Until the early 1930s, south of Butternut Mountain, a five-minute side trail led to a small house and barn called the "Badger Lumber Camp." The camp represented a transitional moment in Vermont’s landscape, when remnants of the state’s once-dominant logging industry persisted as informal waypoints for a newly emerging recreational activity: hiking.
The structure had practical origins rooted in Vermont’s substantial logging heritage. While the camp’s date of construction remains uncertain, it was likely in the mid-1920s.
By the time the Long Trail was nearing completion as a hiking destination, old logging camps had taken on new value. The U.S. Forest Service laid the Long Trail along old logging roads that passed by lumber camps, private cabins, inns, and hiker-friendly farms. The Badger Camp became one such repurposed shelter. Its barn’s hayloft offered refuge for hikers, though conditions were far from ideal. The 1929 Long Trail Guide Book described Badger Camp as "dirty and forlorn, but roof good," a candid assessment reflecting the camp’s dilapidated state while noting its practical utility to trail travelers.
The camp was never constructed or maintained by the Green Mountain Club, distinguishing it from the formal shelter system the organization was developing during this period. Instead, it represented the ad hoc network of accommodations that early Long Trail hikers depended upon—a mix of private structures, farms, and abandoned buildings that predated the GMC’s systematic approach to building and maintaining purpose-built shelters.
By 1931, as professional shelter construction accelerated and the Long Trail itself was finally completed, the Badger Camp had already begun its decline. The structure did not survive long into the mid-twentieth century; today only traces of this modest piece of Vermont’s overlapping logging and hiking heritage remain.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 6th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 7th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1929.
- Long Trail News 1931 (1931). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- "Long Trail News." , no. August (1931).
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club. Pp. 16.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 7 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1928. Pp. 15.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 8 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930. Pp. 11.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 9 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. Pp. 55.
