Orleans County

Lake Memphremagog reaches 31 miles from Newport, Vermont, into Quebec, and it has defined Orleans County since the region was first settled. The county was organized in 1792, named for the French city of Orleans — a fitting choice given the strong French-Canadian influence that persists along the border to this day. Many family names in the county's northern towns trace directly to Quebec parishes.

Newport City, the county seat, sits at the southern tip of Lake Memphremagog and has served as the commercial hub of the Northeast Kingdom's western half since the 19th century. The city grew as a railroad junction, and the arrival of the Connecticut and Passumpsic Rivers Railroad in the 1860s connected the remote region to markets in Boston and Montreal. Brownington, a few miles south, is home to the Old Stone House Museum — a four-story granite dormitory built between 1827 and 1836 by Alexander Twilight, who in 1823 became the first African American to earn a degree from a U.S. college (Middlebury).

Orleans County covers about 720 square miles of hills, wetlands, and boreal forest. The roughly 27,000 residents are spread across 18 towns, and the landscape is defined by working farms, logging operations, and the steady pull of the lake. The county courthouse in Newport City houses the Superior Court, and the sheriff's department patrols a territory that runs from the Canadian border south to the Lowell Mountains. The state's attorney's office rounds out the county's governance from the same seat.