Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every summer, we fan out around the state to delight in our favorite annual tradition: discovering the origins of Vermont’s strangest road names, as chosen by our listeners.
We raid town archives, chase down local lore, and spend an inordinate amount of time driving up and down the roads in question (sorry, neighbors!) — all in the name of journalism.
Don’t miss the seven previous installments of our annual road names series. You can find them all here.
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Horn of the Moon Road in East Montpelier
By Burgess Brown
Aurora Eley: You could either go that way, which is very steep and easy, or this way. I like to go this way.
Burgess Brown: Aurora Eley is guiding me down a steep wooded slope next to her home in East Montpelier. We’re making our way to Aurora’s favorite swim spot.
Aurora Eley: That’s our plunge pool.
Burgess Brown: Her brother Orion is here too.
Orion Eley: We plunge just about whenever it's, like, either sweltering or we have had, like, a stressful day and need to cool off.
Burgess Brown: I hear that.
Burgess Brown: These two celestially-named children live on Horn of the Moon Road.
It’s like we’re in a fairy tale.
Orion Eley: It's actually like a magical land. It's so, so good.
Burgess Brown: Aurora and Orion’s parents, Sarah Waring and Paul Eley, are the ones who originally submitted Horn of the Moon Road to the show.
Sarah Waring: What an unusual name, right? People sometimes say, “Oh, it's very poetic.” Because I don't think the word moon often shows up in road names.
Burgess Brown: They bought their house here about a decade ago as they were preparing for marriage and kids. For Paul, the road name was a big factor in his decision making.
Paul Eley: So when we were coming out to look at the house, I think I said to Sarah, “Well, we have to buy this house because then we get to live on Horn of the Moon Road.” I think I was already sold.
Burgess Brown: And these two aren’t alone in their appreciation for this lyrical road name.
Burgess Brown: Now, if I wanted to go take a photo of the road sign, Horn of the Moon Road—
Sarah Waring: Yeah, you can't. People steal it every time. Every time a new one goes up, somebody comes along, I don't know, within a week, within two weeks, and it's gone again. I'm betting there a lot of people who have Horn of the Moon Road signs in their dorm rooms or on their old barn somewhere.
Burgess Brown: Sarah and Paul love their road. And they want to know: What inspired this little poem of a name?
To answer this question, I made the first call of any half-decent road names investigation: the local historical society. And Sandal Cate, president of East Montpelier’s, answered that call — and boy, did she deliver.
Sandal Cate: And luckily we just have people around us who have been paying attention to history and know how to get at historical sources.
Burgess Brown: She shared my question with her local history network and collected a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, maps and history books.
She and her husband Paul invited me to East Montpelier to show me what she’d found and take me on what she called a “bus tour” of the area.
Sandal Cate: So Burgess, we're now on the Horn of the Moon Road, which has probably been here for a good long while.
Burgess Brown: Horn of the Moon is a dirt road about five miles north of downtown Montpelier. The road winds through farmland high in the hills until it meets up with the brook where Aurora and Orion do their plunging. There, it makes a sharp southwesterly turn down and then across the Wrightsville Reservoir.
Sandal Cate: And now we've just crested the high point on Horn of the Moon, and I'm going to slow down just so that Burgess can look around and get a sense of the panorama here. Um, there's an old sugar house on the right.
Burgess Brown: I mean, it is a Vermont postcard up here: rolling pastures and incredible views of the Worcester Range. It does feel like we’re high above the earth, looking down over central Vermont. Maybe like we’re sitting on the horn of the moon.
And just so we’re all on the same page here, the “horns” that we’re talking about refer to the two sharp tips you see during a crescent phase of the moon. I had to look this up to be sure and, these days, it’s really not a super common phrase. But Sandal says, that’s not always been the case.
Sandal Cate: Language waxes and wanes, just like the moon does. (Laughter)
Burgess Brown: In all those old newspapers Sandal and her friends found, there are lots of astrological references to the “horn of the moon.” There’s even this old children's book called “From The Horn of the Moon.”
