Craftsbury

Founded in 1781 by Colonel Ebenezer Crafts, who led a group of settlers north from Sturbridge, Massachusetts, Craftsbury sits on a high plateau in Orleans County with commanding views of the surrounding hills. Craftsbury Common, the hilltop village green surrounded by white clapboard houses and a church, is regularly cited as one of the most beautiful village centers in New England. It is not an accident — the settlers laid it out with deliberate care.

The town is home to about 1,180 people and has become known well beyond its size for the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, a year-round athletic facility that hosts cross-country skiing, running, rowing, and sculling programs at a national level. Sterling College, a small environmental school, also operates in the town. Despite these institutions, Craftsbury retains the feel of a working rural community with active farms and a strong cooperative ethic. Town Meeting in March is taken seriously here. Residents fill the town hall to debate budgets and articles with the attentiveness you would expect from a place that has been governing itself since the eighteenth century.