Corliss Camp sits at the end of a short spur off the Long Trail’s Davis Neighborhood approach in Johnson, an enclosed frame cabin with bunks, windows, and a wood stove — built in 1989 by the Laraway Section and named for a volunteer whose devotion to the Long Trail spanned decades. It has been welcoming hikers, skiers, and snowshoers ever since, and remains the fixed point of one of the club’s longest-running holiday traditions.
The Camp It Replaced
Before there was Corliss Camp, there was Parker Camp, a small frame structure that had stood in the same general area since 1932 and had already been rebuilt once, moved “a little south of its former site, in a better location,” a relocation significant enough that it required moving a mile of the Long Trail itself to reach it.
“…a point one half mile north of Belvidere Mountain, then spent a week building the new Parker camp, a little south of its former site, in a better location. This made it necessary to move a mile of the Trail so that it would pass the camp.”
— Long Trail News, February 1933, p. 1
By the 1950s, guidebooks described it modestly: a frame camp with a cook stove and bunks for twelve, water two hundred feet back along the Trail, reached by a blue-blazed spur running a half-mile south to the end of a passable road. It had been maintained across the decades by a line of St. Albans Section volunteers — Jean Jackson, Herb Reed, and Remi Grafton are recorded among its adopters — but by the late 1980s, the land it stood on was changing hands. The Nature Conservancy had acquired a 600-acre tract in the area as part of the Long Trail Protection effort, with the title set to pass to the Green Mountain Club once the purchase price was repaid:
“Parker Camp on the Long Trail in Johnson. This shelter is located on a 600 acre tract of land recently acquired by The Nature Conservancy for the Green Mountain Club. Title will be transferred to the Club when we repay The Nature Conservancy the purchase price of the property.”
— Long Trail News, August 1988, p. 1 (photo caption, Cleo Billings)
That land acquisition set the stage for a new shelter — better sited, larger, and enclosed — to replace the aging camp, with Herb Reed and Peter Hayden volunteering to look after Parker Camp in the interim, “until someone adopts it.”
Naming It for Bob Corliss
The Laraway Section — itself only a year into its new name, having been the St. Albans Section since 1935 before reorganizing and renaming in 1988 — settled quickly on whose name the new camp should carry:
“…possible names to name the camp, which will replace Parker Camp after long time dedicated trailworkers and shelter adopter, Bob Corliss. If all goes according to plan, we will begin work on Labor Day weekend.”
— Long Trail News, 1988 (Laraway Section report)
Robert “Bob” Corliss of St. Albans was, by that point, one of the section’s most familiar names. He was a charter member of the Laraway Section, had adopted Barrows Camp for many years, and had built a reputation for trail work that occasionally bordered on the heroic — one section report recalls him setting off alone to clear the trail from Parker Camp up to Buttonwood Mountain and returning with, of all things, a bad case of measles, before coming back the following season, measles-free, to help re-adopt Barrows Camp with Herb Reed and Bob Wolfe. He and his wife, Betty, hosted section outings and potlucks at their own camp on the Maquam Shore in Swanton, and Bob served for years as a Laraway Section hike and ski trip leader.
Construction began through the summer of 1989, and by autumn the camp was nearly finished:
“…the building of Corliss Camp. Though not complete by press time we plan to close in the new camp before winter sets upon us. A big thank you to all who helped, especially Peter…”
— Long Trail News, November 1989, p. 13
Dedication Day
Corliss Camp was dedicated on December 30, 1989, folded into the Laraway Section’s third annual New Year’s ski and snowshoe outing — a fitting way to introduce a shelter built as much for winter travelers as summer ones:
“The morning of December 30th dawned clear and cold but that didn’t stop approximately 20 people from participating in the Laraway Section’s third annual New Year’s ski/snowshoe outing. We gathered about 10 am at the Davis Neighborhood Trail. Our destination was the new camp the section has built (named Corliss Camp) for a dedication ceremony. Corliss Camp, which replaces Parker Camp, is located on a piece of land recently purchased by the GMC as part of the Long Trail Protection effort. Don Hill and Peter Hayden presented Bob Corliss with the sign for the new camp, named in his honor for his years of hard work and dedication to the Long Trail. Bob then proudly hung the sign over the door.”
— Bob Otterberg, Long Trail News, February 1990, p. 24
The same account records the volunteer and material support that made the project possible — building supplies from Woodbury’s, Rice Lumber Company, and Flanders Building Supply, and labor from Peter Salinger’s students at Lamoille Vocational School and Arjay West’s Boy Scout Troop 94, of Johnson.
“The new shelter was made possible by the generous contributions and volunteer labor of many people. We would like to thank Woodbury’s, Rice Lumber Company and Flanders Building Supply for their contribution of building materials. A special thanks goes to Peter Salinger and his students at Lamoille Vocational School and Arjay West and Scout Troop 94 from Johnson for all their efforts.”
— Long Trail News, February 1990, p. 24
Its first winter drew hikers almost immediately: a February 1991 photo caption describes “a brand spanking new Corliss Camp” welcoming “its first winter skiers.”
A Holiday Tradition Takes Root
Almost from the moment it opened, Corliss Camp became the destination for what turned into one of the section network’s longest-running seasonal traditions — a Christmas or New Year’s hike, most years, to sit by the wood stove and share a meal. The very first of these, in December 1990, replaced an earlier tradition that had centered on a different shelter entirely:
“This was the first Section Christmas hike to Corliss Camp (most years it has had Duck Brook Shelter as the destination)…”
— Long Trail News, February 1991, p. 16
The tradition continued for decades. A December 1995 account captures the appeal of the enclosed camp on a cold day, in conditions its open-fronted predecessor could never have offered in the same way:
“Holiday Trip to Corliss Camp on the Long Trail at Johnson, 12/16/95: We have done this almost-annual holiday trip in all kinds of weather, but never in such perfect winter conditions! … It took us one and one-half hours to reach Corliss Camp, a distance of only 1.8 miles. Having arrived in time for lunch, we wasted no time firing up the wood stove.”
