Orange

The town that gave its name to the county, Orange was chartered in 1781 and sits in the rolling hills of central Vermont. Despite lending its name to one of the state's fourteen counties, the town itself has always been modest in size — about 1,050 residents today. The landscape is a patchwork of forest, hay fields, and small farms, with dirt roads winding between scattered homesteads.

Orange has no real village center. The town is instead defined by its dispersed settlement pattern, typical of Vermont hill towns where families spread out to claim the best farmland and water sources. The old Center Orange cemetery and a few civic buildings mark what might loosely be called the center of town.

Governance here follows the familiar Vermont template: a selectboard handles administration, and town meeting brings residents together each March. In a town without a store, a post office, or a gas station, that annual gathering serves an important social function alongside its civic purpose.