Averys Gore

With a population of zero in recent census counts, Avery's Gore is one of Vermont's most unusual municipalities. A gore is a narrow strip of land left over from imprecise colonial surveying -- a cartographic accident that became a permanent feature of Vermont's political map. Located in Essex County in the heart of the Northeast Kingdom, Avery's Gore consists of dense, unbroken forest with no year-round residents, no roads maintained in winter, and no town government in the conventional sense.

The gore is named for Samuel Avery, who received the land grant in the late eighteenth century. It covers roughly 300 acres of wild terrain that has never been significantly developed. Vermont has several gores and grants remaining from the colonial era, but Avery's Gore is among the smallest and most remote.

Because it has no resident population, Avery's Gore has no town meeting, no selectboard, and no local budget to debate. Its civic affairs are managed at the county level, making it a footnote in Vermont's otherwise universal tradition of direct local democracy -- a reminder that the state's political geography still carries the marks of eighteenth-century surveying.