The Industrial Origins: Hawkes & Wetherbee’s Mill (1801–19th Century)
Long before the Long Trail existed, the site later known as Hawks’ Camp and Grout Job began as an early 19th‑century mill operation on the East Branch of the Deerfield River. According to The History of Stratton, Vermont, the land was purchased on 22 August 1801 by Daniel Wetherbee and Benjamin Hawkes of Leominster, Massachusetts. Their one‑acre parcel lay:
• West of the East Branch of the Deerfield River
• North of the Sunderland Road (now the Stratton–Arlington Road)
• Approximately 200 feet from the road and 100 feet west of the bridge
Atherton Hall sold the land on the condition that the buyers construct a sawmill within one year and maintain it for at least two years. They did so, and the mill appears repeatedly in early Stratton land records. Ownership changed hands several times between 1802 and the mid‑19th century, but the site remained a working mill location for decades.
This early industrial use explains why the later lumber camp was known as Hawkes’ Camp—the name preserved the memory of the original mill proprietors.
Hawkes Camp
The 1st Edition of the Long Trail Guide (1917) describes Hawks’ Camp as:
- Located “on a branch of the Deerfield River”
- Roughly five miles north of the Massachusetts line
- “Fully equipped”
- Available to hikers by key, obtained at Griswold’s Store in Bennington
While not an official Green Mountain Club (GMC) structure. Hikers could use the camp with permission, typical of the earliest Long Trail years when the GMC relied heavily on existing logging infrastructure.
The Grout Job Lumbering Center (1917–1922)
Just north of Hawkes Camp lay the larger Grout Job, a substantial lumbering village active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the early 1920s, the Grout Job operation had largely collapsed, leaving behind a cluster of deteriorating structures. The 1917 guidebook references it as an abandoned lumbering center, though still containing buildings “capable of furnishing emergency shelter.”
During this period:
- The Long Trail passed directly through or near the Grout Job complex
- Hikers often slept in abandoned logging buildings
- The GMC had not yet built a formal shelter in this area
Due to Hawkes Camp’s proximity to the larger Grout Job, hikers often referred to it as "Grout Camp"
Leasing and Renaming as “Camp Webster” (1922)
In 1922, members of the Bennington Section of the Green Mountain Club leased and refurbished the old Hawks/Grout Job camp for official GMC use. This marked the transition from an industrial site to a club-maintained hikers’ shelter.
The 4th Edition of the Long Trail Guide (1922) provides the definitive contemporary description:
“On this road about one mile from the mountain trail is a bronze tablet marking the site where Daniel Webster spoke to an audience said to consist of 15,000 people, in 1840 at a Whig convention.
At the Grout Job is Camp Webster, which is leased and furnished by some of the Bennington Section members. Apply at Griswold’s store.”
Key points:
- he naming referenced the 1915 Daniel Webster Monument on the Arlington–Wardsboro Road.
- The shelter continued the tradition of requiring hikers to obtain a key in Bennington, a holdover from the Hawks’ Camp era.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 1st Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1917.
- Long Trail Guide Book – 4th Edition, 1922. 1922.
- D.K. Young. The History of Stratton Vermont to the End of the 20th Century.
- Walter O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. 1926.
