The Buchanan Shelter sits on a short spur off the Long Trail, on the southwest slope of Bolton Mountain, its open front porch and enclosed bunkroom built to hold sixteen. It has stood since 1984, honoring a man whose fingerprints are on more of the Long Trail than almost anyone’s — Professor Roy O. Buchanan, who founded the Long Trail Patrol and led it, on the ground, for thirty-six years.
The Man the Shelter Honors
Roy O. Buchanan was a professor at the University of Vermont in Burlington, and in the early 1930s he became, in effect, the Long Trail’s first professional caretaker. Trail conditions had grown bad enough by 1930 that the club’s trails chairman, Wallace M. Fay, proposed something the club had never tried: a paid, all-season crew to walk the Trail and keep it in order. The idea became the Long Trail Patrol, and Buchanan was hired to lead it.
“In 1931 the Club’s Board of Trustees authorized formation of a salaried crew to work on the Trail each summer. Buchanan was the Long Trail Patrol’s first leader.”
— Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed., p. 155, citing Long Trail Guide Book, 21st ed. (1977)
Contemporary reporting from that first season shows him literally at the wheel:
“An all season patrol of the Trail was inaugurated this year, whereby a crew of men travelling in a truck… keep the Trail in order… Prof. Buchanan of U.V.M., who is in direct command of ‘Patrol Truck No. 1,’ with Messrs. Hardy and Joslin as assistants…”
— Long Trail News, August 1931, p. 2
He did not step back from that role for thirty-six years. When he finally resigned as chairman of the Long Trail Patrol Committee in the fall of 1966, it was advancing cataracts — not any loss of enthusiasm — that forced the decision:
“Roy resigned as Chairman of the Long Trail Patrol Committee at the October trustees’ meeting. He was forced to do this by advancing cataracts which have reached the point of making it unsafe for him to go on the trail… This was the resignation of the man who actually started the Patrol in 1931, 36 years ago. He did it after a suggestion made by Mortimer Proctor, then GMC president and later the Governor of Vermont, and by Wallace Fay, then the trails chairman. Roy not only started our Patrol, he ran it for the whole 36 years.”
— Long Trail News, February 1967, p. 1
Over those thirty-six years he built or helped build more shelters than any other single figure in the club’s history — by the count taken at his retirement, thirty-seven of them, well over half the shelters standing on the Trail at the time:
“He has had a hand in the building of 37 of the Long Trail camps, some open and some closed. This is over half of the total we have today.”
— Long Trail News, February 1967, p. 1
A later club tribute summed up the scope of it plainly: “Our ‘Mr. Green Mountain Club’. Head of the Long Trail Patrol for 36 years until his retirement in 1967. Builder of 37 Long Trail shelters. Inspiration to many young men who worked on the Patrol and went on to become leaders in the affairs of the Club.” The same tribute credits him, together with his brother Bruce and son Chester, with laying out the Trail’s final northern section from Jay Peak to the Canadian border in 1930 — work that predates the Patrol itself.
Buchanan’s reach extended well beyond trail maintenance into the club’s governance: he served as president of the Green Mountain Club, was later made an honorary trustee, and in 1957 had a mountain in northern Vermont officially renamed in his honor. His name still lives on in the club’s own volunteer-recognition program — the Roy O. Buchanan Award, given to members with ten or more years of continuous service — and in the fond, slightly irreverent memory of the people who worked under him. A birch-bark tribute presented to him on his eighty-fifth birthday, in December 1970, captured the tone: “To the Woodsman Supreme: Maker of outhouses with a nice view, tamer of porkies who try to chew thru, teller of tales… a few we believe, such a character is hard to conceive.” No obituary for Buchanan turned up in the sources searched for this history, though by 1981 club newsletters were already referring to “the late Professor Roy O. Buchanan.”
A Gap on the Trail
By the early 1980s, a stretch of the Long Trail on Bolton Mountain had a problem. In 1982 the Long Trail Patrol and the Burlington Section had relocated the Trail in that area — partly out of concern that logging and development nearby “might detract from the wilderness aspects” of the route — and the relocation left the existing Bolton Shelter effectively out of reach for the average hiker. That left a real gap in shelter coverage between Duck Brook Shelter and Puffer Shelter.
“After the 1983 hiking season, it became evident that a new shelter was needed between Duck Brook Shelter and Puffer Shelter. The 1982 relocation project completed by the Long Trail Patrol and the Burlington Section had placed Bolton Shelter inaccessible to the average hiker. It was decided to build a shelter halfway between Duck Brook and Puffer at a location of two tent platforms that had been constructed in 1983 by the Burlington Section.”
