The first Montclair Glen Lodge was an open board shelter on the Long Trail in Division 9, tucked into a small clearing on the southeast slope of Camel’s Hump in Duxbury, Vermont, at an elevation of approximately 2,670 feet. It was built in 1918 by Professor Will S. Monroe — botanist, trailsman, founder of the Green Mountain Club’s New York Section, and perhaps the most vivid personality in the Long Trail’s early history — along with a crew of volunteers who were laying out what would become the Monroe Skyline. Monroe named the lodge for his hometown of Montclair, New Jersey, and “Glen” for the sheltered forest clearing in which it stood.
The lodge was a four-bunk open board shelter of notable comfort for its era: a good stove, table with benches, shelving and cupboards, a small flower garden outside, and a grove of birches with tent platforms for overflow parties. It appears in every edition of the Long Trail Guide Book from the 2nd (1920) through at least the 10th (1935), and O’Kane’s 1926 trail guide described it with evident pleasure. A porcupine infestation in the late 1920s prompted what may have been the Long Trail’s first documented experiment in chicken-wire shelter protection — a successful one. In 1940, the New York Section was authorized to relocate the trail and rebuild the shelter; the first lodge was abandoned, its site superseded. The GMC database records its service years as 1917 to 1940. (GMC ID 000163)
Setting: The Monroe Skyline and the Glen
Camel’s Hump is the most distinctive summit in the Green Mountains — its profile, visible from much of the Champlain Valley, was called “Couching Lion” by Samuel de Champlain’s party and “Couching Lion Mountain” on early Vermont maps, though “Camel’s Hump” eventually prevailed. The mountain rises to 4,083 feet, and its eastern slopes, drained toward the Winooski River valley, are steep and heavily forested, broken by occasional clearings and outcrops.
The trail that would become the Monroe Skyline runs along the high Green Mountain ridge from the Winooski River south to Lincoln Gap, a continuous and rugged thirty-mile stretch that Monroe cut and marked beginning in 1916. The Long Trail at Montclair Glen passes through what the maps call a “small glen” — a sheltered, slightly flattened clearing in the spruce and fir of the upper slope, where the Forest City Trail descends eastward from the ridgeline toward Huntington. Water is nearby. The birch grove in O’Kane’s 1926 description gave the site an open, inviting quality unusual in the dark spruce forest of that elevation.
The Forest City Trail — named for the city of Burlington — descends from this junction eastward to Couching Lion Farm, Monroe’s property in North Duxbury. The approach from Couching Lion Farm to the lodge is approximately 2.5 miles, all uphill. It was the route Monroe himself used season after season, ascending to his trail and his lodge with dogs and guests in tow.
Professor Will S. Monroe
William Senter Monroe was a professor at the State Normal College in Montclair, New Jersey — a teacher’s college that trained public school educators — and one of the most thoroughly eccentric figures in the history of American hiking. He was, in the recollection of New York Section member Constance Hallock, a man from whom “out come more facts than there is room to print.”
Monroe was a botanist of the first order, capable of identifying every plant in the Vermont forest by its Latin name at a glance, and expert at naming birds from their calls. He had also served as U.S. emissary to Bulgaria and published a book on the country; he spoke several European languages with fluency; he maintained a large library catalogued by Dewey decimal system; he was deeply read in French and German literature; and he had long intended to write a critical biography of Walt Whitman. In the field he was immediately recognizable: C. P. Cowles described him wearing “his characteristic full beard, red bandanna head covering, bright scarlet necktie, gray shirt, black trousers, and ankle-high farm boots.” The LTN writer Matt Larson adds the woolen garters with Monroe tartan design, the beret, and the blue smock. Monroe kept dogs — a beloved succession of them — and had a flock of pigeons named for Wagnerian heroes and heroines.
His energy on the trail was legendary. It was Monroe who combed the Green Mountain ridgeline between the Winooski River and Lincoln Gap for spots of exceptional beauty and interest, and then “painstakingly linked them together,” in the words of Laura and Guy Waterman, “so that the miles roll by in a dazzling succession of rock outcrops, mossy glades, secluded hollows, airy ledges, arching hogbacks, … or exposed rock slabs commanding sweeping views of rugged mountainsides.” He founded the GMC’s New York Section and built lodges at several points along the Monroe Skyline, including the originals at Montclair Glen, Cooley Glen, Birch Glen, and Glen Ellen. He also supervised the first GMC paid trail crew in 1929, leading the Long Trail Patrol under Roy Buchanan.
