Manchester

Long before the outlet stores arrived, Manchester was a fashionable resort destination. The Equinox House — later the Equinox Resort — began hosting guests in the 1850s, and by the Gilded Age, Manchester Village's marble sidewalks were lined with summer estates belonging to some of the country's wealthiest families. Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln built Hildene here in 1905, a Georgian Revival mansion that remains one of Vermont's most visited historic sites.

Granted its charter in 1761, Manchester sits in Bennington County at the base of Mount Equinox, the highest peak in the Taconic Range. The town has roughly 4,400 residents today, though that number swells considerably with tourists and seasonal visitors. The village district is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the town supports a surprising number of cultural institutions for its size, including the Southern Vermont Arts Center.

Manchester operates under a selectboard form of government, holding its annual town meeting each March. The tension between preserving its historic character and managing commercial growth has been a recurring theme at those meetings for decades, a sign of a community that takes self-governance seriously.