Noyes Pond Lodge was the first shelter in what is now Long Trail Division 6, a small, non-GMC log structure near the south shore of Noyes Pond (also called South Pond) in the hills north of Sherburne Pass. First documented in the 2nd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1920) as "a small log shelter with one bunk and good fireplace but no other equipment," it served hikers during the early years of the Long Trail at a time when the trail in this section was largely unmarked forest between widely spaced private accommodations. Over the next three decades, more substantial structures arose at the same location — a GMC open-front shelter, and then a privately owned frame camp built in 1933 — while the original lodge fell into disuse. By 1947, what the guidebooks described as "a log camp, now in ruins, located near the Pond" was the last trace of the original Noyes Pond Lodge. The 14th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1951) made the final guidebook reference to that ruined camp, and it was never replaced at the pond’s edge. The entire Noyes Pond shelter complex ultimately closed in 1966 when the Long Trail Patrol built Rolston’s Rest, a new frame lean-to three-quarters of a mile to the south along Jimmie Deane Brook.
Location and Setting
Noyes Pond (elevation approximately 2,360 feet) lies in the town of Chittenden, about five miles north of Sherburne Pass on the Long Trail. The pond, sometimes called South Pond to distinguish it from North Pond, which lies roughly two miles farther north on a side trail, is a small mountain lake set in spruce and hardwood forest. Walter Collins O’Kane, who hiked and described the Long Trail for his 1926 book Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains, called the pond "a lovely little mountain lake with some trout" — a description the guidebooks would repeat, with minor variations, for decades. A spring near the shore provided reliable drinking water.
The Long Trail in this section ran through private land throughout the shelter’s life. As the Long Trail News of July 1937 noted, "the land around Noyes Pond has not yet been acquired by the Federal Government and the Forestry Service will not build camps on land not owned by them" — meaning any shelter work here required private arrangements rather than federal cooperation.
First Appearance: The 2nd Edition (1920)
The earliest printed record of a hiker shelter at Noyes Pond appears in the 2nd edition of the Long Trail Guide Book, published in 1920. Under a description of the trail northbound from Carmel Camp, the guide notes:
Noyes Pond Lodge a small log shelter with one bunk and good fireplace but no other equipment.
The 3rd edition (1921) repeats this description identically. These two guidebook entries establish the lodge’s character: primitive, minimal, and privately maintained. There is no record in the early guidebooks of who built it or when — it appears in 1920 already as an existing feature of the landscape, referred to without context, suggesting it predated the guidebook entirely.
"One bunk and good fireplace" implies a structure designed for solo or at most paired shelter, with no bunks for a group, no stove, no utensils. Compared to the enclosed metal huts and larger log camps of the era at Killington, Camel’s Hump, and Mansfield, Noyes Pond Lodge was elemental — closer to a trapper’s lean-to than to a purpose-built trail shelter. Yet it appeared in the guidebook alongside every other named shelter on the Long Trail, listed as a legitimate overnight stop between Sherburne Pass (5.6 miles south) and Carmel Camp (6 miles north).
The Shelter Neighborhood, 1920–1935
The Noyes Pond Lodge did not remain the only structure at the pond for long. By the mid-1920s, the GMC had built a more substantial open-front shelter at the same location — an improvement typical of the club’s early expansion program. Walter Collins O’Kane, writing in 1926, titled his chapter section "Sherburne Pass to Noyes Pond Camp" (using "Camp" rather than "Lodge") and described the destination in terms suggesting a reliable, equipped stop. The index to O’Kane’s book lists "Noyes Pond Camp to Carmel Camp" as a named trail segment, and the text references the locale as a comfortable overnight waypoint on the northern end of the Coolidge Range traverse.
By the time the 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book appeared in 1932, the shelter at Noyes Pond had been substantially transformed. The guidebook describes "Noyes Pond Lodge, an open front shelter, with stove, simple cooking utensils and bunks for 10, is set on the slope about 100 yds. back from the pond." This structure — owned by the Club, built around 1923 according to Paul and Joanne Woodward’s Long Trail System Shelter History — bore no resemblance to the original log lodge. It had moved from the pond’s edge back onto a slope, added a stove and cooking gear, and expanded capacity from one bunk to ten. The original primitive log lodge of 1920 had, in the decade since its first guidebook appearance, been superseded.
The 10th edition (1935) and the 11th edition (1937) reflect a further development: both the open-front GMC shelter AND a new privately-owned frame camp were in use simultaneously at Noyes Pond. The guidebook tables for both editions list: "Noyes Pond Camp (1933); Shelter (1923) … Bunks for 20." Two shelters on the same mountainside, at the same map location, together capable of housing twenty people. The 11th edition’s narrative description is the most precise:
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.
"An old Shelter" — the 1923 GMC structure — is already in decline by 1937. The privately-owned frame Camp, built in 1933, occupies the site of the original log lodge near the pond’s shore.
The Privately-Owned Camp (1933)
The 15th edition (1956) and 16th edition (1960) guidebooks describe the Noyes Pond Camp in the clearest terms, confirming its character in the mid-twentieth century:
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 1933 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.
This is the same arrangement described in the errata notes to the 14th edition (1951): "Noyes Pond Camp and Carmel Camp are owned by hunters but by agreement are open to hikers except during the hunting season when they may be found fully occupied or locked." The privately-owned camp at Noyes Pond was one of the last surviving examples of a pattern that had characterized the early Long Trail — private hunting camps and fishing cabins made available to hikers by agreement, the landowners reserving use during deer season in November. The GMC’s April 1934 Long Trail News had already listed "Noyes Pond … Shelter" and "Noyes Pond … Camp" separately in its statewide shelter inventory, confirming both were active.
