Dover

Chartered in 1810, Dover is a relatively young town by Vermont standards, carved from parts of earlier grants in northern Windham County. For its first century and a half, Dover was a sparsely populated hill town of subsistence farms and logging operations. That changed dramatically in 1954 when Mount Snow (originally called Mt. Pisgah) opened as a ski area on the town's western slope, transforming Dover from a quiet backwater into a resort community.

Today Dover has about 1,170 year-round residents, though that number swells considerably during ski season and summer festivals. Mount Snow remains the town's dominant economic engine and one of southern Vermont's largest employers. The tension between resort development and rural character is a constant thread in local politics. Dover's selectboard manages these competing pressures, and Town Meeting each March gives year-round residents a chance to set priorities for a town whose seasonal population can outnumber its permanent one several times over.