Noyes Camp was the last standing structure in the Noyes Pond shelter cluster — a privately owned and maintained frame camp 300 feet back from the south end of Noyes Pond, with bunks for about eight, open to Long Trail hikers by agreement except during the deer hunting season in November. The GMC shelter database records its formal start date as 1932 and its end date as 1968, though a photograph in the database archive labeled "noyes-camp, 1931" suggests construction was underway or complete a year before the shelter officially opened. The camp was one of a small group of private hunting and fishing camps in the Green Mountains that agreed, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s, to make their facilities available to Long Trail hikers during hiking season. By the time Noyes Camp was built, the pond already hosted three other shelters: the original private log lodge near the water (ID 170), a GMC open-front slope shelter on the bluff above (ID 171), and a GMC log cabin near the shore (ID 169, built in 1925). Noyes Camp supplemented all three. It outlasted them all. When Rolston’s Rest replaced the GMC camp in 1966 and the old lodge was long since rubble, Noyes Camp was the only structure remaining at the old pond location. It was removed sometime in 1967 or 1968.
Character and Situation
The camp’s frame construction distinguished it from the log cabins and open-front lean-tos that constituted most of the Long Trail shelter inventory of the 1920s and 1930s. Frame camps — board-and-batten or clapboard construction, often with wood-frame windows and shuttered openings — were typical of the hunting and fishing camps that dotted Vermont’s back country in this period, and they held up better under the seasonal abandonment that characterized hunting camps more than hiker shelters. The camp sat 300 feet back from the pond — farther from the water than any of the other Noyes Pond structures — which placed it on drier ground and away from the marshy edge of the lake.
The 17th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1963) provides the most complete description:
This camp, located 300 ft. back from Noyes (South) Pond, is of frame construction with bunks for about 8. Spring water just in front of the camp. It was built in 1932 and is privately owned and maintained, but by agreement, open to hikers except during the deer hunting season in November, when it is occupied by its owners or locked.
Spring water immediately adjacent. Bunks for eight — the largest single-structure capacity among the Noyes Pond shelters in the mid-twentieth century. The camp’s owners maintained it actively through the 1950s and 1960s, unlike the older log shelters at the pond that had deteriorated and fallen to ruin or been demolished. The note about deer season — "when it is occupied by its owners or locked" — was standard language across the handful of similar private camps on the Long Trail: the hunters who owned them tolerated hiker use in summer but reserved the fall for their own purposes.
The GMC shelter database records ID 168’s is_gmc field as true, which appears to be an error. Every guidebook from the 11th edition (1937) through the 18th edition (1966 errata) consistently describes Noyes Camp as "privately owned and maintained." The camp was included in the Long Trail system by agreement, not by Club ownership.
Earliest Documentation
The photograph of Noyes Camp in the database archive is dated 1931 — one year before the formal start date of 1932. The discrepancy may reflect construction happening in the autumn of 1931 in advance of a spring or summer 1932 opening, or simply a misattribution in the archive. The Long Trail News of July 1933 made the earliest textual reference to the camp:
The new log cabin at Noyes Pond is ready. It is intended to supplement the old camp.
The phrase "new log cabin" appears in the 1933 LTN, whereas all subsequent descriptions call the camp "frame construction." Either the 1933 report was inaccurate about the construction material, the camp was originally log-sided and was later resided or expanded, or the July 1933 report was describing one of the other Noyes Pond structures — most likely the GMC camp (ID 169), which was built of logs in 1925. The ambiguity underscores how closely the multiple Noyes Pond shelters were intertwined in the documentary record: their physical proximity, overlapping names, and shared guidebook entries make it difficult, in some cases, to determine which structure a given source is describing.
If the 1933 LTN was in fact describing ID 168, the "old camp" it was supplementing would have been the GMC shore camp (ID 169) — which by 1933 had been in service for eight years and was presumably in need of the supplement. "Old camp" in this context would not mean ID 170 (the ruinous original private lodge), but the by-then-established GMC facility at the water’s edge.
1937 and the Guidebook Consolidation
The 11th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1937) is the first edition to describe Noyes Camp in a way that clearly distinguishes it from the GMC shelters:
Noyes Pond has a Camp and an old Shelter. The Camp (stove and bunks for 8) is located near the Pond but the Shelter, open front, simple cooking utensils and bunks for 10, is set on the slope about 100 yards back of the Pond.
