Manicknung Cabin was a small log cabin on the east slope of Stratton Mountain in southern Vermont, built around 1912 by the Stratton Mountain Club as a fire-spotter’s lodge associated with what would become Vermont’s first steel fire lookout tower. The cabin stood about a quarter of a mile east of the summit, beside a spring, on the steeply falling ground below the peak. It was known by several names — Forester’s Lodge, Porcupine Lodge, and by the Mahican name for the mountain itself, Manicknung — and it served a dual purpose: housing the state fire warden during the fire season, and offering emergency shelter to hikers on the Long Trail who came up from the Manchester side and descended toward Stratton Pond. The Long Trail Guide Book listed it from the 2nd through at least the 7th edition (1920–1928), always as "Foresters’ Cabin" and always with the annotation "Bad order." A 1921 photograph of a forester named Bourne standing at the lodge survives in the GMC collection, placing a face at the only overnight station on the Long Trail’s Stratton section. The original fire tower was replaced in 1934; the cabin was not rebuilt. "This old cabin," notes the History of Stratton, Vermont, "has since succumbed to the mountain." The GMC database records its service years as 1917 to 1934.
Setting: Stratton Mountain and the Name Manicknung
Stratton Mountain is the highest point in southern Vermont — its summit reaching 3,859 feet above sea level and visible in long views from many directions across Windham and Bennington counties. It is a large mountain with a gently curving ridge that extends in a northeast-to-southwest direction, its slopes on the northwest drained by the Windhall River, those on the east by a branch of the West River, and those on the south by a branch of the Deerfield River.
The Mahicans — the Algonquian-speaking people who inhabited the lands south and west of this mountain before European colonization — called the summit Manicknung, meaning "Place where the Mountain heaps up." The name describes the mountain’s appearance from the southwest, where Stratton’s summit rises above a long ridge and seems to heap itself up above its neighbors. John C. Huden, whose etymological work is cited in the History of Stratton, confirmed that the name is Mahican rather than Western Abenaki, noting that the Englishmen who received colonial charters for southwestern Vermont had typically settled first in Mahican territory in northwestern Massachusetts and were more likely to retain Mahican place-names for features that had not yet received English ones. The mountain has long since lost its Mahican name in common usage. As O’Kane wrote in 1926: "The Indian name of the mountain was ‘Manicknung,’ but it has long since been known by the name of the town in which it lies" — Stratton, chartered in 1761 by Royal Governor Benning Wentworth.
On July 30, 1761, Wentworth issued a charter for a township of thirty-six square miles dominated by that great elevation. For the next century and a half, Stratton was farmed, logged, and steadily depopulated as families moved west. By the early twentieth century the mountain was largely forested again, its former clearings returning to softwood, and the question of forest fire protection had become a practical concern for both landowners and the newly active state forestry service.
The Stratton Mountain Club and Vermont’s First Steel Fire Tower (1912–1914)
The Stratton Mountain Club was a local organization — distinct from, though connected in membership to, the Green Mountain Club — that undertook the development of the mountain for hiking and recreation. In 1912, the club built a trail up the east slope of Stratton, beginning at the Edwin Grout farm at the end of what is now Shepardson Road and ascending to the summit along a path that locals had already been using. At the summit, the club undertook a second and more lasting project: the construction of Vermont’s first steel fire lookout tower.
The tower was built by R. M. Ross, funded through a series of payments recorded in the Stratton Mountain Club’s financial records: $100.00 paid on October 20, 1913; $50.00 on January 16, 1914; and a final payment of $37.13 on June 8 of the same year. (Some portion of these funds may have covered the construction of the Ross Trail as well.) The tower was not yet complete when the club gathered at the summit for a dedication ceremony on Thursday, June 25, 1914, but the event went forward anyway, with approximately 250 people present — ranging in age, as the History of Stratton notes, from 13 months to 81 years. Speeches were delivered by Lieutenant Governor Frank E. Howe, James P. Taylor (the GMC founder and a prominent figure in regional mountain development), and Hermon Eddy, all members of the Stratton Mountain Club. They spoke from the wooden scaffolding still in place from the tower’s construction.
