For nineteen years, Goddard Shelter stood 0.3 mile south of the summit of Glastenbury Mountain, one of the most remote and storied peaks in southern Vermont — a 20-by-16-foot open-front log structure built in a 1985 collaboration between the Green Mountain Club’s Bennington Section and the U.S. Forest Service, and named in honor of Ted Goddard, a former president and treasurer of the GMC who had given decades of leadership to the club and to the Bennington Section. The shelter was a significant upgrade over the deteriorating 1965 lean-to it replaced, financed by a generous private donation, airlifted into place by a National Guard helicopter, and raised by volunteers including two Boy Scout troops from Bennington. It served hikers through the peak of Long Trail visitation growth in the 1980s and 1990s, offered a caretaker-staffed summit camp for part of its tenure, and underwent a second major improvement in 1989 before rot finally claimed its logs in the fall of 2004. Its replacement — a post-and-beam structure raised by more than thirty-five volunteers over a single autumn weekend — carries the same name in honor of the same family.
Glastenbury Mountain: A Summit Apart
Glastenbury Mountain rises to 3,748 feet in Bennington County in the southwestern corner of Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest. Remote even by Long Trail standards, the summit is among the least visited on the entire trail: it lies far from any trailhead, surrounded by miles of unbroken forest in a landscape drained by the headwaters of the Deerfield, Walloomsac, and Batten Kill watersheds. The Long Trail crosses the summit, and the Appalachian Trail coincides with this stretch of the Long Trail through southern Vermont.
The mountain has attracted a particular mystique over the generations. The 2005 Long Trail News described Glastenbury as "the center of the Glastenbury Triangle, a place where many weird, tragic and purportedly supernatural events have occurred over the centuries." Whether or not one takes the supernatural reputation seriously, the practical remoteness of the place is real: reaching the summit on foot requires a substantial commitment, and hikers who camp there do so in genuine wilderness, with no road access and no quick exit.
The summit’s fire tower, built in 1927, has long been one of the mountain’s landmarks, offering views across the southern Green Mountains and into New York and Massachusetts on clear days. Hikers had used Glastenbury Mountain as an overnight destination since at least 1929, when the first shelter in this location was established.
The Predecessor: Glastenbury Mountain Shelter (1965)
The immediate predecessor to Goddard Shelter was the Glastenbury Mountain Shelter, a log lean-to with bunks for six built in 1965 by the Long Trail Patrol for the Bennington Section of the GMC. A spring 40 feet east of the shelter on the Long Trail provided water. The 21st edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1977) listed it in service.
By the late 1970s the shelter had begun to deteriorate. A joint GMC and U.S. Forest Service survey of shelters in 1979 identified the site as needing attention. At the same time, use had grown to the point where a six-bunk shelter was proving inadequate: by the mid-1980s, parties of ten or more at Glastenbury were not uncommon, and the survey’s recommendations pointed toward a larger replacement rather than repair of the existing structure. Planning for a new shelter began in earnest after the 1979 survey, though construction would not begin until the fall of 1984.
Ted Goddard Sr. and the Naming
The new shelter was named for Theodore "Ted" Goddard, a central figure in the Green Mountain Club’s organizational life for many years. Goddard served as president and treasurer of the GMC at the club level, and as president of the Bennington Section — the geographic unit directly responsible for the stretch of trail through Glastenbury Mountain’s corridor. He was, in the language of the Long Trail community, a builder of the institution as well as of the trail itself: the kind of officer whose sustained administrative work over years and decades makes the field work possible.
Goddard died before the shelter’s construction. In 1983, his son, Ted Goddard Jr., donated funds to the Green Mountain Club in his father’s memory to support the construction of the new shelter on Glastenbury Mountain. The donation brought together the private resources and the organizational momentum that the project needed. Construction planning moved forward with the Bennington Section taking the lead, in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service.