And then there are mentions of this place where we are now.
Sandal Cate: There are lots of newspaper clippings that make reference to the Horn of the Moon and they are dated, you know, 1847, 1849. So, the name goes back a good long ways.
Burgess Brown: The thing is, these newspaper clippings from the mid-1800s aren’t referencing our road. They’re referencing a community. This whole area, up here in the hills above Montpelier, is called the Horn of the Moon.
Sandal pulls out a copy of a memoir called Trips Down Memory Lane by a woman named Jennie Gladding and starts reading.
Sandal Cate: “In the northwest corner of East Montpelier, Vermont is a little community called the Horn of the Moon. Here, surrounded by wooded hills…”
Burgess Brown: Jennie’s book gives us a glimpse into life here on the Horn of the Moon around the turn of the 20th century. What the day-to-day was like for the dairy farmers, the struggles of winter, and the roaring house parties that happened on “The Horn,” as residents called it.
We stop off at one of the houses where those parties probably happened. It’s now the home of Dan Smith and Flor Diaz Smith.
Flor Diaz Smith: We call it Cuerno de Luna, which is “horn of the moon” in Spanish.
Burgess Brown: The Smiths’ place has, at various points, been a dairy operation, accommodations for drovers moving cattle on foot, a tavern and a tack shop. Now they’re raising beef cattle and chickens.
Dan, Flor’s husband, has heard a lot of stories from the old-timers about the history of their house. He’s also heard a story about how the area got its name.
Dan Smith: The Native American, the Indigenous person who had a cow and said he found it on the horn of the moon.
Burgess Brown: Dan’s referencing a story that’s kind of the default explanation of where the name Horn of the Moon came from. It’s even in the town history book, called Across the Onion.
The story goes like this: An Indigenous man living in the area lost his cow, or lost his wife, depending on who’s telling it, and went out searching. He found his cow, or wife, in the hills of East Montpelier. When locals asked him where he found her, he said, “on the horn of the moon” — the explanation being that the shape of the moon had guided his search.
Now, I have to say I’m pretty skeptical of this. It sounds like a nice folktale that would get passed down to children in the area. But it’s really not all that satisfying to me.
Sandal has her doubts, too.
Sandal Cate: I just say that's a legend which doesn't have high end documentation.
Burgess Brown: But she has another theory.
Sandal Cate: We'll stop here. Here we go. That gives us a nice overview,
Burgess Brown: We’re near the peak of Horn of the Moon Road. There’s a particular vista Sandal wants me to see.
Sandal Cate: Straight ahead, the highest crest of the hill. And there's a ridge to the left, and it really has a nice sort of crescent-bowl-shape feeling to it.
Burgess Brown: Aha! A crescent. But I’m not totally seeing what Sandal is talking about here. It mostly just looks like a long hill to me.
Fortunately, she’s brought maps — including something called a LiDAR map.
Sandal Cate: And don't ask me what “LiDAR” stands for. I know there's a term.
Burgess Brown: Light Detection and Ranging. Basically, lasers are used to make 3D renderings of the earth.
And, sure enough, looking at the map, this hill that’s just north of our road makes a clear crescent shape. And it comes to a distinct point — maybe like a horn.
And as Sandal says, the historic Horn of the Moon community is nestled into this crescent shaped bowl.
Even though I’m struggling to see the crescent shape without the benefit of modern technology, Sandal says people in the 18th or 19th century would’ve had a different relationship to the land.
Sandal Cate: Sure, a person who was living in the area and had to go someplace and would have walked the ground extensively. I mean, we're, we're a little removed these days from being on the land and knowing the terrain and, and using the terrain to our advantage.
He would have known that there was this shape, this bowl, this crescent in the land, and would’ve said, “Oh, it was just at the horn of this moon shaped hillside.”
Burgess Brown: This is a convincing explanation to me. Even moreso because Sandal has another piece of evidence to back it up. It’s an 1847 novel that was published as a serial in local Vermont newspapers. It’s about a guy who grew up in rural Vermont and became a schoolmaster in a “nearby mountain town.”
