Aeolus View Camp was a roadside open-front shelter built in 1922 on Bondville Road east of Manchester — one of the earliest shelters constructed on the Long Trail’s southern section, and one of the first to be lost when the trail was relocated away from its original road-walking alignment. Sitting on the north side of what is now Route 30, almost at the junction with Route 11, the camp commanded a view westward across the Battenkill Valley toward Mount Aeolus in the Taconic Range. By 1926 it could bunk twenty to twenty-four hikers; by 1932 the count had settled to sixteen. When the 10th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book appeared in 1935, the camp was gone — only the description of the view remained.
Setting: The Bondville Road and the Battenkill Valley
In the early 1920s, the Long Trail’s Division 3 — the section between Manchester and the area of Bromley Mountain — included stretches that followed public roads rather than backcountry ridge lines. The trail had been open from its southern terminus only since 1917, and trail crews were still working to push the route onto more advantageous terrain. In the interim, hikers on this section walked the Bondville Road, known then as Motor Route 101, which ran east from Manchester toward Brattleboro by way of Bondville.
Aeolus View Camp stood at the trail’s mile 52.1, elevation 1,950 feet, on the north side of this road very close to the junction of present-day Routes 11 and 30. From this position the camp offered a clear view across the Battenkill Valley — the river valley that runs through Manchester and Arlington — toward the Taconic Mountains to the west. The centerpiece of that view was Mount Aeolus, a 3,230-foot summit that rises 1.5 miles west of East Dorset. Named for Aeolus, the Greek god of the wind, the mountain was a prominent landmark on Manchester’s western horizon. (The Board on Geographic Names did not formally settle on the spelling "Aeolus" until 1986; the mountain had previously appeared on maps as "Mount Eolus" and "Green Peak.")
Construction: 1922
The December 1922 issue of The Green Mountain News reported the shelter’s creation with a single sentence: "A new shelter was built on the Bondville Road east of Manchester." No builder is named, and the brief announcement suggests the camp was a straightforward project — a roadside structure intended to serve hikers passing through Manchester on the Long Trail’s early road-walking route.
The first winter was not gentle. The December 1923 Green Mountain News noted: "The roof of the cabin on the Bondville road was blown away and a new one put on." The replacement roof, which the 9th edition (1932) describes as tin, proved more durable — the camp remained in use for at least another decade.
The Camp in Use
By 1926, Walter O’Kane described the shelter in his Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains: it sat "on the north side of Motor Route 101 (present day route 30) which connects Manchester on the west with Brattleboro on the southeast by way of Bondville," offering "bunks for twenty to twenty-four persons" and commanding "a view of Mount Aeolus near Manchester."
The capacity figure — twenty to twenty-four — makes Aeolus View Camp notably large for its era, suggesting the shelter served not just through-hikers but day visitors and local hikers who came for the view. Its roadside location, at the junction of two well-traveled routes, would have made it easily accessible.
The 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1932) described it in its final form: "This is an open front camp with bunks for 16, stove and a tin roof. From this camp one gets a charming view of Mt Aeolus framed in trees across the Battenkill Valley." The capacity had dropped from the 1926 figure — possibly reflecting reconsidered furnishing, a physical change to the interior, or simply a more conservative accounting of usable bunk space.
Abandonment and Trail Relocation
The 10th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1935) dropped all mention of the camp as a shelter. The edition retained the view — "Mt. Aeolus framed in trees across the Battenkill Valley" remained worth noting to northbound hikers — but the camp itself had disappeared from the record.
The camp was lost to trail relocation. As the GMC worked through the 1920s and into the 1930s to refine and improve the Long Trail’s routing, road-walking sections were steadily replaced by mountain crossings. In Division 3, the original alignment along the Bondville Road gave way to a route on higher ground, and a shelter that had served hikers on the old road-walk had no place on the new corridor.
Aeolus View Camp was among the earliest GMC shelters to be abandoned for this reason — a product of the Long Trail’s first decade of active development, when the route was still finding its permanent form.
Sources
Green Mountain Club (GMC). GMC Shelter Database, Shelter ID 000001: Aeolus View Camp.
Green Mountain Club (GMC). GMC Shelter Database: Downloaded History, Shelter ID 000001.
"Green Mountain News." December 1922. [Quote: "A new shelter was built on the Bondville Road east of Manchester."]
"Green Mountain News." December 1923. [Quote: "The roof of the cabin on the Bondville road was blown away and a new one put on."]
Walter O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. 1926. [Quote: "It commands a view of Mount Aeolus near Manchester."]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 9th edition. Green Mountain Club, 1932. [Quote: "From this camp one gets a charming view of Mt Aeolus framed in trees across the Battenkill Valley."]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 10th edition. Green Mountain Club, 1935. [No mention of camp; only the view of Mount Aeolus remains.]
Paul and Joanne Woodward. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd edition. Green Mountain Club, September 10, 1999. p. 1.