After retirement from teaching, Monroe bought the old Callahan Farm on the eastern slopes of Couching Lion and renamed it Couching Lion Farm. The white wood-frame farmhouse, with its large barn and small spring, became his permanent home — a retreat that also served, informally, as a base camp for hikers on the Monroe Skyline and a gathering point for naturalists, Audubon Society groups, and Sullivant Moss Society members whom Monroe led on explorations of the vicinity. His hospitality, Cowles noted, was “international in scope.” He lived at the farm with his sister and his dogs until his death. At his death, Monroe bequeathed some 200 acres — including the farm and a plantation of larch trees he had planted on the eastern flank of Camel’s Hump — to the state of Vermont, which named it Will Monroe State Park. It was later incorporated into Camel’s Hump State Park.
Building the First Lodge (1918)
In 1918, Professor Monroe led a crew of volunteers — drawn largely from the nascent New York Section — up the eastern slope of Camel’s Hump and built the first lodge at Montclair Glen. He named it for his New Jersey hometown: Montclair. The construction was part of a larger campaign to provide shelter at intervals along the Monroe Skyline, which Monroe had been cutting from its northern terminus at the Winooski River southward since 1916.
The 1919 group photograph — one of 20 images associated with this shelter in the GMC collection, and the most historically significant — shows Monroe and his companions gathered at the new lodge. The names recorded with the image are: Gilbert Smith, Allen Smith, Theron Dean, Professor William Monroe, Katherine Monroe (his sister), Herbert W. Congdon, James P. Taylor (the GMC’s founder), and Clarence P. Cowles. The photograph is an assembly of the GMC’s founding generation: Taylor, who had conceived the Long Trail in 1909; Congdon, who would design many of the Buchanan-style lodges that followed; and Cowles, whose family connection to the Camel’s Hump area extended over decades. Monroe himself stands among them, having built the shelter behind them.
A second photograph from the same year, labeled “Montclair Glen and Auxiliary Tent, 1918,” shows the lodge during or shortly after its first season, when tent platforms in the adjacent birch grove handled additional parties — a detail that appears in later guidebook descriptions as well.
The lodge as originally built had no windows. This proved immediately limiting. In an account published in the Long Trail News for February 1950, New York Section member Grace Carpenter described the problem and Monroe’s characteristic solution:
“The lodge at Montclair Glen originally had no windows, and this cost its occupants a magnificent view of sunsets and hills to the west. One night, at the end of a hard day’s work on the trail, we were reveling in the glory of the sunset glow and the illumined hills. But in order to see it we had to leave our supper board and go outside. I commented on the fact that a window on that side of the lodge would be wonderful. Doctor [Professor] Monroe thought ‘it might be managed.’ After supper he and another man in the party melted away. An hour or more later they returned, lugging with them a window. After the fatigue of a full day of trail work, he had gone down the mountain, negotiated ownership of the window with a farmer, and brought it back up again so that it might be installed during our own stay in Vermont.”
It was entirely in character. The same energy that had cut thirty miles of ridge trail painstakingly now descended a mountain in the evening, struck a deal with a farmer, and climbed back up with a window — so that the party could see the sunset from inside.
The Lodge’s Character: Furnishings, Views, and a Flower Garden
Walter Collins O’Kane visited Montclair Glen Lodge in the mid-1920s and described it in Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains (1926) with more care than most trail guide writers of the era brought to shelter descriptions:
“Montclair Glen Lodge is an open board shelter maintained by the Green Mountain Club. It is provided with four bunks, each of which is large enough for three people. Other furnishings include a good stove, a table with benches, shelving, cupboards, and, out in front, a seat. Roundabout is an open grove of small birches with several platforms for tents. Close to the Lodge is a tiny flower garden.”
