Pavement Invades the Rustic Life : Duel Over Dirt Raising Dust in Vermont

Dirt roads, long a part of Vermont’s pastoral landscape, have become a battleground for those trying to preserve the backcountry life style.

Raising dust in the contentious debate are a recent influx of out-of-staters whose initial attraction to dirt-road charm quickly faded in a year of knee-high snow followed by axle-deep mud.

While native Vermonters are accustomed to a winter and springtime regime of stalled vehicles and soiled clothing, the newcomers complain loudly at the local government level.

“A lot of people who’ve built vacation homes would like to be able to get to them year-round,” said Glenn Gershaneck, Vermont Transportation Agency executive assistant.

“Keeping a dirt road travelable in springtime is a real tough assignment. You can go axle deep without a lot of trouble,” he said.

Moreover, newcomers say they are concerned that bad road conditions might slow fire trucks, ambulances and school buses.

“What worries me is if my house caught fire in the middle of the winter, nobody would be able to come put the fire out,” said Lynn Redd, who moved three years ago to Wilmington, where 50 miles of the 75 miles of road are unpaved.

Wilmington, a picturesque community of 1,800 permanent residents near a major ski resort, bursts with an additional 5,000 or 6,000 people on summer and winter weekends.

Motorists forced to use unpaved back roads to avoid bottlenecks in town are applying pressure on local government to upgrade or pave the secondary routes. Some residents worry that this would encourage more tourists to use the back roads and shatter the cherished quiet of backcountry living.

Indeed, some die-hard Vermonters point with pride to their rustic roads, and to fresh streaks of mud on their vehicles as evidence of spongy road surfaces bravely surmounted. These roads less traveled are part of the simple charm that keeps out-of-staters feeding the state’s Vermont’s tourist-driven economy.

“People come up here for the charm of Vermont, then take it away by paving,” said Debbie Anderson, who moved to Wilmington from Massachusetts 10 years ago. “What did people do before they were paved?”

Others say that some newcomers are also trying to pull up the drawbridge against the march of progress by stymying local efforts to bring blacktop to dirt roads.

“There’s too many flatlanders (out-of-staters) coming in. They don’t want the blacktop,” said Roy Bolles, the road commissioner of Calais for almost two decades.

Bolles said some new Calais residents have assumed public office and are trying to influence local politics in favor of keeping the roads unpaved, but most local and state officials say the pro-blacktop forces seem to be winning the debate.

For example, in tiny Wardsboro, more and more of the 43 miles of road are expected to be paved in coming years, largely due to pressure from residents of a new vacation community that has sprung up in the area.

“In small-town politics, the majority rules,” said road foreman Francis Coburn, who is a former Wardsboro selectman.