The Johnson-Whiteface Trail
Gates Camp, also known as Patch Camp, sat not on the Long Trail itself but on what the 1924 guide called "the old trail from Johnson to Whiteface" — a hiking route running from the village of Johnson up to the summit of Whiteface Mountain (3,612 feet), which rises sharply from the Lamoille River valley just south of town. The trail had sufficient history by 1924 to be called "old," suggesting it predated the Green Mountain Club’s formal trail-building program in this area, or at minimum predated the extension of the Long Trail into the Lamoille County corridor.
The Long Trail itself was still under construction through the Whiteface and Laraway terrain in the early-to-mid 1920s, and the Johnson-Whiteface Trail likely served as the primary hiking approach to this part of the mountains while the main ridgeline trail was being blazed. The club incorporated the Johnson approach into its guidebooks as an access route, noting its camps alongside those on the main Long Trail corridor. The camp’s position — about 5.1 miles south of the Lamoille River bridge — placed it roughly two miles below the Whiteface summit, in the middle section of the climb from town to mountain.
The Lamoille River bridge served as a practical reference point for hikers coming from Johnson on foot. Crossing the Lamoille and then following the old trail south into the hills, a hiker bound for Whiteface would reach the camp at the midpoint of the climb. This made Gates Camp a natural rest stop and overnight shelter for day hikers who misjudged the distance, for parties making a two-day ascent of Whiteface, and for through-hikers connecting the Johnson-Whiteface approach to the main Long Trail.
Patch Camp and Its Repair
The earliest history of the camp is undocumented in the sources that survive. Patch Camp — named for someone by that surname, presumably a local landowner or early hiker who established the site — existed as a shelter on the Johnson-Whiteface Trail before the Green Mountain Club formalized it. The club’s standard practice in its early decades was to note existing backcountry camps on its maps and in its guide books, and in many cases to repair or rebuild them when they fell into disrepair.
The 1924 guide’s phrase "recently repaired" suggests the GMC had recently done exactly that: found an existing camp in rough condition, put it back into serviceable shape, and gave it a new name in the process. Gates Camp was named for someone called Gates — again, almost certainly a person who donated land, funded the repair, or contributed significantly to the work. The specific identity of neither Patch nor Gates has been established in the accessible historical record; both names follow the Long Trail’s convention of honoring local landowners and trail patrons, and the absence of any further record suggests both were private individuals rather than public figures.
What the camp looked like after its repair is not described in detail by the 1924 guide, which was characteristic of early Long Trail guidebook entries — the books listed camps by name and location, giving hikers just enough information to find them, without architectural description. The shelter was presumably a frame or log structure with bunks, a stove, and some form of weather protection sufficient for overnight use.
In the Guide Books
The 1924 Long Trail Guide Book listed Gates Camp twice — on pages 16 and 19 — reflecting its appearance in both the northbound and southbound trail descriptions for the Whiteface approach. The 1930 guide listed it again, on page 14. By this point the Long Trail itself had been completed to the Canadian border (August 1930), and the Johnson-Whiteface Trail, with its single overnight shelter, represented one of the access routes connecting the main Long Trail corridor to the nearest railhead.
The railhead in question was the Johnson station on the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad — "St. J. & L. C. R.R." in the guide-book shorthand of the day. This line, running east-west across northern Vermont and connecting St. Johnsbury to Swanton via the Lamoille River valley, was the primary means by which hikers from Boston and other eastern cities reached the northern Long Trail in the 1920s. Johnson was the nearest station to the Whiteface-Laraway section of the trail, and the Johnson-Whiteface Trail with its camp at Gates was the logical route from the station into the mountains. The 1931 Long Trail News, announcing the decision to build a new camp at West Settlement, described the location as "about two miles south of the St. J. & L. C. R.R. crossing near Johnson" — emphasizing, as was standard practice, its accessibility from the railroad.