— Reidun Nuquist, Trail Talk (Montpelier), Spring 1996, p. 5
A decade later, the same author was still making the trip:
“December 10, 2005, Holiday hike and party, Corliss Camp on LT: Nine of us hiked up the Davis Neighborhood Trail, a side trail to the LT in Johnson, to Corliss Camp. Half the group chose to use snowshoes…”
— Reidun Nuquist, Trail Talk (Montpelier), 2005
Not every visit was a group affair. A more solitary, reflective account from the summer of 2000, signed only “Snowberry,” describes a night alone at the camp:
“Corliss Camp had a newly abandoned feel to it, as though the previous occupants left in a hurry… Sometime after midnight, I fell asleep, only to be awakened by scampering… As I walked north, I turned for one last look at Corliss Camp. It was sitting just as I’d found it.”
— Long Trail News, Summer 2000, p. 31
In 2011, a photograph taken near the camp — “Snake Eating Toad near Corliss Camp,” by Kelli O’Reilly — won first prize in the club’s photo contest, one small sign of how established a waypoint the camp had become on the Long Trail’s map of memorable spots.
Three Decades of Upkeep
Corliss Camp’s structural life since 1989 has been one of steady, well-documented volunteer maintenance rather than crisis. Sterling College students helped restain the camp in the late 1990s; a 2019 field season saw Sterling College and Tufts University crews carry twelve-foot panels of metal roofing up the trail to reroof the building and carry the old asphalt shingles back out, alongside broader corridor work to fix waterbars and drainage that had made the trail “feel like a carwash in wet weather.” By 2022, more than thirty years after construction, the Laraway Section’s Bruce Bushey was still credited with ongoing structural work at the camp — staining, window repair, and crib and privy maintenance — continuing a chain of stewardship that runs back to Bob Corliss himself.
No fire, structural failure, or major incident at Corliss Camp turned up in the decades of newsletters searched for this history — a quiet, well-tended record that stands in some contrast to the more eventful histories of other Long Trail shelters.
Bob Corliss
Robert Corliss died in the summer of 2001, and the Green Mountain Club’s own tribute makes clear how central he had been to the club’s culture of volunteer stewardship, not just to the camp that bears his name:
“I noted with sadness an obituary in the Burlington Free Press on June 27, 2001 regarding the passing of Bob Corliss of St. Albans. Bob was a long-time member and supporter of the Green Mountain Club and a charter member of the Laraway Section. Bob was the namesake of Corliss Camp in Johnson and was a recipient of the Roy O. Buchanan Award (for giving ten consecutive years of trail service to the club) at annual meeting in June 2001. Bob hosted many Laraway Section outings at his camp on the Maquam Shore in Swanton. I remember hiking to the summit of Jay Peak on August 21, 1999 as part of a Laraway Section outing, and celebrating with Bob his eighty-fifth birthday at the summit after our walk up. May we all be so fortunate.”
— Scott Christiansen, Long Trail News, Fall 2001, p. 21
That August 1999 birthday places his birth around 1914, making him roughly seventy-five years old when Corliss Camp was dedicated in his honor — a fitting late-career tribute to a man who, by his own section’s account, had been clearing trail, adopting shelters, and leading hikes for the Green Mountain Club for the better part of his adult life.
Sources
- Long Trail News, February 1933, p. 1 (Parker Camp relocation).
- Long Trail News, August 1986, p. 16.
- Long Trail News, May 1986, p. 14; May 1987, p. 8 (donor listings).
- Long Trail News, August 1988, p. 1 (Parker Camp / Nature Conservancy land, photo caption).
- Long Trail News, August 1989, p. 3.
- Long Trail News, November 1989, p. 13.
- Long Trail News, February 1990, p. 24 (“Corliss Camp Dedicated,” Bob Otterberg).
- Long Trail News, February 1991, p. 16.
- Long Trail News, Summer 1991, p. 16.
- Long Trail News, Fall 1992, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Summer 1999, p. 18.
- Long Trail News, Fall 1999, p. 23 (Laraway/St. Albans Section history).
- Long Trail News, Winter 1999, p. 23.
- Long Trail News, Summer 2000, p. 31 (“Snowberry”).
- Long Trail News, Fall 2001, p. 14, p. 21 (Bob Corliss tribute, Scott Christiansen).
- Long Trail News, Spring 2011, p. 13 (photo contest).
- Long Trail News, Winter 2018, p. 25 (section history retrospective).
- Long Trail News, 2019 (field season report).
- Long Trail News, Fall 2022, p. 20 (volunteer recognition).
- Reidun Nuquist, “Holiday Trip to Corliss Camp,” Trail Talk (Montpelier), Spring 1996, p. 5.
- Reidun Nuquist, “Holiday hike and party, Corliss Camp on LT,” Trail Talk (Montpelier), 2005
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), 44 (1991), p. 6.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), 61 (2008), p. 8.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 9th ed. (1932), p. 56 (Parker Camp).
- Long Trail Guide Book, 14th ed. (1951), p. 52 (Parker Camp).
- Long Trail Guide Book, 24th ed. (1996).
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. (1999), pp. 34, 94, 95, 161
- Ridgelines (Burlington), 1996, 1999, 2019 (outings calendars).
