Vermont Now, The Smallest State by Population and the Life It Chose

Vermont is the second smallest state by population in the United States, behind only Wyoming. It has about as many residents as the city of Louisville, Kentucky. There is one congressional district. There is no major metropolitan area. The interstate system here is small by national standards.

It is also consistently ranked among the best-educated, healthiest, and most civically engaged states in the country. Vermont has lower crime rates than almost every other state. It has some of the highest voter turnout rates in national elections. Its legislature is among the most gender-balanced in the country. In two thousand and nine, the legislature voted to legalize same-sex marriage, and the governor's veto was overridden, making Vermont the first state to do so through a legislative act rather than a court ruling.

Vermont's smallness is not the result of failure. Vermont has been small by choice, or at least by values. The Act Two Fifty land-use law of nineteen seventy reflected a decision by the legislature and the voters that growth itself was not the goal, that protecting the agricultural and forested landscape had priority over development at any cost. That law, and its successors, have prevented the kind of sprawl that consumed southern New Hampshire and much of Connecticut.

The state has navigated the loss of its manufacturing base, the slow decline of dairy farming, the challenge of keeping young people from leaving, and the chronic difficulty of providing municipal services, schools, roads, fire departments, libraries, in places too small to afford them alone. It has not solved all these problems. Rural Vermont has real poverty, real isolation, and real challenges with housing costs that have spiked in the wake of remote-work migration.

What it has is a continuity of character. The politics are different up here than in the rest of New England. The land shapes the people, and the people shaped the laws to protect the land. Drive far enough up any of these roads, and you will find that the conversation is still local, still particular, still about the specific people and the specific ground they share. That is a thing Vermont has held on to.