Check out this excerpt:
“The particular neighborhood was known by the name Horn of the Moon, an appellation generally understood to be derived from a peculiar curvature of a mountain that partially enclosed the place.”
So ultimately, this is how interpreting history works. Without solid documentation, or with conflicting documentation, we have to go with our best educated guess. And mine is that this little community, and the road that runs through, got its name from the crescent shaped hill that surrounds it.
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Scotch Hollow Road in Newbury
By Lucia McCallum
Lucia McCallum: Do you think there could be such thing as, like, a secret Scotch stash somewhere?
Mary Burnham: (Laughter) You know it could be— if you could pinpoint when it became Scotch Hollow.
Lucia McCallum: That’s Mary Burnham, she just quickly stepped out from her shift at Tenney Memorial Library in Newbury where she's the librarian. Now she’s giving me a tour of Scotch Hollow Road.
Mary Burnham: You’re gonna go up the hill, and you'll pass my house on the left.
Lucia McCallum: Mary lived on Scotch Hollow Road for over half a century, but like our question-asker — who requested to remain anonymous — Mary is unsure about its origins.
Mary Burnham: I don’t know! OK, so hang a right.
Lucia McCallum: The “hollow” part of the name is obvious: A good chunk of this road snakes its way through a narrow wooded valley. And tight turns and loose gravel make me wonder if my 2004 Accord is up for the task.
Mary Burnham: I rarely go in here. Um. But I'm sure the Honda will be good. Keep going, if you want to!
Lucia McCallum: But what “scotch” has to do with this road is less clear. When I first heard the name, my mind went to, well, booze. Think old-timey bootleggers and moonshine. Maybe this is Brave Little State’s chance to crack the case on a long lost prohibition smuggling route.
I say goodbye to Mary and head into town to see what else I can find.
Scotch Hollow has a big presence in the area. Literally: It’s the longest road in town, spanning over 13 miles from Ryegate in the North, through Newbury, almost all the way to the New Hampshire border.
It’s even on the menu at the village store.
Lucia McCallum: And you guys say that you have a pizza named after it?
Aleeha Hunt and Morgan Tripp: Yeah!
Aleeha Hunt: If you want to grab our menu right there, it should be on the pizza page towards the back.
Lucia McCallum: For those wondering, the Scotch Hollow is topped with sausage, mushrooms, onions and roasted red pepper on a garlic butter crust.
Lucia McCallum: Yeah, um. I'm Lucia. I'm with Vermont Public.
Lucia McCallum: Next I visit the town clerk’s office, which is just down the street from the library. They lead me towards the back of the office to the so-called “highway books.”
Mary Collins: I have no idea how it’s indexed. Let’s see…
Lucia McCallum: These heavy leatherbound records document the creation of some of the town's first roads. I’m hoping they contain a definitive account of where “Scotch Hollow” comes from.
But scanning through, I come face-to-face with one of my deep-seated insecurities, one that’s haunted me since the third grade: my inability to read cursive.
Lucia McCallum: July 6, 1839. Road, roads, something…
Lucia McCallum: So, from what I can tell, Scotch Hollow as a road can be traced as far back as 1839.
But there are also references to Scotch Hollow as a neighborhood — and those go back even further. Here’s Assistant Town Treasurer Brenda Highland reading birth records from a book of Newbury’s town history.
Brenda Highland: And William was born in Ryegate in 1803. He lived at the upper end of Scotch Hollow. So it goes back to 18 something.
Lucia McCallum: Eighteen something. These archival records help me understand the “when” of Scotch Hollow. But in order to find the “why,” the nice folks at the town clerk’s office suggest I pick up the phone and reach out to a local expert.
Lucia McCallum: I just got word that you might know something about the origin of the name Scotch Hollow.
Sandy Titus: Yeah.
Lucia McCallum: Sandy Titus has lived in Newbury her whole life and is something of an unofficial local historian.
