The current Goddard Shelter is a post-and-beam structure built in the late summer and fall of 2005, raised by more than fifty volunteers over a single weekend on Glastenbury Mountain and dedicated in a ceremony honoring the Keenan family of Shaftsbury, who funded the project in memory of their son Shaun. It replaced a log lean-to that had served the site since 1985 and whose logs had rotted beyond repair. The construction coincided with a major renovation of the 1927 Glastenbury fire tower at the summit, transforming a single season of work into one of the most significant improvements in the mountain’s long history as a hiking destination. The new shelter retained the Goddard name, honoring a former president and treasurer of the Green Mountain Club. Since its completion, the shelter has served hikers on the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail in what has long been regarded as one of the most remote and storied overnight settings in southern Vermont.
Background: Glastenbury Mountain and Its Shelter History
Glastenbury Mountain had been a camping destination on the Long Trail since 1929, when the first shelter in this location was established. The mountain has a particular mystique: remote even by Long Trail standards, its summit at 3,748 feet sits at the center of what has been called the Glastenbury Triangle, a region where an unusual number of disappearances and unexplained events have accumulated in local memory over the generations. The Long Trail and Appalachian Trail share the route over the summit, and the fire tower built there in 1927 by the Vermont Timberland Owners Association became one of the trail’s landmark structures — dedicated on July 4, 1927, with telephone cable connecting it to the fire-watch network, and last manned as an active lookout in 1949.
The shelter that the 2005 structure replaced had itself been a major project. In 1985, the Bennington Section of the GMC and the U.S. Forest Service built a 20-by-16-foot open-front log lean-to with space for twelve hikers, funded by Ted Goddard Jr. in memory of his father — the shelter’s namesake, a former president and treasurer of the GMC and past president of the Bennington Section. The 1985 structure succeeded a 1965 lean-to built by the Long Trail Patrol. After nearly two decades of service, its logs had deteriorated past the point where renovation was practical.
Planning: The Decision to Replace
In 2003, the Green Mountain Club began planning for work on two structures at Glastenbury Mountain simultaneously: the roof and sleeping deck of Goddard Shelter, and the Glastenbury fire tower. During the winter of 2004, the tower was inspected and found to require significant safety work — treads, railings, and platforms needed replacement to bring it within safety regulations. That fall, when crews turned to the shelter, the scope of the problem proved larger than anticipated: the logs were not merely deteriorating at the surface but rotten through. Renovation was out. The shelter would need to come down and be replaced entirely.
The shift from renovation to replacement required rapid replanning and new permitting. Doug Reeves of the U.S. Forest Service navigated the process in what participants described as nearly record time, allowing the full project — new shelter and tower renovations — to proceed in the 2005 season rather than being delayed another year.
The Keenan Family and the Funding Coalition
In 2003, Shaun Keenan of Shaftsbury, Vermont, died. Shaun had been a hiker who loved the Glastenbury area, and after his death his family was looking for a way to honor his memory in a place that had mattered to him. The GMC’s replacement shelter project on Glastenbury Mountain was the natural fit. The Keenan family provided the lead private funding for the project, and GMC Executive Director Ben Rose would later describe the gift in terms that went beyond the transactional: "It was clear from the beginning that this was a special project, because we accepted a profound gift and responsibility: the Keenan family’s support for a structure where their son’s spirit would always reside."
Additional financial support assembled from across the trail community: the Vermont Country Store, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the GMC’s Bennington Section, RK Miles Hardware of Manchester, the Theodore Goddard family (continuing the family’s connection to the shelter that bore its name), and the USDA Forest Service. RK Miles also provided logistical support in kind, storing and delivering more than one ton of steel for the fire tower renovations, including the new roof for the cab.
Preparing Materials: Summer 2005
With funding in place and permits secured, the practical work of construction began well before any crew set foot on the mountain. Erik and Laurel Tubiason, veteran GMC shelter builders with long experience on remote trail projects, spent weekends through July and August of 2005 preparing the shelter materials — cutting, fitting, and organizing the post-and-beam components so that they could be assembled quickly once the airlift delivered them to the summit.
Simultaneously, Paul Austin of the Bennington Section pre-built the ADA-accessible moldering privy at ground level with the assistance of architecture students from Williams College. Building the privy off-site and airlifting it in components allowed a structure that would have taken days to complete on a remote summit to be nearly finished in a single weekend.
The staging area for the airlift was a five-acre field in Shaftsbury provided by resident Janet Mattison. Volunteers spent two days preparing loads, bundling materials, rigging slings, and coordinating with the flight crew.
The Airlift and First Weekend: August 2005
On Friday, August 19, 2005, the materials airlift took place. Working in warm and mostly dry conditions, the crew and helicopter made thirty-one loads up the mountain in just under eight hours — lumber, hardware, and the pre-built privy components, all delivered to the summit clearing. The efficiency of the operation reflected the care of the pre-staging work: every load was ready to fly.
