East Bolton Village occupied the eastern part of the Winooski valley in Bolton, at the point where Joiner Brook descends from between Bone Mountain and Stimson’s Mountain to reach the Winooski River near the center of the township. The C.P. & G.W. Stevens lumber mill operated along the brook at Bolton Station, and the state road — the old Burlington-to-Montpelier turnpike, later Route 2 — ran along the north bank of the Winooski through the valley below. The Central Vermont Railroad followed the same alignment.
The farm’s position relative to the trail was functionally precise. Hikers coming from the south — descending Bamforth Ridge from Camel’s Hump and crossing the Winooski at Brush’s Farm — would reach the state road and, shortly beyond it, the Huntley/Thompson property before beginning the ascent to Bolton Mountain. Those coming from the north would arrive after the descent and need food before the Winooski crossing. In either direction the farm occupied the hinge point between mountain travel and valley road. The Worcester Telegram correspondent who documented the Thompson era (October 26, 1930) described a house set roughly a quarter mile from the state highway, with the railroad audible nearby and an old schoolhouse — long since closed and "given over to the squirrels and the chipmunks" — further up the same farm road.
The Huntley Family and the Boarding House
Etta Huntley (née Hayden) was the youngest daughter of a Bolton farming family and served additionally as the town’s "Local Editor," submitting accounts of local life to state and regional newspapers. She married Alton "Alta" Huntley, a Duxbury man who worked at the Stevens lumber mill along Joiner Brook, on September 30, 1891, and the couple established their boarding house near the base of the brook in East Bolton Village. Long Trail hikers were among their regular guests from at least 1917.
Alta died in 1923 after a brief illness. Etta continued the boarding house through 1924 and 1925 before closing it in October 1925 and traveling to California. She married Jefferson Bruce, a widowed lumber businessman, on February 8, 1926; they settled in California and she died there on September 6, 1946, at the age of eighty.
The Farm on the Long Trail: Huntley Period
The Long Trail Guide Book listed the Huntley Farm from its earliest editions. The first edition (1917) included it among the well-known rest stops on the Bolton section, and the listing continued through at least the fourth edition (1922, p. 14). Walter Collins O’Kane cited the farm in Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains (Houghton Mifflin, 1926), placing it in the documentary literature of the trail beyond the guide book’s spare entries.
The Thompson Family and the Continued Operation
After Etta Huntley’s departure in October 1925, the property apparently passed to George H. Thompson and his wife, who established it as the Thompson Home in time for the 1928 guide book. The 1928 seventh edition described it as follows: "Located in Bolton Village, Mrs. George H. Thompson provides good rooms and board." Ferry service across the Winooski River was also noted — a service not mentioned in the Huntley-era listings, suggesting either that it was added under Thompson management or simply was not documented previously.
The Thompson family’s son or a young farmhand served as the ferryman. A Worcester Telegram correspondent who hiked the Long Trail in thirty days and published his account under the title "In the Haunted Mountains of Vermont" (October 26, 1930) described the crossing in vivid detail:
Inquiry is made at a farmhouse. A boy says he is a ferryman. In the gathering dusk he leads the expedition out through the barnyard past the pigstye through a pasture and to the river. He asks the vagabond and the mate to sit and roll a cigaret while he bails the boat out. Bye and bye young Charon has his ferry ready. The expedition, bag and baggage, sits all together in the stern. The boat threatens to go under. It is steadied. The riffling river tugs at it and nudges it away. But young Charon plies the oars, cuts into midstream. While he struggles the moon comes over Camel’s Hump, picks out the shadow of the Crouching Lion and down on the river scatters, winks and smiles upon the bubbling stream.
After the crossing, the same correspondent described supper at the house:
An hour later the Vagabond and his mate are deep into the trenchers. Steak, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beets, etc., etc., etc. vanish from the table. Mrs. Thompson stands by with a "well, I never" expression, but her husband looks on as if he could remember times when he had come out of the woods wolf-hungry.
The menu — a full harvest table in late October — and Mrs. Thompson’s evident amazement at the hikers’ appetite give a clear picture of the household’s character: a working Vermont farm that had been absorbing long-distance hikers for years without quite growing accustomed to what the trail produced.
The Succession and the Same Building
The gap between Etta Huntley’s departure (October 1925) and the Thompson Home’s appearance in the guide (1928 edition) is consistent with a property changing hands. The 1928 guide’s citation of "Bolton Village" as the location matches the loose geographic usage of the early editions, which applied "Bolton" broadly to properties in both East Bolton Village and Bolton Village proper. The Thompsons’ ferry service across the Winooski — reached through the farm’s own barnyard and pasture — confirms a property with river access, consistent with East Bolton’s position near where Joiner Brook meets the Winooski.
The photographic evidence is the strongest link. The photograph of the Huntley Farm from the Bolton Hollow History website and the photograph of the Thompson Home from the Worcester Telegram article show the same farmhouse and the same attached outbuildings. Vernacular Vermont farm architecture could produce visually similar structures; it does not routinely produce identical structures with matching outbuilding configurations at distinct properties. The reasonable conclusion is that these are the same building documented at different points in its history under different operators.
Disappearance and Context
The Thompson Home does not appear in guide book editions after approximately 1931. Bolton Lodge, built in 1928 by the GMC’s Burlington Section on Edward S. Bryant’s land above the valley on Bolton Mountain, offered purpose-built accommodation on the same trail section and almost certainly reduced hiker demand for valley-floor boarding. The transition from private farm hospitality to GMC infrastructure — already underway when the Thompsons took over the property — was complete by the early 1930s.
Sources
- “Families of Bolton: Hayden and Huntley..” he Hollow — Bolton Vt History. Accessed July 19, 2026. boltonvtundiscovered.wordpress.com.
- “In the Haunted Mountains of Vermont.” Worcester Telegram, October 26, 1930.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1928. 1928.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 404.
