White River Junction: Vermont's Railroad Crossroads
Near Woodstock, Vermont
Hartford, Vermont was chartered on July fourth, seventeen sixty-one, by Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire, making it one of the first towns granted east of the Green Mountains after the French and Indian War. For most of its first century, Hartford was quiet farming country. That changed in eighteen forty-eight, when the railroad arrived at the confluence of the Connecticut and White Rivers.
The small depot village called White River Junction found itself at the crossroads of five separate rail lines, and trains flooded in from all directions. At its peak, fifty passenger trains entered and left White River Junction every day, and the station served eight tracks at once. It became the largest railroad junction in Vermont and one of the busiest in all of New England north of Boston.
The trains are quieter now, but the junction's brick downtown still reflects the moment when geography and iron rails made this Connecticut River crossing one of New England's great meeting places.