Four bunks for three people each meant a theoretical capacity of twelve hikers — a generously appointed shelter by Long Trail standards. The stove, table and benches, shelving, and cupboards gave it the feel of a maintained cabin rather than a bare waystation. And the flower garden outside, in the clearings of the spruce forest at 2,670 feet, suggests something of Monroe’s personality: the botanist who knew every plant by its Latin name had, apparently, planted some of them outside the door of his mountain lodge.
By the time of the 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1932), the description had evolved slightly: “open camp with 2 double-deck pole bunks for 12; stove and simple cooking utensils; excellent permanent water. A fine view of the Adirondacks.” The bunks were now pole construction, double-decked, and the Adirondack view — visible on clear days to the west through the gap in the trees — had made it into the official description. The approach trail from Couching Lion Farm, 2.5 miles to the northeast, was the standard access route.
During his years of active work on the Monroe Skyline, Monroe used Montclair Glen Lodge as a kind of field headquarters. C. P. Cowles described Monroe’s New York Section “with summer headquarters at Montclair Glen Lodge” supervising construction of shelters and trail across the ridgeline until the entire planned section was complete. By 1926, Monroe’s formal trail-building work was done. He bought the Callahan Farm and “lived out his remaining years with his trail, his sister, and his beloved dogs” — a phrase from the Winter 2008 LTN that captures the quality of his relationship to the landscape he had built.
In the Long Trail Guidebooks (1920–1935)
The first documentary record of Montclair Glen Lodge in the GMC’s published record appears in the 2nd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1920). It is listed at elevation 2,675 feet, with “permanent water 2.7 miles from Callahan’s” — Callahan’s being the name of the farm that would later become Couching Lion Farm — and access “2 miles from Camel’s Hump Club Huts over summit” and “5 miles from Huntington Center.” The approach trails are named in the 3rd edition (1921): the Callahan’s Trail branch (1 mile) and the Forest City Trail (2 miles from its junction with the Couching Lion Farm trail).
By the 4th through 8th editions (1922–1930), the approach nomenclature had settled: the “Couching Lion Farm Trail” (Monroe had bought the farm and renamed it) with a 1-mile branch to the lodge, and the Forest City Trail, 2 miles. The guidebooks through this period list the lodge consistently as a shelter on the Monroe Skyline, with permanent water and a connection to Couching Lion Farm as the standard approach.
The 9th edition (1932) provides the most detailed contemporary guidebook entry: “open camp with 2 double-deck pole bunks for 12; stove and simple cooking utensils; excellent permanent water. A fine view of the Adirondacks.” It also records that the lodge could be reached “via approach trail from Couching Lion Farm 2½ miles to northeast,” and that mail could be addressed “in care of Prof. Will S. Monroe, Waterbury, Vt., R.F.D.” — Monroe’s postal address at Couching Lion Farm. Monroe was not just the builder; he was still, in 1932, the recognized custodian and point of contact for the shelter.
The 10th edition (1935) notes that “Couching Lion Farm” is the “home of Prof. Will S. Monroe.” It adds a practical detail for automobile-era hikers: “Autos may be left in the field near the farm, but hikers are not entertained” — Monroe had drawn the line at hosting overnight guests in his farmhouse while remaining willing to let hikers park in his field.
The 23rd edition (1985), long after the first lodge had been replaced and replaced again, offered a retrospective note: “The first was located 200 ft from the present-day lodge where the Forest City Trail descends.” The siting of the first lodge and the third lodge (built in 1948) were nearly identical — separated by only 200 feet — with the ill-fated second lodge having been placed further away, in an inferior location.
The Porcupine Problem (1928–1929)
Porcupines — or hedgehogs, in the common Vermont parlance of the era — were a persistent nuisance at Long Trail shelters throughout the 1920s. They gnawed wooden structures, ate leather and salt-stained pack straps, and generally harassed hikers and degraded buildings. At Montclair Glen Lodge, the problem was acute enough to prompt what the Long Trail News of April 1929 described as an experiment.
