Baltimore

One of Vermont's tiniest towns, Baltimore was chartered in 1793 in Windsor County and has remained a place apart ever since. The town sits on a high plateau between the Williams and Black Rivers, and its population has hovered around 200 for the better part of a century. There is no village center in any meaningful sense -- just scattered homes, farms, and forest along a handful of dirt roads.

Baltimore was named after Frederick Calvert, Lord Baltimore, though the connection between the English aristocrat and this remote Vermont hilltop is lost to history. The town has no store, no school of its own, and no church building still in active use. Students attend school in neighboring Springfield or Chester.

Despite its small size -- roughly 229 residents -- Baltimore maintains its own town government with a selectboard and holds an annual town meeting. In a town this small, meeting day is as much a social occasion as a civic one. Nearly every voter knows every other voter by name, giving Baltimore's version of direct democracy an intimacy that larger municipalities cannot replicate.