Dartmouth faculty and professionals, home to the Montshire Museum of Science, and known for one of the better public elementary schools in the state. Its identity has always been tied to that river crossing, close enough to a great university that its light spills over, far enough away to remain its own quiet place.