The weekend that followed — still August — was less cooperative. Rain and fog moved in, but volunteers persisted. The foundation sona tubes were poured, and work began on the privy, which was nearly complete by Sunday. The shelter structure itself would wait for a later weekend.
Raising the Shelter: September 10–11, 2005
The main build took place on the weekend of September 10 and 11, 2005. More than thirty-five volunteers arrived on Saturday and more than twenty on Sunday. Working in sunny skies and pleasant temperatures — a marked contrast to the August weekend — the crew leveled the sill beams, nailed decking, attached siding, pegged the frame, sanded exposed beams, and attached the roof. The atmosphere on the summit, participants later reported, was one of collective excitement: people sharing food, laughter, and stories alongside the physical work of raising a structure on one of Vermont’s most isolated summits.
On Sunday at 1:00 PM, with the final touches being completed, a ceremony was held with the Keenan family. Ben Rose spoke on behalf of the GMC. A cherry wood plaque was affixed to the shelter — a permanent marker of who had made it possible and why.
. Fire Tower Restoration
Concurrent with the shelter build, GMC project leader Matt Wels led the Glastenbury fire tower renovation, working alongside U.S. Forest Service personnel John Kamb and Bill Garrison. The new cab roof — more than a ton of steel delivered by RK Miles and set in place by the helicopter — was wrestled into position and secured by the crew. Treads, railings, and platforms throughout the tower were replaced. The work required precise cutting and drilling of galvanized steel on a remote summit, a technically demanding task under any conditions. The fire tower renovation was completed in mid-October 2005.
The tower’s 1927 Ithiel Town-style steel structure, originally used as an active fire lookout until 1949 and reconstructed by the Youth Conservation Corps with a helicopter airlift in 1976, had now received its most significant structural work in decades. The 2005 restoration returned it to visitor use alongside the new shelter, giving Glastenbury Mountain a renewed identity as a summit worth the long approach.
The Shelter in Active Use
The new Goddard Shelter differs substantially from the lean-to it replaced. Where the first structure was an open-front log design — a form that went back to the earliest decades of the Long Trail Patrol — the second is post-and-beam, a more labor-intensive form of construction that was increasingly favored for its structural longevity and aesthetic warmth. The shelter is reached by a spur trail 0.3 mile south of the Glastenbury Mountain summit; a spring 150 feet south of the shelter on the Long Trail provides water.
The Bennington Section of the GMC continues to maintain the shelter, leading annual work parties in April and May to prepare the site for the hiking season and addressing ongoing maintenance needs through the summer. A caretaker presence has been part of the shelter’s management through portions of its history, consistent with the GMC’s pattern at heavily used overnight sites.
The 2019 Bear Incident
In the summer of 2019, Goddard Shelter became the center of one of the more serious bear incidents in recent Long Trail history. A black bear — food-conditioned by improper hiker behavior at the site — ripped apart the shelter’s privy after a hiker threw a moldy loaf of bread into it, made repeat visits to steal food from hikers’ packs, and on one occasion entered the shelter itself, retreating only after a startled hiker struck it with a trekking pole.
The GMC responded immediately. Staff installed a bear box for secure food storage, reinforced the privy door, cleared trash from within 150 feet of the shelter, and placed informational signs at the shelter, privy, and bear box explaining food storage requirements and bear behavior. Goddard Shelter was closed temporarily while game wardens from the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife tracked the bear. The bear was euthanized in mid-July 2019 after its behavior continued to escalate; the shelter was reopened following the euthanization.
The incident brought Goddard Shelter into a broader GMC conversation about changing bear behavior across the Long Trail. Vermont’s black bear population had grown substantially in the preceding decades, and food-conditioned bears — animals that had learned to associate human campsites with food — were appearing at multiple shelter sites, from Stony Brook to Montclair Glen Lodge to Hump Brook Tenting Area. In summer 2019, the U.S. Forest Service issued a Food Storage Closure Order for the entire Green Mountain National Forest, requiring hikers to store food in bear boxes, approved bear-resistant canisters, or properly constructed bear hangs. The bear box installed at Goddard in response to the 2019 incident became a permanent fixture at the site.
The Fire Tower’s Later History
The 2005 renovation extended the fire tower’s usable life but not indefinitely. By 2022, inspection found the first flight of stairs in poor condition; that section was removed and the tower’s climbable access was curtailed. In April 2025, the Federal Aviation Administration conducted a structural assessment and deemed the tower unsafe. The U.S. Forest Service issued a closure order effective April 22, 2025, prohibiting climbing or other recreational use of the tower until further notice. The surrounding trails — including the Glastenbury/West Ridge Loop — remained open.
The shelter, situated 0.3 mile south of the tower, is not affected by the closure. Glastenbury Mountain continues to be accessible to hikers on the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail.
Sources
- SummitPost: The new Goddard Shelter. Accessed July 19, 2026. https://www.summitpost.org/the-new-goddard-shelter/228234.
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