— Long Trail News, August 1984, p. 4 (“Buchanan Shelter on Line”)
The plan went to the club’s Shelters and Trails Committee in the fall of 1983 and was approved by the Board of Directors in January 1984. The driving force behind the design was Basil Goodridge, a Burlington Section volunteer who — as a tribute after his death in 1986 would later put it — was “the driving force behind our newest shelter, Buchanan shelter. As well as designing and planning the shelter, he put in many, many hours of work.” Goodridge was also the longtime adopter of nearby Puffer Shelter.
Naming It for Roy Buchanan
The choice of name was not a foregone conclusion imposed from above — it came from the membership. In the winter of 1984 the Burlington Section put the question to a vote at its annual meeting, and members made their preference clear well before the formal decision:
“The Burlington Section executive committee voted at its March meeting to name the new shelter under construction this summer ‘Buchanan Shelter’ in honor of the late Professor Roy O. Buchanan. Numerous letters and notes suggested that this would be an appropriate choice. A tally of the votes made at the Section annual meeting in January confirmed the desire of members to honor Roy Buchanan in this way.”
— Ridgelines, June 1984, p. 1
It is worth noting that this was not the first shelter to carry Buchanan’s name. An earlier structure — originally called Wiley Lodge — had been renamed Buchanan Lodge in 1964, but it later burned and was never rebuilt. The 1984 shelter on Bolton Mountain is the one that has carried his name ever since.
Building Through the Mud Season
Construction did not go entirely to plan. Materials were delivered to the site, on land belonging to the Bolton Valley Corporation, in late April 1984, and work began the first weekend of May under the leadership of Don Wallace and Jack Lance of the Burlington Section. Spring in the Green Mountains, however, is mud season, and the timing showed:
[The land was] “so soft due to melting snow” [that Bolton Valley Corp.’s bulldozer could not be used, forcing materials to be hand-carried to the site; the same August 1984 account concludes:] “if it were to be done over again, we would prefer to build in August or September” rather than black-fly season.
— Long Trail News, August 1984, p. 4
Despite the soft ground and the season, the volunteer effort was substantial. A long list of Burlington Section members, local families, a Bolton Valley Corporation, and a Boy Scout troop — Troop 603, under Scoutmaster William Ward — all contributed money, labor, or time to the project:
“The following people donated money, labor and time to the construction of Buchanan Shelter: Marjorie Adams, Gunther and Dorothy Benndorf, Bolton Valley Corporation, Greg Bostock, Smith Edwards, Basil Goodridge, Donly Goodridge, Robert Hansen, Hollie Johnson, Tom Joslin, Patricia Krupp, Mary Ladabouche, Sara Ladabouche, Seth Ladabouche, Jack Lance, Jean Lance, Harold Miles, Madelin Miles, Pam Moritz, Dave Morse, Dot Myer, Lee Peery, Will Peery, Manuel Peraza, Brad Perkins, Bob Poole, John Sharp, Tony Smith, Sally Spear, Sam Spencer, Carlene Squires, Issac Stokes, Katrina Stokes, Troop 603 B.S.A. — William Ward, Scoutmaster, Peter Vlahos, Don Wallace, Chris Ward, Mary Ward, Dais Washburn, Mary Weld, Ron Whipkey, Ginny Yandow.”
— Ridge Lines, Vol. 14, No. 4, March 1985
The finished shelter was built post-and-beam, lean-to style, with an open front porch and an enclosed bunkroom sleeping sixteen, and a water source about a hundred feet to the north.
Dedication Day
Buchanan Shelter was dedicated on October 21, 1984, in a low-key ceremony that fit both the man being honored and the volunteer culture that built the place:
“On October 21 we are dedicating Buchanan Shelter, named to honor Roy Buchanan, one of Burlington Section’s most active trails and shelters workers in the past… There will be no elaborate ceremony — just a chance to see the completed shelter, put up a plaque listing the volunteers who helped build it, and have refreshments. The dedication is planned to coincide with an overnight hike on the Long Trail led by the Ladabouche family…”
— Ridgelines, September 1984, p. 1
The same announcement preserved two early log-book entries that suggest the shelter made a strong first impression on hikers passing through: “I wish my apartment was this good,” and, from someone who had just walked the entire Appalachian Trail, “There’s nothing this nice on the AT.”
