WHEELER HOLLOW OR THE WATER WORKS
(NOW THE VERGENNES WATER SHED AREA)

Moving here March 1, 1932 on the Elgin Spring Farm a lot of history has developed. The area was known as Wheeler Hollow, named after the owners.

Going to school at Beeman Academy, my 7th and 8th grade teacher was Mary Dalton, born up at the north end on a small farm, which was the north boundary of the Water Works property. She told stories of driving down through the Water Works to go to the New Haven Junction for railroad services and to Vergennes for goods. She started teaching in 1908 in New Haven and taught for 43 years. She was a history teacher and I loved history.

The low lands in the Hollow were either meadow or pasture. The land behind the little reservoir was open pasture on the north end of the cobble. When I was ten or so the pasture had a few large apple trees in it. Ted Norton from Bristol owned it at that time. He was a cattle dealer along with being a land buyer. He would buy cheap cattle in the spring and put them in the pasture until fall and then sell them, returning a neat profit.

In that pasture on the west side, up against the high ledge was a small logging camp. There is still a hole where it stood in a group of big pines which were cut in the 60's. The story that Mark Peck told, being our old neighbor, born in 1868, died at 86 years old was that; Dana, a hermit, lived there in a cabin. He had a hound and hunted foxes in the winter, returning from hunting, he was coming down the shoot on the high ledge, slipped and shot himself. In the 40's, a stove and some other things were still there in the old shack.

The land on the north end of the big dam was a hay meadow where the water and the red and white pine plantation is now. My principal at Beeman Academy, who was Ridley Norton, son of Ted Norton, told me of dump raking hay and pitching it as a young boy for his father. This was in the 1910's.

The mountain land on the east side of the pine plantation was all clear cut for wood that was sold to the Lime Kiln to burn in the kilns. They cut four foot wood and drew it to the kiln with horses by our farm. You could see for years the clear cut from our farm. After the dams were built, they planted it to red pine, of which just a few lived. Poplar and grape vines took over the pines. That clear cut never amounted to anything. When Vergennes started the water shed area in 1938, they bought as much of the land as they could for the shed, so as to prevent as much run off as possible. They bought the King pasture where the Fish & Game Club house is now for access. The big dam was high enough so water would gravity feed to the city without pumping.

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