Goshen

With a population of just 172, Goshen is one of the smallest towns in Addison County and in all of Vermont. Chartered in 1792, the town occupies rugged, mountainous terrain in the Green Mountain National Forest. The landscape here is more forest than farm, with elevations that made large-scale agriculture impractical from the start.

Goshen's small size has kept it largely unchanged over the centuries. There is no village center, no general store, no gas station. Residents live on scattered homesteads connected by dirt roads that wind through the national forest. The town's primary attraction for outsiders is the natural landscape itself — hiking trails, hunting grounds, and the kind of deep quiet that has become increasingly rare in New England.

Despite its tiny population, Goshen maintains full local governance through a selectboard and annual town meeting. It is a testament to the Vermont tradition that even a community this small exercises the same democratic self-governance as the state's largest cities.