Visitors to Montpelier are often taken up into the beautiful Berlin hills….

Charles Edward Crane, “Let Me Show You Vermont”

When I think of Berlin, Vermont, the image that pops into my head is “shopping mall.” That’s because Berlin is where Walmart, Price Chopper, Staples, and other big stores are located, as well as various car dealerships and our local hospital. I visit Berlin often as it’s just 25 minutes down the road from me, but those trips are usually for more for practical than pleasurable reasons.

But the good thing about our 251 Vermont quest is that it gets us out to see the familiar with fresh eyes. So James and I (have I introduced my husband, chauffeur, and road companion yet?) load our pup Ita and my sketchbook into the car, and set off to see a new side of this somewhat unVermontish—given its fast food and strip malls and big box stores— neighboring town.

We drive past the familiar parking lots of the mall, and the Maplefields Visitor Center, a big, new building with an unclear function other than providing a bathroom break for weary tourists exiting Interstate 89. On we continue to the Berlin Town Hall, a functional rather than historic building. But on nearby streets, less than a few miles from the freeway and malls, we find lovely 19th Century homes and the beautiful Congregational Church and cemetery. Next to Shed Road (there’s a white shed there that explains the name) a stream burbles through thawing snow and hosts two ducks swimming peacefully along scouting out a nesting site. In Vermont, even in a built-up area like Berlin, you can always find history and nature close by.

Berlin may look like much of suburban America, but its past stretches way back. The town was chartered in 1763 with the first grants of land given to ministers, merchants, and judges. Each early settler was required to pay “one ear of Indian corn” for their acre of land and after ten years could pay “one shilling for each hundred acres of land.” (No mention in the history books of reimbursements to the Abenaki natives who had been living here for generations.) James read that Berlin is the only town in Vermont with a German name, do any readers know if that’s true, and why that is?

Another interesting piece of history is that the McIntosh apple had its New England origins as a cash crop in Berlin. By the 1870s, a farm and orchard located here had nursery stock numbering in the thousands and traveling salesmen that sold a variety of fruit trees throughout New England, including the tasty and hardy McIntosh. The orchard at its peak covered some 300 acres with a total population of 50,000 seedlings, which I’m guessing is bigger than any orchards in our state these days.

We follow Old Pumphouse Road to Berlin Pond, and drive along the edge for a ways. It would be a lovely to walk, dogs in tow, around the pond on a spring afternoon, but it feels too chilly to enjoy being outside today without a parka on—in fact, men are ice fishing on the pond’s still frozen water. (That’s a recreational activity I don’t understand as it seems it would be both very cold and very boring, but I appreciate that’s it’s beloved by many, including our son.)

We continue up the road to the Edward F. Knapp Airport, a tiny facility built during the 1930’s Depression by the federal government’s infrastructure program to bring jobs to rural areas. The pandemic has made the airport even more quiet than usual, and it’s hard to believe that Knapp Airport served Northeast Airlines in the not-too-distant past. Today we just see one small plane leaning expectantly against the runway’s chain link fence, waiting for something new and exciting to happen.

Our tour of Berlin is almost complete for today, and we head back down the road and north towards home. I hope we’re back soon to explore more of the “out of the way” Berlin we discovered—especially to walk that loop around not the shopping mall this time, but big, beautiful Berlin pond.

Your comments are welcome below!