Rockingham Village Historic Walking Tour brochure

"When the first settlers of European descent arrived in Vermont in the mid-1750s, they were confronted by a densely forested wilderness. As the Town of Rockingham was laid out by early surveyors, they located its main settlement - Rockingham Village - on an expansive elevated terrace above the Connecticut River Valley, as it was easily defensible against attack by the French and their Native American allies to the north, and less prone to flooding. Bordered by the Williams River, the village also had a reliable source of water for drinking, agriculture and water-powered industry. During that time, the French and Indian War was raging between British American and New France (Canada), with Vermont a central art of what was the North American theater of the European Seven Years' War of 1756-63. Although the town was chartered in 1753, it wasn't until the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763, ending the hostilities, that British colonists began making their way north from Connecticut and Massachusetts - where prime farmland had become scarce - to settle here permanently. Rockingham Village initially served as the commercial and social hub of the town, which also included the villages of Bartonsville, Bellows Falls, Cambridgeport and Saxtons River. In 1835 there were three taverns , two stores, two blacksmiths' shops and a large tannery clustered around the Rockingham Meeting House, to be joined in future years by additional businesses and hotels. This bustling era for the Rockingham Village community was not to last, however. With defense against attacks no longer a pressing concern, by the early 1800s Bellows Falls began to emerge as the most desirable part of town, with residents lured to the area by lush farmland and the Connecticut River itself, which offered abundant fishing, greater water power for various mills and the ability to transport goods far more quickly than by land. Then completion of the Bellows Falls Canal in 1802 - the first to be built in North American - allowed boats to bypass the Great Falls and cemented Bellows Falls' position as the commercial and residential enter of town. The development of the railroads in the mid-1800s brought even more industry to Bellows Falls, including numerous paper mills that employed thousands of the town's residents over time. Still, Rockingham Village remained an important of the town, if only because the Rockingham Meeting House and town offices were there. In 1839 the meeting house was abandoned as a place of worship, although town meetings continued to be held there until 1869, when the town offices were relocated to Bellows Falls. Many of the businesses in Rockingham Village were leveled by a disastrous fire in 1908, which also claimed six historic homes. A number of the homes seen today were built on sites of those burned-out earlier dwellings. Rockingham Village was further isolated when the relocation of Route 103 was completed in the early 1960s, eliminating the need to use Meeting House Road as a major thoroughfare for traffic." Project funding was funded in part by a Historic Preservation Fund grant to the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (grant no. P17AF00049).

Rockingham Village Historic Walking Tour brochure

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