Construction: Fall 1984 to May 1985
The logistics of building on Glastenbury Mountain presented the classic challenge of remote summit construction: how to get heavy materials — pressure-treated lumber, metal roofing — to a site reachable only on foot or by air. The Bennington Section and USFS secured the use of a New York Air National Guard helicopter for the materials airlift, a solution that had been used for other remote Long Trail projects and that remained the only practical way to move quantities of lumber to a peak this far from any road.
The Air National Guard helicopter delivered 320 board feet of pressure-treated lumber and 14 sheets of metal roofing to the site. On the ground, the community mobilized in complementary ways. Boy Scout Troop 353 of Bennington peeled the logs for the shelter’s construction. Boy Scout Troop 355 of Bennington, led by Art Kaiser, built the rock footings on which the structure would stand. Kaiser’s contribution to the project was recognized formally: the Bennington Section elected him an Associate Member.
Construction began in the fall of 1984. The main building crew — Mike Russom, Fred Abraham, and Jim Kuras — worked through the shoulder season and into the spring, completing the shelter between May 6 and 17, 1985. The timing was deliberate, finishing the work before the black fly season made outdoor work miserable.
The completed shelter was an open-front log lean-to, 20 feet by 16 feet, with a porch and a raised floor sleeping area providing space for twelve hikers — double the capacity of the 1965 structure it replaced. Water was available from a spring 150 feet south of the shelter along the Long Trail. The 23rd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1985) recorded the shelter in its first season of service.
The 1985 Long Trail News published a detailed account of the construction, and the images of the newly completed shelter — and of the simultaneous dismantling of the old Glastenbury Mountain Shelter in the same season — were among the most widely reproduced shelter-construction photographs in the GMC’s archives of this period.
Caretaker Service and Use
By 1987, the volume of overnight use at Glastenbury Mountain was sufficient to support a season caretaker stationed at the shelter. The Long Trail News (1988) reported caretaker data from the 1987 season showing an average of six campers per night, with parties of ten or more not uncommon. For a summit this remote, those numbers reflected a meaningful and consistent pull on the site.
The caretaker presence at Glastenbury was part of the broader pattern of GMC caretaker deployment on heavily used overnight sites, providing direct hiker contact, Leave No Trace education, and maintenance during the season when it was most needed. The shelter’s capacity for twelve, substantially larger than its predecessor, helped absorb the overnight demand without requiring hikers to camp in undesignated spots.
The 1989 Challenge Grant Project
In 1989, the shelter and its site received a second significant investment through a U.S. Forest Service Challenge Grant. The project addressed foundation work, site cleanup, construction of an outhouse, and exterior staining of the shelter. As with the original materials airlift, the weight of supplies required air transport: an Army Air Guard helicopter delivered 1,100 pounds of materials for the project. The Challenge Grant program, which matched private or organizational contributions with federal funds, was a mechanism the GMC used at multiple sites during this period to accomplish work that would have been difficult to fund or staff through club resources alone.
The 1989 improvements extended the shelter’s effective service life and addressed the wear that five seasons of active use had produced on the foundation and site infrastructure.
Deterioration and the Decision to Replace
By 2003, nearly two decades of weather and use had taken their toll on the structure. The GMC began planning that year to replace the shelter’s roof and sleeping deck in tandem with reconstruction work on the Glastenbury fire tower, which had been deemed unsafe during the winter of 2004 and required tread and railing work to meet safety regulations. The combined project — shelter renovation and fire tower repair — was conceived as a single coordinated effort using a shared materials airlift.
When crews inspected the shelter more closely in the fall of 2004, however, the scope of the problem proved larger than anticipated. The logs themselves were found to be rotten, making renovation impractical. A full replacement was necessary. Doug Reeves of the U.S. Forest Service navigated the planning and permitting process in what participants described as nearly record time, allowing the project to proceed the same season rather than waiting another year.
The funding coalition for the new shelter assembled around a private gift. After their son Shaun died in 2003, the Keenan family of Shaftsbury was looking for a way to honor his memory. Shaun had loved hiking and had made many treks in the Glastenbury area; the shelter replacement was the natural fit. Additional support came from the Vermont Country Store, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the GMC’s Bennington Section, RK Miles Hardware of Manchester, the Theodore Goddard family, and the USDA Forest Service.