The tower that eventually stood at Stratton’s summit was the first steel fire lookout tower erected anywhere in Vermont — a signal achievement at a moment when fire detection was becoming a formal part of state forestry administration. A telephone line connected the tower to a farmhouse in the valley on the east side — the so-called Forrester farmhouse, which stood at what is now 468 Mountain Road.
Manicknung Cabin: Construction and Character
Alongside the trail-building and tower construction, the Stratton Mountain Club erected a cabin about a quarter-mile down from the summit, beside a spring on the east slope. The History of Stratton, Vermont describes it plainly: "This structure, referred to as Manicknung Cabin or Porcupine Lodge, was used by the fire-spotters, once the tower was built."
The 1924 Long Trail Guide Book gave what is the most detailed surviving description: "the watchman is housed in Porcupine Lodge about a quarter mile east of the summit, steeply down hill, where there is excellent water. This lodge is built of huge logs, is small, and has but one spare bunk beside that of the watchman." The spring — the "excellent water" — was what made the site usable, and its location on the east slope, sheltered from the prevailing westerly wind, gave the structure some protection from the mountain’s worst weather.
The cabin went by several names during its active years. "Forester’s Lodge" — or "Foresters’ Lodge" — appears in the guidebooks and on the 1921 photograph caption. "Porcupine Lodge" appears in the 1924 guidebook text, reflecting the porcupines (or hedgehogs, as the earlier guides called them) that had moved into the structure. The GMC database preserves the most informal variant: "Also called Porky lodge!" — a note that suggests the cabin’s nickname had a life of its own among hikers who passed through.
The Cabin in the Long Trail Guidebooks (1920–1928)
The GMC’s 2nd edition guidebook (1920) was the first to document the cabin, listing it in the Stratton Mountain narrative alongside the note "Indian name, Manicknung" for the mountain. The entry for the cabin reads: "down the east slope about a half mile [are] a spring and Forester’s cabin, an old cabin now given over to hedgehogs, which may give shelter in an emergency." The phrase "given over to hedgehogs" — hedgehog being a colloquial Vermont name for porcupine — conveys a structure that, by 1920, was in poor condition and had lost its primary occupant: the state fire warden, who apparently was not resident at the time of the guide’s writing. The simultaneous note that "a phone of the State Forestry Service is installed near the tower" confirms the fire detection function was still active even if the cabin’s use had lapsed.
By the time the 3rd edition appeared (1921), the entry had been condensed to a single line: "Foresters’ Cabin, ½ mile east tower. Bad order." That language — "Bad order" — persisted unchanged through the 4th (1922), 5th (1924), and 7th (1928) editions. Eight years of guidebook entries, all carrying the same verdict.
Yet the 1924 guidebook’s narrative text, quoted in the History of Stratton, tells a different story than "Bad order" implies: the watchman is housed there, the lodge is built of huge logs, there is one spare bunk for a hiker. These two accounts — the terse table entry and the more expansive trail narrative — may not be contradictory. "Bad order" in the GMC’s guidebook language typically described structural condition, not occupancy. The cabin may have been occupied and functional, while its fabric continued to deteriorate.
A 1921 photograph in the GMC collection shows a man identified as "Forester named Bourne" standing at the lodge. It is the only image that places a person in the cabin during its active years, and the only evidence of the name of any of the fire wardens who spent their seasons there watching the southern Vermont horizon for smoke.
Fire Tower and Cabin Replaced (1928–1934)
The original 1914 fire tower at Stratton’s summit was not designed to last indefinitely, and by the late 1920s it had been supplemented by a second fire-spotter’s cabin elsewhere on the mountain. The History of Stratton records a "cabin built in 1928" associated with the fire-spotting function, distinct from the Manicknung Cabin — suggesting that by 1928 the state or the club had provided a newer alternative. The 1934 construction of a replacement fire tower at the summit likely marked the functional end of Manicknung Cabin’s role as a fire warden’s base: a new tower required a new support structure, and the old log building had been in bad order for over a decade by then.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1920. Pp. 27.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 4 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1922. Pp. 12.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 5 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 13.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 39.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 7 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1928. Pp. 15.
- O’Kane, Walter Collins. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press, . P. 89. Description of Stratton Mountain and the Mahican name Manicknung, 1926.
- Young, D.K.. History of Stratton, Vermont. Green Mountain Club. Pp. 305.