Sandy Titus: I believe that when you come along through the Scotch Hollow and there’s a long valley, a hollow.
Lucia McCallum: Sandy says the name Scotch Hollow has less to do with scotch whiskey and more to do with Scottish people.
Sandy Titus: And my belief is that that hollow was primarily populated with people who had Scottish history: McClintocks, Burrows. I can't think of others right now, but I'm sure that there were.
Lucia McCallum: Others — like Sandy’s own family. They’ve lived in Newbury since nearly its founding and are Scottish themselves.
Sandy Titus: My father always said that our family was Scotch-Irish, meaning Scottish people who had moved to Ireland and then come to America.
Melodee Woods: It would be the road that would be most directly connected to the Scottish emigrants in Rygate and in Barnet.
Lucia McCallum: I’m talking with historian Melodee Woods, who’s based at Loughborough University in England. In 2005, she published a study on Scottish cultural identity in New England. She says the name Scotch Hollow no doubt leads back to early Scottish settlers.
But not just any Scottish settlers. Melodee can trace the history all the way back to one particular group of early Scottish residents. They called themselves the Scotch American Company of Farmers. And they started arriving in Vermont in 1773.
Melodee Woods: The following year, 1774, they started actually building in Ryegate, Vermont. This was individuals from various ranks of life that had come together and decided they were going to recreate their community in a sort of more affluent and more mutually beneficial way than they were able to maintain back in Scotland.
Lucia McCallum: But they didn’t plan on sticking around. Melodee says they were still financially tied to Great Britain — and eventually intended to return.
However, their ties to their homeland quickly became a little rocky. And prospects of ever returning became a lot more far-fetched.
Melodee Woods: In 1775, we have Lexington and Concord and the start of the American Revolutions. And that really changes everything, because immigration to the Americas is made illegal from Britain. People are no longer allowed to go. And so they get caught up in this war.
Lucia McCallum: Instead of returning to Europe, the Scotch American Company of Farmers became more integrated into their new home.
Melodee Woods: They start to intermarry with local Vermonters or other individuals from New England. It really becomes an American town at that point. And that is sort of the end of the Scotch American Company of Farmers as a corporation, but the people who were involved in it continue to hold town offices and be really prominent members of the community for the rest of their lives.
Lucia McCallum: Melodee says since members of that first generation of the Scotch American Company of Farmers came to the area, it stands to reason that they would settle in Scotch Hollow, possibly with their American spouses.
Melodee Woods: I can imagine some cheeky individual, a Scottish individual naming it Scotch Hollow as sort of a testament to their former homeland, or their parents' former homeland.
Lucia McCallum: During my trip, I heard from both lifelong residents and transplants that Newbury’s the type of community that can make you feel at home within a couple of weeks.
Sounds like those first Scottish emigrants maybe felt that too.
Goodenough Road in Brattleboro
By Sabine Poux
Sabine Poux: Goodenough Road is a mile-long dirt road in West Brattleboro. Question-asker Cassandra Keith lives nearby and passes by it a lot.
Cassandra Keith: So I said to myself, what the heck does that mean? Is the road just good enough? (Laughter) Because I couldn't imagine it was actually a family name.
Sabine Poux: Well, even though it seemed far-fetched to Cassandra, Goodenough is, in fact, a family name. The word itself likely comes from Middle English, meaning good servant.
Well, one thing I know for certain: There are a lot of Goodenoughs in Vermont.
Last year, while combing the archives of the Hardwick Gazette for a different story, I happened upon one “Mandana Goodenough” — a widowed mother of four who kept a prolific diary.
And then there’s Ward Goodenough, the modern-day state’s attorney for Windsor County. But Ward says the road in West Brattleboro that bears his name was named after a different branch of the family.
Ward Goodenough: I think the connection from my family to that side of whatever the Goodenough family is is pretty far back in time.
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But Ward points me to yet another branch of the Goodenoughs — the Goodenoughs of Goodenough Rubbish Removal in Brattleboro. It’s located just 15 minutes from one end of the road.