A bronze-and-plexiglass plaque was mounted inside listing the volunteers, along with a line attributed to Buchanan himself — “Vermont is three hours wide and three weeks long” — and closing, in a nod to the fable of communal effort, with “Then I will,” said the Little Red Hen, and she did!” A visitor who hiked in on snowshoes that first winter left a vivid account of the new building:
“Roy Buchanan is a GMC legend. He was also a friend… From our first glimpse, we knew it did him honor. It is by far the nicest shelter on the LT… The plaque on the wall… was carefully encased in plexiglass…”
— Ridgelines, March 1985, p. 3 (“A Beautiful Winter Trek: Buchanan Shelter”)
The following spring, the shelter and the surrounding stretch of trail served as one of the featured hikes for the Green Mountain Club’s seventy-fifth anniversary gathering, held nearby at Bolton Valley in May 1985 — a sign of how quickly the new shelter had become a point of pride for the section that built it.
Four Decades of Quiet Stewardship
Compared with some Long Trail shelters — ones that have burned, been rebuilt from the foundation up, or been relocated more than once — Buchanan Shelter’s four decades of service have been comparatively uneventful, which is itself a kind of testament to how well it was built and how consistently it has been cared for. The record shows a steady rhythm of small maintenance trips and a changing cast of dedicated adopters rather than any major crisis.
In June 1987, a Burlington Section outing creosoted the shelter and repaired the outhouse door. Spring work parties in 1989 cleared trail on both approaches — from Jonesville to Buchanan, and from Buchanan over Bolton Mountain to Puffer, the latter trip made “in snow.” By that year, Greg and Penny Bostock had taken on the role of adopters, the first pair on record for the shelter. Stewardship passed over time to Clem Holden and Herm Hoffman, who by 2011 had “taken care of Buchanan Shelter for many years,” and later to Brian Youngberg, listed as adopter in 2013. In 2019, a Long Trail Patrol crew used backcountry stone-rigging techniques to do trail work at sites including one just north of Buchanan Shelter.
The shelter has also, over the years, become something hikers photograph and write about. A 2021 photo of the shelter by Nathanael Asaro won the “Trail Features” category in the club’s photo contest that year, and that same year a thru-hiker’s published trail diary described reaching “Buchanan Shelter” on the twenty-third day of a thirty-six-day end-to-end hike, twelve miles south of Bamforth Ridge Shelter. An earlier hiker’s snapshot from 2001, shared on a trail-journaling website, is simply captioned: “A very nice shelter in the rain. Good water here w/pvc piping too.”
No storm damage, fire, or major reconstruction was found in the sources consulted — a genuinely different arc from many of its neighbors on the Trail. Buchanan Shelter, as far as the record shows, has simply stood on Bolton Mountain since the mud season of 1984, sheltering hikers, skiers, and snowshoers under the name of the man who built more of the Long Trail than anyone else.
Sources
Long Trail News
- Long Trail News, June 1930, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, August 1931, p. 2.
- Long Trail News, August 1950, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, February 1967, p. 1.
- Long Trail News, August 1981, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, February 1985, p. 3
- Long Trail News, August 1984, p. 4 (“Buchanan Shelter on Line”).
- Long Trail News, November 1988, p. 17.
- Long Trail News, Summer 2021, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2021, p. 12.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2019, p. 28.
- Long Trail News, Winter 2013, p. 15.
- Long Trail News, Winter 2022, p. 20.
- Long Trail News, November 1982, p. 4.
Ridgelines / Ridge Lines (Burlington Section)
- Ridge Lines, Vol. 14, No. 4, March 1985 (donor list).
- Ridgelines, June 1984, p. 1 (naming vote).
- Ridgelines, September 1984, p. 1 (dedication announcement).
- Ridgelines, March 1985, p. 3 (“A Beautiful Winter Trek: Buchanan Shelter”).
- Ridgelines, March 1986, p. 1 (Basil Goodridge tribute).
- Ridgelines, September 1987, p. 1.
- Ridgelines, June 1989, p. 1.
- Ridgelines, Spring 2011, p. 3.
- Ridgelines, Spring 2013, p. 3.
- Ridgelines, March 1998, p. 2.
- Ridgelines, Fall 2009, pp. 2–3 (“The Wisdom of Roy Buchanan,” Daan Zwick).
- Ridgelines, Spring 2025, p. 10.
- Ridgelines, February 1980, p. 3.
Long Trail Guide Book
- Long Trail Guide Book, 21st ed. (1977).
- Long Trail Guide Book, 24th ed. (1996).
Other
- Woodward, Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. (1999), pp. 18, 35, 155, 161.
- Holmes, Marjorie. History of the Green Mountain Club, Burlington Section, p. 9.
- Green Mountain Club shelter database: shelter record and history file for Buchanan Shelter (`get_shelter` / `download_history`, shelter ID 41).
