For eighteen years, a frame lean-to stood on a spur trail along the west shore of Bourn Pond, offering hikers on the Long Trail’s Division III corridor one of the most scenic stopping points in southern Vermont. Built in 1965 by the U.S. Forest Service, the North Bourn Pond Shelter occupied a position that Long Trail hikers consistently described as exceptional — set on a small peninsula that jutted into the pond, with Stratton Mountain rising in profile across the water. When the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act designated the Lye Brook Wilderness in 1975, the shelter found itself inside protected wilderness lands where permanent structures had no long-term legal standing. The USFS dismantled and removed it in 1983. In its place, a system of primitive tenting areas took shape along the pond’s shores — a quieter, lower-impact way of accommodating the same overnight need.
The Setting: Bourn Pond’s North Shore
Bourn Pond sits on a forested plateau at roughly 2,550 feet in Bennington County’s southern Green Mountains, a 56-acre body of water in the Lye Brook watershed known for its brook trout fishing and for the long approaches required to reach it. The pond’s surface offers some of the most striking views available from any pond in this section of the trail: Stratton Mountain — at 3,940 feet the highest summit in southern Vermont and the storied birthplace of both the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail — rises to the south and can be seen across the water from the pond’s northern and western banks.
By the mid-1960s, the south end of the pond already had a shelter: the South Bourn Pond Shelter, a log structure rebuilt from old fishing camps in 1957 by the Putney Summer Work Camp, situated at the southwest corner of the pond with a spring 250 feet to the east. The north end of the pond had no overnight facility. Hikers reaching Bourn Pond from the north via the Long Trail had no covered shelter at which to stop unless they continued south along the pond’s western bank to the existing camp.
Construction: 1965
The U.S. Forest Service built the North Bourn Pond Shelter in 1965 on a spur trail approximately 300 feet off the Long Trail, along the western shore of the pond. Unlike the South Bourn Pond Shelter’s log construction — born of the hand-hewn vernacular tradition of early Long Trail camp building — the North Bourn Pond Shelter was a frame lean-to, reflecting the USFS’s standardized approach to backcountry structure construction in the 1960s. It provided bunks for six to eight hikers.
The shelter occupied a site on a small peninsula that extended into the pond, a location that traded ease of access for natural drama. A path led from the shelter down to the water’s edge, where hikers looked directly across the pond toward Stratton Mountain. The 22nd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1983) — the last edition to list the shelter — described the view simply: a path leads to the pond where there is a good view of Stratton Mountain.
Water was available from the pond itself, though the guide books advised hikers to boil it before drinking; an alternative was to obtain water from the spring at the South Bourn Pond Shelter, a short distance away along the pond’s western bank. The two shelters, built eight years apart by different organizations, served the pond’s north and south ends as a complementary pair through the late 1960s and 1970s.
A 1979 shelter resurvey produced a panoramic photograph of the shelter in its pond-side setting, one of the few visual records of the structure that survives.
The Lye Brook Wilderness and Removal
On January 3, 1975, the Eastern Wilderness Areas Act (Public Law 93-622) established the Lye Brook Wilderness within the Green Mountain National Forest, initially protecting approximately 14,300 acres of southern Vermont backcountry. Bourn Pond and both of its shelters fell within the designated boundaries. Federal wilderness law under the Wilderness Act of 1964 prohibits the installation and maintenance of permanent structures in designated wilderness areas; the shelters at Bourn Pond, built before the wilderness designation existed, were now operating outside that legal framework.
The Forest Service moved deliberately. For eight years after the Lye Brook designation, the North Bourn Pond Shelter continued to serve hikers while the USFS worked through its management planning for the new wilderness. In 1983, the agency dismantled and removed the shelter. The February 1984 issue of the Long Trail News reported the removal. The Vermont Wilderness Act (Public Law 98-322) expanded the Lye Brook Wilderness further in June 1984, adding approximately 1,700 acres — the shelter had already come down before the expansion was finalized.
The South Bourn Pond Shelter, also within the wilderness, was not removed at the same time; it remained in use for another 22 years before the USFS intentionally burned it in 2005. The different timelines likely reflect differences in shelter condition, site impact, and USFS management priorities rather than any formal policy distinction between the two locations.
The Tenting Areas
When the North Bourn Pond Shelter came down, the USFS and GMC did not simply close the pond to overnight camping. Instead, they transitioned the entire Bourn Pond area to a system of three primitive tenting areas — North, South, and West — distributed along different sections of the pond’s shoreline. The arrangement spread campers more evenly around the pond rather than concentrating them at two fixed shelter sites, reducing the ecological pressure on any single location.
The 23rd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1985) was the first to list the North Bourn Pond Tenting Area, describing a site on a spur trail approximately 300 feet to the east, offering a beautiful pond setting and good views of Stratton Mountain. The amenities were minimal: stone fire rings and, eventually, moldering privies at two of the three areas. No enclosed shelters, no bunks. The tenting areas carried forward the same scenic experience the shelter had offered — the pond, the mountain view, the peninsula atmosphere — in a form compatible with wilderness management.
The North Bourn Pond Tenting Area remained in use through 2011, according to Paul Woodward’s Long Trail System Shelter History. The South and West tenting areas continued in active use beyond that date and remain listed as camping destinations at Bourn Pond today.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 22nd Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1983.
- "Long Trail News." , no. February (1984).
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 18 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1966. Pp. 25.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 19 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1968. Pp. 26.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 20 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1971. Pp. 27.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 21 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1977. Pp. 32.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 77.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 77.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 78.