So, I shoot them an email and they confirm that yes, the road is named for their family, and, more specifically, for their great-grandfather, Arthur Goodenough, who lived in a house on that road long, long ago.
So, the story of how this Vermont road got its name might not be all that interesting: road named for a person who lived on the road. It happens a lot.
However, the Goodenough family is very interesting.
Cynthia Sykes: I am Cynthia Sykes. My mother was born in the Goodenough house. And I now live in Greenfield.
Sabine Poux: Cynthia Sykes is cousins with the Brattleboro Goodenoughs. She lives in Massachusetts.
Cynthia Sykes: I’m very into the history of the family and I’m very interested this and the house. The house is, like, precious to us.
Sabine Poux: Cynthia’s interested not only in her family history but histories writ large. On the side, she’s a paranormal investigator. She says she’s been doing that for years.
And today, we’re meeting at the West Brattleboro Cemetery. Cynthia’s brought along another cousin, Wendy Loewenthal, who’s also a Brattleboro Goodenough.
Wendy Loewenthal: My mom was Linda Goodenough. She was related to practically everybody around here, pretty much, I think.
Sabine Poux: A lot of Cynthia and Wendy’s family is buried here – including Arthur Goodenough, our road’s namesake.
Wendy Loewenthal: He’s my great grandfather.
Cynthia Sykes: Great grandfather.
Sabine Poux: And he’s buried here.
Cynthia Sykes and Wendy Loewenthal: Yes.
Arthur Goodenough was … well, I’ll let these guys tell you.
This Week in Brattleboro History: Welcome to This Week in Brattleboro History. Produced by the Brattleboro Historical Society and the Brattleboro Area Middle School. Arthur Goodenough was born in 1871.
Sabine Poux: This is from a podcast that the middle school and historical society put together five years ago about Arthur.
This Week in Brattleboro History: And his first published poem appeared when he was 14 years old. He spent his entire life on the family farm in West Brattleboro…
Sabine Poux: As the podcast explains. He was a farmer and prolific poet. He wrote thousands of poems, which appeared in local and national publications.
He seemed to only really ever get Vermont famous. But if you have heard of Arthur, you’ve probably heard that he had a correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft, the very famous horror and science fiction writer.
Cynthia Sykes: I’d say he’s a pretty cool guy. I mean, the poetry— I did bring the books.
Sabine Poux: Cynthia has brought one of Arthur’s poetry books to the cemetery. She asks me to read one of the poems outloud.
Sabine Poux: I don’t really know how to read poetry but I’ll try.
“Let Dreams be Spared. God spare my dreams. Whatever powers prevail. Let not my vision nor my fancies fail. So shall my hand…
Cynthia Sykes: He could be deep.
Wendy Loewenthal: And dark.
Sabine Poux: Arthur wrote a lot of those deep, sometimes dark poems from the the homestead on Goodenough Road. And it’s the same homestead that Cynthia’s mom – Arthur Goodenough’s granddaughter — was born in.
But Cynthia tells me that birth had a sad ending. She says there were complications. And ultimately, her mom’s mom did not survive through labor.
Cynthia Sykes: So she died. And mom's twin sister, Fern died at the same time in that house.
Sabine Poux: Cynthia says she and her mom visited the homestead a little over a decade ago.
Cynthia Sykes: When they did the tour, my mom wanted to go upstairs to see which room, if she could kind of figure out what room she was born in. But she couldn't, because they didn't have the stairs. So she never got to go up.
Sabine Poux: Cynthia’s mom has since passed away. But Cynthia is still curious about the house, and the room.
So, we go to take a visit, together.
Sabine Poux: How would you describe what this looks like, the outside of this house?
Cynthia Sykes: Well, we're looking at a house just over 200 years old, and it looks like the same, pretty much the same wood is still on the outside, which is amazing.
Wendy Loewenthal: Yeah.