The Final Season and the Transition
The replacement shelter was built in August and September 2004, with materials airlifted on August 19 — thirty-one loads in under eight hours, with the staging area provided by Shaftsbury resident Janet Mattison’s five-acre field. Erik and Laurel Tubiason, veteran GMC shelter builders, spent weekends during July and August preparing the shelter components. Paul Austin of the Bennington Section pre-built the ADA-accessible moldering privy with the assistance of Williams College architecture students.
The new structure — a post-and-beam design — was raised over the weekend of September 10 and 11, 2004, with more than thirty-five volunteers on Saturday and more than twenty on Sunday. A ceremony was held on Sunday afternoon with the Keenan family in attendance. GMC Executive Director Ben Rose spoke. A cherry wood plaque was affixed to the shelter, honoring Shaun Keenan and acknowledging the community that had built it. The new Goddard Shelter retained its name, continuing the honor to Ted Goddard Sr. and connecting the new structure to the one it replaced.
The first Goddard Shelter, which had served hikers for nineteen seasons, was taken down as the new one was raised.
Sources
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 23rd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1985. P. 29. [First listing of Goddard Shelter.]
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 24th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1996.
Long Trail News, 1985. Green Mountain Club. Pp. 3, 12, 13. [Construction account; airlift details; crew members; Boy Scout troops; completion dates.]
Long Trail News, 1988. Green Mountain Club. P. 7. [1987 caretaker data: avg. 6 campers/night, 10+ not uncommon.]
Long Trail News, 1989. Green Mountain Club. P. 18. [USFS Challenge Grant project; Army Air Guard helicopter; 1,100 lbs materials.]
Long Trail News, 1999. Green Mountain Club. P. 13.
Long Trail News, 2004. Green Mountain Club. P. 12. [Renovation plans; decision to replace rather than repair.]
Long Trail News, Winter 2005. Green Mountain Club. [Kate Fish, "Goddard Shelter Replaced and Glastenbury Fire Tower Repaired." Full account of replacement shelter construction; Keenan family; materials airlift; September 2004 build weekend; ceremony; quotation from GMC Executive Director Ben Rose.]
Woodward, Paul and Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 29, 44.
GMC Burlington Section. "Glastenbury Mountain Shelter." Long Trail System Shelter History. gmcburlington.org. Accessed July 2026. [Log lean-to, bunks for 6, LT Patrol for Bennington Section, 1965; spring 40 ft east on LT; in use 1965 to c. 1985. Photograph of dismantling, 1985.]
GMC Burlington Section. "Goddard Shelter (1st)." Long Trail System Shelter History. gmcburlington.org. Accessed July 2026. [Quotation from GB 24th ed. 1996; Ted Goddard biography summary; Boy Scout troop details; spring location.]
GMC Burlington Section. "Goddard Shelter (2nd)." Long Trail System Shelter History. gmcburlington.org. Accessed July 2026. [Reproduction of LTN Winter 2005 article by Kate Fish; full account of 2003–2004 planning and construction of replacement shelter.]
Wikipedia. "Glastenbury Mountain." Accessed July 2026. [Elevation: 3,748 ft; Bennington County; Green Mountain National Forest; Long Trail and AT traverse summit; fire tower maintained by GMC; shelter 0.3 mile south of summit.]
Sources
- Long Trail News 1985 (1985). Green Mountain Club. 3.
- Long Trail News 1985 (1985). Green Mountain Club. 13.
- Long Trail News 1985 (1985). Green Mountain Club. 12.
- Long Trail News 1988 (1988). Green Mountain Club. 7.
- Long Trail News 1989 (1989). Green Mountain Club. 18.
- Long Trail News 1999 (1999). Green Mountain Club. 13.
- Long Trail News 2004 (2004). Green Mountain Club. 12.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 23 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1985. Pp. 29.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 44.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 29.
