Brattleboro

Brattleboro began as a frontier outpost. "To defend the Massachusetts Bay Colony against Chief Gray Lock and others during Dummer's War, the Massachusetts General Court voted on December 27, 1723, to build a blockhouse and stockade on the Connecticut River near the site of what would later become known as Brattleboro."¹ Fort Dummer, the 1724 stockade that resulted, was the first European settlement in what is now Vermont. The town proper came a generation later: "the township became one of the New Hampshire grants, and was chartered (founded) as such on December 26, 1753, by Governor Benning Wentworth. It was named Brattleborough, after Brigadier-General William Brattle, Jr. of Boston… Ironically, there is no record that Brattle ever visited the locality."¹

Water power made it an industrial town. "Whetstone Falls, very close to where Brattleboro's Whetstone Brook flows into the Connecticut River, was a handy source of water power for watermills,"¹ and the mills gave rise to the town's signature industry. "The Estey Organ Company was an organ manufacturer based in Brattleboro, Vermont, founded in 1852 by Jacob Estey. At its peak, the company was one of the world's largest organ manufacturers, employed about 700 people… Estey built around 500,000 to 520,000 pump organs between 1846 and 1955."² Its sprawling Birge Street complex, with "more than 20 buildings, many of which were interconnected by raised walkways and covered bridges,"² survives today — and "one of the buildings now houses the Estey Organ Museum."²

Brattleboro also drew the era's reformers and writers. "In 1834, the Brattleboro Retreat, then called the Vermont Asylum for the Insane, was established"¹ — "the first facility for the care of the mentally ill in Vermont, and one of the first ten private psychiatric hospitals in the United States."³ A decade later "the Brattleboro Hydropathic Establishment was opened by Robert Wesselhoeft; this was the third 'water cure' establishment in the country… Until the water cure closed in 1871, the town was widely known as a curative health resort."¹ And "British author Rudyard Kipling settled in Brattleboro after marrying a young Brattleboro woman, Carrie Balestier, in 1892… Kipling wrote The Jungle Book and other works there."¹

Brattleboro wears its arts identity openly — it was ranked "No. 9 among 'arts towns' with a population of 30,000 or less" in The 100 Best Small Art Towns in America.¹ Time a visit for the first Friday of the month, when "an event known as 'Gallery Walk' is held, during which galleries, artists, arts organizations, and stores display new art works or hold performances."¹ The anchor is the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center — "a vibrant non-collecting contemporary art museum focused on the work of living artists,"⁶ set in the town's "former railroad station"⁵: "BMAC is located in Brattleboro's historic Union Station at the foot of Main Street in downtown Brattleboro, Vermont."⁶

For the town's industrial past made visitable, the Estey Organ Museum occupies one of the surviving slate-sided factory buildings on Birge Street.² Just west of downtown off Route 9, the Creamery Covered Bridge — "Built in 1879, it is Brattleboro's last surviving 19th-century covered bridge"⁴ and "a significant tourist attraction"⁴ — makes an easy stop. And each February the Harris Hill Ski Jump hosts international competitions that "still attract daring ski-jumping athletes from all over the world."¹