The first Mad Tom Camp was a small, GMC-maintained cabin that stood along an abandoned highway through Mad Tom Notch in the mountains between Winhall and Peru, Vermont, from approximately 1920 until its replacement in 1922. It served as one of the earliest overnight facilities on the Long Trail system in southern Vermont. Though short-lived — replaced within two years by a much larger open-front camp.
Setting: The Abandoned Highway Through Mad Tom Notch
Mad Tom Camp takes its name from the notch and brook that define the area between Styles Peak (3,394′) and Bromley Mountain (3,260′). In 1920 — and for several decades before — the notch carried an old highway running from East Dorset on the western side of the Green Mountains to Peru on the eastern side. By the time the Long Trail was routed through this area, the road had fallen from active use; successive Long Trail Guide Books describe the approach to the camp as a descent from Styles Peak "to a deserted highway from East Dorset to Peru." This landscape of abandoned infrastructure — old logging roads, former highways, clearings "fast growing up" — was characteristic of the Long Trail’s path through southern Vermont in its early decades.
The Long Trail in this section descends steeply from Styles Peak into the notch, where the highway crossed the watershed between east and west drainages. At that crossing, just south of the road, stood the first Mad Tom Camp. Good water was available a short distance to the east. The 6th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1924), describing the successor camp, situated the site "on the north side of the road" and noted it "accommodated 20 to 24 persons" — considerably larger than the original — with "a supply of water just to the east." The original camp appears to have occupied the same general location on or near the old highway.
The Camp (1920–1922)
The first Mad Tom Camp appeared in the second edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1920) — the edition that also marked the completion of the Long Trail from Johnson, Vermont, to the Massachusetts state line. The second edition, the first to document the trail as a continuous route from Johnson south, listed the camp among a growing inventory of overnight facilities that included GMC-built shelters, farms open to hikers, abandoned lumber camps, and private facilities.
Paul and Joanne Woodward’s Long Trail System Shelter History (2nd ed., 1999) describes the original camp succinctly: "A small cabin with stove and 2 bunks on an abandoned highway, East Dorset to Peru." The 4th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1922) — the last to describe the original structure — offers a fuller picture: "just south is a small but habitable cabin, Mad Tom Camp, with stove and double deck bunks, in bad condition from hedgehogs. Good water is to be had a little way to the east."
The "hedgehogs" were porcupines — so commonly called in Vermont usage of the time. Porcupine damage was a chronic problem for early Long Trail shelters throughout the 1910s and 1920s. The animals gnawed at wooden structures, particularly where sweat or urine from hikers had deposited salt. The 4th edition’s candid acknowledgment of the camp’s condition as "habitable" but "in bad condition" in the same year it was replaced suggests a structure that had already exceeded its useful life by 1922.
Sources
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 4 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1922. Pp. 35.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 72.
