Coventry

Granted in 1780, Coventry sits at the southern end of Lake Memphremagog in Orleans County, where the Black River enters the lake. The town's position on the waterway made it a natural point of settlement, though growth was slow in this remote northern region. For most of its history, Coventry was a quiet farming and logging community, little known beyond its immediate neighbors.

That changed in 2004, when the Phish music festival drew roughly 70,000 fans to the town's fields for what was billed as the band's final concert — a number that dwarfed Coventry's permanent population of about 1,100 by a factor of sixty. The event caused memorable traffic jams and became part of Vermont music lore. Day to day, Coventry remains a small, rural town. It is home to the regional landfill that serves much of the Northeast Kingdom, a fact of civic life that generates regular debate. Residents govern through a selectboard and gather each March for Town Meeting to handle budgets, taxes, and the decisions that keep their community running.