The towns bordering Lake Champlain from Vergennes to Fair Haven form the most coherent historic farm landscape in the Champlain Valley and remain much as they appeared about 1850. Most have a town center near their geographic center and farm boundaries often follow the property lines of the original rectangular town lots, with farmyards established along the town road usually near the center of their lot. Although far from complete, Shoreham is the best example of the “build-out” of the subdivision plan for most New Hampshire Grant towns. Though this plan was introduced for the majority of Vermont towns, it was rarely followed due to topography, and, where it was tried, it was often later abandoned.
Shoreham's town plan, on view in the Town office on the green, provided for a central village with public and one-acre house lots around a central green, and rectangular one-hundred-acre lots dividing the rest of the town. Shoreham village and its green lie in the center of the roughly square town, with churches and school on the west side of the green and house lots on the north side, as per the plan. The other two sides of the green were never developed. There was one farm for each original rectangular one-acre lot, though most farms have engulfed or split one of the neighboring lots. The majority of farm boundaries follow the lot lines, and trees, fences, and, occasionally, stone walls often make them visible. Between Larrabee's Point and Shoreham village, for example, they head off perpendicular to the road where the roads parallel boundaries. Because stone is rare in this lake-bottom country, a stone wall is almost certainly an original lot line and is typical of the Champlain Valley and distinct from elsewhere in Vermont. With its intact mid-nineteenth-century rural landscape, distinguished Federal and Greek Revival farmhouses, two centuries of barns, stone schoolhouses, a ferry landing operating at Larrabee's Point since 1789, and landmark village buildings, Shoreham provides a nearly complete picture of the historic lake towns.
Writing Credits
Data
Citation
Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson, "THE LAKE TOWNS", SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/essays/VT-01-ART130.
Print Source
Buildings of Vermont, Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 130-130.
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