Vermont

American Precision Museum
The American Precision Museum is museum of precision manufacturing, featuring a collection of hand and machine tools, housed in an old armory in the small Vermont town of Windsor. Among the museum's remarkable collections and displays of small-scale invention...
Argonaut Talc Mine
For many years, Vermont was one of the leading states in the production of talc, and it is still one of only six states that does so, and is ranked third in the nation. All of the talc production currently comes from a single mine, the Argonaut Mine, in Ludlow....
Bentley Snowflake Museum
The Snowflake Museum in Jericho is one of the most remarkable museums in the state. It is located in the back rooms of the Old Mill Craft Shop, past the door for the Jericho Village Office. It features the work of Wilson Bentley (1861-1931) who lived his entire...
Carving Studio and Sculpture Center

The Carving Studio and Sculpture Center in West Rutland is an active art production site, located at a large, long-shuttered Vermont Marble production plant. Most of the buildings are leased to other companies, but the Carving Studio occupies a few of the...
Danby Quarry

Located inside Dorset Mountain, the Danby Quarry is the largest underground marble quarry in the world (since most marble, and other dimension stone for that matter, is excavated in pits, not underground). Its ceilings are 60-feet high and the primary...
Elizabeth Mine Superfund Site
The Elizabeth Mine, in South Strafford, was once the largest copper mine in the nation, and was still the largest in New England during WWII. Its production peaked in 1955, when it covered 850 acres (more than a square mile). When it closed in 1958, it was the...
Ethan Allan Firing Range

Vermont has one full-fledged military range, the Ethan Allan Firing Range, near Underhill Center. Owned by the Army, the 11,000 acre range was first established in the 1920s, and was developed as a major gun testing range by General Electric in the 1950s. It...
Highwater Test Range
The legendary Canadian weapons engineer Gerald Bull operated a test site that straddled the international border, near Jay, Vermont. First known as Highwater Station (the name coming from the closest town on the Canadian side) the location was created on land...
Joseph Smith Birthplace
The farm where Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons) was born, in 1805, was located on this hillside in South Royalton. The site is now one of more than a dozen historic sites owned by the LDS Church, and is a...
Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historic Park

The Marsh Billings Rockefeller Historic Site is a complicated place. Located in the town of Woodstock, perhaps Vermont's fanciest town, it is the state's first and only National Park. It consists of a few hundred acres covering Mount Tom, and the farm and...
Middlebury Quarry
The Middlebury Quarry is a large open pit limestone quarry that is the primary source of the material for the calcium carbonate processed at OMYA's Verpol Plant 25 miles away. Up to 115 truckloads a day go back and forth on the highway. The quarry is nearly a...
Mount Equinox
A 7,000 acre private wooded reserve owned by reclusive monks, where the nation's "longest paved private toll road" rises 3,200 feet up to the top of Mount Equinox. The property was amassed and developed starting in the 1930s, by a chemist, engineer and executive...
Omya Verpol Operation
OMYA's Verpol plant grinds up rock to extract and purify calcium carbonate for industrial applications. Calcium carbonate is a widespread material, making up 4% of the earth's crust. Found in limestone, chalks, and other common rocks and minerals, it is often...
Rock of Ages Quarry Visitor Center
The largest granite quarries in the world, they say, and possibly in fact (as it all depends on how you measure them), are in Vermont, around the town of Graniteville, south of Barre. Granite has been quarried here since the 1820s, but it took the railway,...
Smith Granite Quarry
The Upper E. L. Smith Quarry is said to be the "largest and deepest dimension granite quarry in the world." It is one of several in the region, most of which are owned and operated by the Rock of Ages company. The grey granite of the Graniteville quarries is...
Swanton ICBM Silo
Though possibly the least militarized state in the Union, Vermont has two intercontinental ballistic missile silos, no longer in service - as missile silos, that is. This one, near Swanton, is used as an equipment yard by the Chevalier Drilling Company, a local...
The Robert Frost Stone House
The work of the poet Robert Frost embodies the serene tranquility of a hyper-romantic New England. Though he was born in San Francisco, and lived out the last quarter of his life in Florida, he drew most of the imagery for his poetry from the places he lived in...
Vermont Marble Museum
A large museum of the local marble industry, located in the former showroom and warehouse of the Vermont Marble Company. In the early 1900s, when marble was still a major building material, the Vermont Marble Company, headquartered here in Proctor, dominated the...
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant
A nuclear power plant located on the Connecticut River, at the southern end of the state. This single reactor plant, which went on line in 1972, produces 550 megawatts, enough for 500,000 homes. It is the only major power plant in the state, and produces nearly...