Essex County

With fewer than 6,000 residents spread across 1,916 square miles, Essex County is the least populated county east of the Mississippi. Organized in 1792, it occupies Vermont's northeastern corner — a remote stretch of boreal forest, bogs, and mountains that has more moose than traffic lights. Three of its towns (Averill, Ferdinand, and Lewis) are unincorporated gores with no municipal government at all.

The county seat, Guildhall, is a village of a few hundred people on the Connecticut River. Its white-clapboard courthouse, built in 1850, stands on the village green and is one of the most photographed courthouses in New England. Guildhall was settled in 1764 and served as a waypoint for travelers heading into the northern wilderness. The town's name comes from the Saxon word for a meeting hall — appropriate for a place that has housed county government for over two centuries.

Timber and pulpwood have sustained Essex County's economy since settlement. The Nulhegan Basin, now part of the Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge, protects 26,000 acres of wetlands and forest that shelter lynx, black bear, and nesting warblers. Island Pond, the county's largest village, was once the headquarters of the Grand Trunk Railway's operations in the United States. Today the sheriff's department, state's attorney, and Superior Court still operate from Guildhall, serving a jurisdiction where neighbors are measured in miles, not feet.