Abandonment and French Camp, 1931
The 1931 Long Trail News announced the end of Gates Camp and the beginning of its replacement in the same breath. The club had selected a site for a new camp at West Settlement, about two miles south of the railroad crossing at Johnson, on land donated by Phillip French of Johnson, who also provided lumber for construction. The new camp — French Camp — would be the first shelter built by the newly formed Long Trail Patrol under Roy O. Buchanan. The August 1931 Long Trail News described French Camp as essentially complete. Of Gates Camp, the same issue recorded simply: "Being abandoned."
Why the move? Several factors converged. Gates Camp was an old structure on an old trail, both of which required continued investment to maintain. The establishment of the Long Trail Patrol as a professional, salaried maintenance crew in 1931 gave the GMC the capacity to build a new, purpose-designed shelter rather than continuing to prop up a patched ruin. The West Settlement site offered land donated without cost, lumber supplied by the landowner, a better position relative to the main Long Trail corridor, and a more comfortable approach from Johnson. From the club’s perspective, investing further in Gates Camp when a superior replacement could be built from scratch on donated land made little sense.
The 1937 Long Trail Guide Book (page 55) recorded the outcome with bureaucratic brevity: Gates Camp, abandoned in 1931.
Ruins and Afterlife
The camp’s abandonment did not end its appearances in the guide books. For nearly two more decades, its ruins served as a landmark on the trail. The 10th edition guide (1935) noted "two miles from the summit are the ruins of Gates Camp." The 13th edition (1947) still listed the site. By the time of the 1948 Long Trail News (page 4), the ruins were "practically gone," though the trail from the site to Johnson was reported still in use — hikers continued to approach Whiteface from Johnson along the old route even as the shelter that had served them on it disappeared into the vegetation.
The 1956 guide (15th edition, page 48) and the 1960 guide (16th edition, page 56) both carried references to the location, suggesting the trail remained a recognized access route for at least a quarter century after the camp’s abandonment. The 1962 Long Trail News (page 5) included a mention of the area, the latest documented reference in the accessible record.
The Name Question Revisited
The confusion in later sources between "Gates Camp" and "Patch Camp" — with one described as near the ruins of the other — deserves a brief final note. The 1924 guide is the most authoritative source on this question, and it is unambiguous: one camp, one site, two names. Patch Camp was repaired and renamed Gates Camp sometime before 1924. Whatever traces of the original Patch Camp structure may have remained visible at the site after the GMC’s renovation, and whatever confusion later guide book writers introduced by listing both names, the historical record is clear that the Green Mountain Club was maintaining a single shelter, not two.
Gates Camp served hikers in the Johnson-Whiteface corridor for approximately seven years in its GMC-maintained form. Its predecessor, Patch Camp, extended the history of shelters at this location somewhat further back, into the period before the GMC standardized the camps along the approach trails. Both names for the same site are now equally forgotten, subsumed into the larger history of French Camp and the Long Trail’s more successful northern infrastructure.
Sources
- “St. Johnsbury and Lamoille County Railroad..” Wikipedia. Accessed July 18, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Johnsbury_and_Lamoille_County_Railroad.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1924 (1924). Green Mountain Club. 16.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1924 (1924). Green Mountain Club. 19.
- Long Trail News 1930 (1930). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1930 (1930). Green Mountain Club. 14.
- Long Trail News 1931 (1931). Green Mountain Club. 3.
- "Long Trail News." , no. August (1931).
- Long Trail Guide Book. 10th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1937 (1937). Green Mountain Club. 55.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1940 (1940). Green Mountain Club. 58.
- Long Trail News 1948 (1948). Green Mountain Club. 4.
- Long Trail News 1962 (1962). Green Mountain Club. 5.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 13 ed. Green Mountain Club. Pp. 55.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 15 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1956. Pp. 48.
- Green Mountain Club. Guide Book of the Long Trail. 16 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1960. Pp. 56.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 42.