"The Camp" with a stove and bunks for 8, near the pond. "The old Shelter," open front, on the slope. This edition treats ID 168 (the privately-owned frame camp) as "the Camp" and ID 171 (the GMC slope shelter, soon to be rebuilt) as "the old Shelter." By 1937, the privately-owned frame camp — then only five years old — was already the newer and presumably better-maintained of the two primary structures. That same summer, the Proctor Section replaced the old slope shelter with a new one, using salvaged material. After 1937, Noyes Camp and the rebuilt GMC camp (under whatever name) shared the pond as the two functioning shelters.
The Postwar Decades
The 12th edition (1940) describes "a log camp (stove and bunks for 8) located near the Pond" alongside the "new camp on the slope." The "log camp near the Pond" is plausibly ID 168 (despite its frame construction; guidebook writers were inconsistent about distinguishing frame from log), or possibly the remnants of the original ID 170. By 1947, whatever log camp had stood near the pond was "now in ruins" — ID 170, almost certainly — while the "newer camp on the slope" (the 1937 GMC rebuild) remained in service.
By the 15th edition (1956), guidebook descriptions of Noyes Pond focus on a single structure: "This camp, located 300 ft. back from Noyes (South) Pond, is of frame construction with bunks for about 8" — which matches ID 168 exactly, distance, material, and capacity. The GMC camp on the slope either had become subsumed under the same description or had ceased to be mentioned as a separate structure. For the next decade, Noyes Camp functioned as the pond’s sole listed shelter.
The errata notes to the 14th edition (1951) named both Noyes Pond Camp and Carmel Camp as "owned by hunters but by agreement open to hikers except during the hunting season when they may be found fully occupied or locked" — the standard language of the Long Trail’s private-camp accommodation agreements. By 1963, the 17th edition had refine this language and confirmed the camp was "built in 1932."
Replacement and Demolition
In 1966, the Long Trail Patrol built Rolston’s Rest on Jimmie Deane Brook, three-quarters of a mile south of the old Noyes Pond location, to replace the GMC shelter infrastructure at the pond. The 18th edition errata stated that "old Noyes Pond Camp will be dismantled" once Rolston’s Rest was operational. But Noyes Camp (ID 168) was not the GMC’s camp — it was the privately-owned frame structure. The demolition sequence therefore involved two separate actions: the GMC’s closure of its own shelter presence (ID 169), completed with Rolston’s Rest in 1966, and the removal of the private camp (ID 168), which persisted for a year or two longer.
The May 1968 Long Trail News reported: "The former Noyes Pond Camp has been removed." This reference most likely describes ID 168, since it was the last remaining structure at the old Noyes Pond site after the GMC camp was succeeded by Rolston’s Rest. Noyes Camp, in the end, was the one that took longest to disappear — it had the newest construction, the best maintenance, and the most recent owners.
Relationship to the Other Noyes Pond Shelters
Noyes Camp (ID 168) was the newest of the four Noyes Pond database entries and the last to be removed. Its relationships to the other three were shaped by its status as a privately-owned late addition to an already-established GMC shelter complex:
Noyes Pond Lodge (ID 170, 1920–1951): The original private log lodge near the shore was ID 168’s closest analog — both were privately owned, both were non-GMC structures maintained by external owners and made available to hikers by agreement. But they were separated by a decade of construction, and by the time ID 168 was built in 1932, ID 170 was already aging and little-documented. The two private structures coexisted for roughly fifteen years, with ID 170 near the water’s edge and ID 168 300 feet back. When ID 170 fell to ruin between 1940 and 1947, ID 168 absorbed whatever remaining hiker traffic had relied on the old lodge.
Noyes Pond Shelter (1923–1965): The GMC slope shelter and Noyes Camp overlapped for at least a decade and a half. The 11th edition (1937) captures their relationship plainly — "the Camp" (ID 168) near the pond, and "the old Shelter" (ID 171) on the slope. The Proctor Section’s 1937 rebuild used material from ID 171 in constructing a new open-front camp, which then served alongside ID 168 through the early postwar years. When ID 171’s presence faded from guidebook mention in the 1950s, ID 168 remained.
Noyes Pond Camp (ID 169, 1925–1965): Noyes Camp and Noyes Pond Camp were the two longest-surviving shelters at the pond and shared the location for roughly three decades. The Long Trail News of July 1933 described the newly-built ID 168 as "intended to supplement the old camp" — with "the old camp" almost certainly meaning ID 169, the GMC’s 1925 shore cabin. From the early 1930s through 1965, the two structures complemented each other: the GMC-managed camp (ID 169, slope or shore) and the privately-owned frame camp (ID 168, 300 feet back). When Rolston’s Rest was built in 1966 to replace ID 169, ID 168 briefly became the only shelter at the old Noyes Pond site. Its own removal in 1967–68 closed the shelter history of the pond entirely.