Sabine Poux: The Goodenough House was likely built around 1790. It’s tall and brown with red shutters, and leans into the side of a hill.
There’s been a lot of work on it since Cynthia was here last.
Cynthia Sykes: I think it looks amazing for the age. I really do.
Sabine Poux: These days, the house isn’t owned by the Goodenoughs. It’s been preserved due to its architectural and historical significance. And today, it’s two neighbors who care for the house – Michelle Menegaz and Michael Weitzner.
They live further down Goodenough Road. And they meet Cynthia, cousin Wendy and me at the property.
Michelle Menegaz: Are you guys sisters?
Wendy Loewenthal: Cousins.
Michelle Menegaz: Oh my goodness.
Sabine Poux: Michelle and Michael have done a lot of work here, with a lot of help from others. And there’s still a lot of work to be done. It’s a really old house that’s seen many years of wear and tear.
And for Michelle and Michael, that’s part of the draw.
Michelle Menegaz: I've always said this, this house speaks for itself. Yes, anybody who's ever been involved in any kind of historic anything comes to this house and they're like, “Oh my goodness.” They, it's, it's very amazing.
(Sound of door latch)
Michael Weitzner: This is not exactly an easy place to get into, right now.
Sabine Poux: It’s hard to get in past the old doors and uneven dirt floor. But there are large parts of the Goodenough House that remain intact, including these giant hardwood beams.
Michael Weitzner: Some of these are chestnut. That’s right. A lot of the framing was chestnut.
Sabine Poux: We pass through a door that has Wendy’s grandparents initials engraved on it, in a heart.
Michelle Menegaz: Hey, you guys. Did you see these, these initials?
Sabine Poux: Oh. Yeah, that’s the ones.
Michael Weitzner: If we want to, we can go upstairs. It's very steep.
Sabine Poux: The final stop is the second floor of the house, where we hope we might be able to find the room where Cynthia’s mom was born, and where her grandmother and aunt died.
We’re not entirely sure which room it is. But while we’re walking through one of them, an old bedroom, Cynthia pauses.
Cynthia Sykes: I’m suspicious of…
Sabine Poux: Of what?
Sabine Poux: She explains that she came in here a few years ago, with some of the equipment she uses for her paranormal investigating.
Cynthia Sykes: We had a bunch of equipment just laying here by itself, and we were in there, and all of a sudden flashing and beeps going off, we come in here, and it was just jumping off the table. So I don't know. That kind of said, “This is the room you're looking for.” (Laughter)
Sabine Poux: Do you feel anything now being in here?
Cynthia Sykes: I, my, the hair on my arms has been standing up. But just because I know what the house is, that might be doing it, too. But this room here, it just, it had all kinds of things happening.
Sabine Poux: There are some things we might never know for sure about the Goodenough House.
And in the years since the poet Arthur Goodenough lived here, the place has really taken on an almost mythological quality.
H.P. Lovecraft, that famed science fiction author Arthur rubbed elbows with — he used the house as the setting for one of his novellas, where he re-imagined it as a site of the occult and extraterrestrial.
And as Michelle, the neighbor, said, it’s a place that amazes everyone who comes into contact with it — a place that’s so rich in history that it almost seems to speak for itself.
But for the Goodenoughs, and for Cynthia and Wendy, it’s something else, entirely.
Cynthia Sykes: It kind of feels like home. I mean, there’s a connection, I should say.
Michelle Menegaz: Of course.
Wendy Loewenthal: I mean, this is like unbelievable.
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Credits
This episode was reported by Burgess Brown, Lucia McCallum and Sabine Poux. Editing and production from Josh Crane. Angela Evancie is our Executive Producer. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Craig Goodenough, Bill Holiday, Joe Rivers, Mary Collins, Aroline Putnam, Paul Cate, Steve Picazio, Karalyn Mark, Jessica Leal, Trina Magi, Olivia Campbell, Eric Anderson, Corinne Cooper, Jennifer Boyer, Sarah Wilds and Bob Nuner.
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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.
