The Bread Loaf Shelter stood on Vermont’s Long Trail for twenty-nine years, from 1931 to 1960, serving hikers in the Bread Loaf Mountain region of the Green Mountain National Forest. A log structure built by the Lake Pleiad Section of the Green Mountain Club, it replaced an older shelter tradition at the same location and was itself replaced, in 1960, by the Emily Proctor Shelter — a name that brought the site’s history full circle.
The Site Before the Bread Loaf Shelter
The Bread Loaf area had sheltered Long Trail hikers well before 1931. When the Green Mountain Club was in its earliest years, a Vermont philanthropist named Emily Proctor of Proctor, Vermont, funded the construction of three overnight shelters along the trail. One of these — the original Emily Proctor Shelter — was built around 1913 at a place known as "Breadloaf Glen," at the base of the ravine below Bread Loaf Mountain. Walter Collins O’Kane, in his writings on the Long Trail, noted that this shelter served hikers coming down through the glen.
By the late 1920s and early 1930s, sections of the Long Trail were being rerouted as trail standards evolved. By the 1932–33 season, the main trail no longer descended into the ravine to reach the original Emily Proctor Shelter; instead, a side trail was cut to it. The February 1933 Long Trail News noted that "while the Long Trail now did not descend the ravine to Emily Proctor lodge, there was a side trail leading to it, and the lodge was kept in good condition." The old shelter was eventually torn down by the U.S. Forest Service around 1959 — its site approximately three-quarters of a mile below the location that would become home to the Bread Loaf Shelter.
Construction (1931)
The Bread Loaf Shelter was built in 1931 by the Lake Pleiad Section of the Green Mountain Club. The Lake Pleiad Section took its name from Lake Pleiad, a small pond on the Bread Loaf campus of Middlebury College, which sits at the base of Bread Loaf Mountain. The section was closely associated with Middlebury College faculty; Professor R. H. White served as its representative to the GMC and as a trustee.
The shelter was a log structure with bunks for approximately ten hikers. Brook water was available adjacent to the building. Its completion was announced at the Green Mountain Club’s Annual Meeting in January 1932 and reported in the February 1932 Long Trail News: "The Middlebury Section reported that the usual amount of work had been done on the Trail, and that the lodge on Breadloaf mountain had been completed."
Years of Service (1931–1960)
The Bread Loaf Shelter served hikers on the Long Trail through nearly three decades of changing conditions in the Green Mountain National Forest. It appeared in successive editions of the GMC’s Long Trail Guide Book, including the 50th Anniversary Edition (16th edition, 1960), which listed it among the shelters along the trail through the Bread Loaf–Middlebury Gap section.
The shelter occupied an important position on the trail between Lincoln Gap and Middlebury Gap. Hikers traveling the Long Trail north or south through the Bread Loaf region used it as an overnight stop, with reliable water from the adjacent brook.
Demolition and Replacement (1960)
In the summer of 1960, the Long Trail Patrol under Roy Buchanan, working with Harris Abbott, took down the Bread Loaf Shelter after twenty-nine years of service. In his report published in the November 1960 Long Trail News, Buchanan described the work: the old shelter was dismantled and a new one built on the same site. The replacement — named the Emily Proctor Shelter, reviving the name of the GMC’s early patron — was an Adirondack-type open shelter sleeping six to eight, constructed from logs cut locally under a permit from the U.S. Forest Service.
GMC President Don Kent, in the same issue of the Long Trail News, described the project as "erection of a fine new shelter to replace the old Breadloaf Shelter." The choice of name for the new shelter consciously honored Emily Proctor’s original contribution to sheltering hikers in this area — linking the 1960 structure to the philanthropic tradition that had placed the very first shelter in Breadloaf Glen nearly half a century earlier.
Sources
- "Annual Meeting report confirming completion of "the lodge on Breadloaf mountain"." Long Trail News, 1932.
- "Middlebury Section report on Emily Proctor lodge side trail." Long Trail News, 1933.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 50th Anniversary Edition (16th) ed. Green Mountain Club, 1960.
- "Long Trail News." 1960.