The August 1928 issue of the LTN had reported that chicken wire strung across the front of the shelter at Montclair Glen was being trialed as a deterrent. The April 1929 issue confirmed the result: “The experiment proved successful, and it is now planned to protect other shelters on the Monroe Skyline Trail in a similar manner during the coming season.” Montclair Glen Lodge had, in effect, become the pilot site for a porcupine-exclusion method that would be extended across the Monroe Skyline — a modest but practical contribution to the management of Long Trail shelters. [Woodward, 1999; LTN August 1928, April 1929]
End of the First Lodge (1940)
The circumstances of the first lodge’s end are outlined briefly in the May 1940 issue of the Long Trail News, which records that “The NY Section was authorized to relocate certain portions of the Trail and rebuild the Montclair Glen Shelter.” The authorization marked the formal end of the original lodge’s service life.
The replacement lodge — the second at Montclair Glen — was built in a location described in the November 1948 LTN as “uninviting,” approximately 0.2 miles south of the present-day lodge site. The Winter 2008 LTN noted that “anecdotal evidence suggests porcupines were critical to its demise.” By 1948, the second lodge’s condition had deteriorated to the point that the New York Section had it replaced entirely.
The third Montclair Glen Lodge was built in 1948 by Roy Buchanan — who led the Long Trail Patrol beginning in 1929 and would go on to construct more than thirty closed “Buchanan-style” camps across the Long Trail system — for the New York Section. The November 1948 LTN announced it with evident pride: “When you are up this way, drop in and see the new Montclair Glen Camp. It is a credit to those who built it and an ornament to the Long Trail.” The logs from the old camp were salvaged for the new structure’s floor, roof, and bunks. The third lodge was situated just 200 feet above the site Monroe had originally chosen — close enough that the first and third lodges were, in effect, at the same spot on the mountain.
That third lodge — built by Buchanan in Buchanan style, with walls of logs, bunks for eight (twelve with reasonable discomfort), a good stove, and windows — became the lodge that later generations of hikers knew as Montclair Glen Lodge, and which was extensively restored in 2008 using larch logs helicoptered in from Professor Monroe’s own plantation on the eastern flank of Camel’s Hump, where the trees he had planted decades before were still standing.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1920. Pp. 14.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 3rd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1921. Pp. 16.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 4th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1922.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 5th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 6th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1926.
- Long Trail News, 1928. Report on chicken-wire porcupine experiment at Montclair Glen Lodge.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 7th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1928.
- Long Trail News, 1929. Confirmation of successful porcupine experiment; plan to extend chicken-wire protection to other Monroe Skyline shelters.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 8th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 10th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 40.
- “The NY Section was authorized to relocate certain portions of the Trail and rebuild the Montclair Glen Shelter.” Long Trail News, 1940.
- Long Trail News, 1950. Grace Carpenter’s account of Monroe’s window-retrieval at Montclair Glen.
- Long Trail News, 1974. Monroe’s bequest of Couching Lion Farm (200 acres) to Vermont; naming of Will Monroe State Park.
- Cowles, C. P. Profile of Professor Will S. Monroe. 1982.
- Description of new (third) Montclair Glen Lodge built by Roy Buchanan:, “bunks for eight (twelve with reasonable discomfort) and is completely enclosed … good coat of creosote oil to inhibit decay and discourage the porkies.” Long Trail News, 1948. “When you are up this way, drop in and see the new Montclair Glen Camp. It is a credit to those who built it and an ornament to the Long Trail.”.
- Green Mountain Club, 1932. Open camp with 2 double-deck pole bunks for 12; stove and simple cooking utensils; excellent permanent water. A fine view of the Adirondacks. 9th ed. Mail via Prof. Will S. Monroe, Waterbury, Vt., R.F.D, 1932. Pp. 42.
- Green Mountain Club, 1985. The first was located 200 ft from the present-day lodge where the Forest City Trail descends. 23rd ed. 1985.
- Larson, Matt. Restoring Montclair Glen Lodge. 2008.
- O’Kane, Walter Collins. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. Houghton Mifflin / Riverside Press, . P. 229 (lodge description), p. 413 (route description: Cowles Cove to Montclair Glen under 5 miles; Montclair Glen to Camel’s Hump Huts 2 miles), 1926.
- Woodward, Paul and Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, . P. 76. Consolidated account of all three Montclair Glen lodges, 1999.