The 1933 camp’s owners maintained it unevenly. By the early 1940s the Long Trail News noted hunters renting private camps along the trail "at a modest fee," citing the Noyes Pond Camp as one example of a hunting camp successfully managed under such arrangements. But the camp’s condition varied with the attention its owners gave it, and when they were absent, deterioration set in quickly.
The 1937 Replacement Shelter
While the 1933 private camp continued in use by hunters and hikers alike, the GMC’s parallel open-front shelter — the 1923 structure — was deteriorating by the mid-1930s. The Proctor Section, whose territory included this stretch of the trail, took responsibility for replacing it. In July 1937, the Long Trail News reported the reason the section had to act:
The land around Noyes Pond has not yet been acquired by the Federal Government and the Forestry Service will not build camps on land not owned by them. The Proctor Section therefore has had to replace the old shelter at Noyes Pond. This camp will probably be completed this week-end as it is all finished except the roof, doors, shutters and bunks.
The November 1937 Long Trail News confirmed the work was done:
The Proctor Section has built a new open front camp at Noyes Pond. The cost of the new shelter at Noyes Pond was $137.64. The cost of this camp was fairly low due to use of some of the material from the old shelter and to some volunteer labor.
The recycling of material from the 1923 shelter kept costs down. The total was modest even by 1937 standards. The new 1937 open-front camp replaced the old GMC shelter on the slope, providing the same accommodation — bunks for about ten — in a fresher structure. Together with the private frame camp from 1933, the Noyes Pond location now offered two separate shelter options to northbound hikers.
Decline of the Original Camp, 1940–1951
The 12th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1940) presents the most detailed portrait of the Noyes Pond shelter pair at their moment of coexistence:
Noyes Pond has two camps. There is a log camp (stove and bunks for 8) located near the Pond and a new camp on the slope about 100 yards back of the Pond, near a fine spring. The new camp has a stove and bunks for 10.
"A log camp" near the pond. "A new camp" on the slope. The language suggests the structure near the pond — which corresponds to the privately-owned 1933 camp — was an older-style log or log-sided construction, while the 1937 Proctor Section camp on the slope was newer and more standard.
By the time the 13th edition appeared in 1947, the picture had changed:
Noyes Pond had two camps. There was a log camp, (now in ruins), located near the Pond and a newer camp on the slope about 100 yards back of the Pond, near a fine spring. The new camp has a stove and bunks for 10.
"Had" and "was" — past tense. "Now in ruins." Between 1940 and 1947, the log camp near the pond had collapsed into disuse. The shift from present to past tense is sudden and complete. The 13th edition erases the camp near the pond as a usable shelter without comment on when or why it fell.
The 14th edition (1951) is the last guidebook to mention the ruined camp, in a passage that signals a further transition: the "newer camp on the slope" is now the only functional shelter, and the log camp exists only as a geographic note. After 1951, the camp near the pond disappears from guidebook descriptions entirely. The 15th edition (1956) describes only one structure at Noyes Pond, which it identifies as the privately-owned frame camp of 1933 — suggesting that the 1937 Proctor Section camp had itself been absorbed into, or replaced by, the private arrangement that would persist through the 1960s.
The End of the Noyes Pond Shelter Complex
By the mid-1950s, the Long Trail’s passage through Noyes Pond was served by a single shelter: the privately-owned frame camp, accessible to hikers by landowner agreement, locked during November deer season. This arrangement held through the 1960 guidebook.
A full replacement of the Noyes Pond shelter infrastructure came in the summer of 1966. The Long Trail Patrol built a new open-front frame lean-to along Jimmie Deane Brook, roughly three-quarters of a mile south of the old Noyes Pond Camp. The November 1966 Long Trail News described the construction:
An open-front frame shelter was then built south along a brook locally known as Jimmie Deane Brook, to replace Noyes Pond Shelter. It is, I believe, about ¾ of a mile south of the old Noyes Pond shelter and is on land belonging to Mr. Harvey Burch who has a beautiful home near Noyes Pond. He was very helpful to the trail gang.
The 18th edition guidebook’s errata note used different phrasing for the same event: "Rolston Rest Shelter, a frame leanto with bunks for 6 to 8, was built by the Long Trail Patrol in 1966. Its location (100.0 m.) is about a mile south of old Noyes Pond Camp which will be dismantled." By May 1968, the Long Trail News confirmed: "The former Noyes Pond Camp has been removed."
The November 1976 Long Trail News, in a retrospective on the similar removal of Carmel Camp, placed Noyes Pond in context: "the Club was well aware, as a result of earlier experiences with Seth Warner Camp, Noyes Pond Camp, and Clarendon Lodge, that an attractive shelter on a clean site formerly occupied by a troublesome closed camp tends to remain clean, attractive, and considerately used. When Noyes Pond Camp was replaced in 1966 by Rolston’s Rest, only Carmel Camp remained." The privately-owned camp at Noyes Pond was the second-to-last of the old private camps that had once supplemented the Long Trail shelter system. Carmel Camp was the last.
Relationship to the Other Noyes Pond Shelters
Noyes Pond Lodge (ID 170) was the founding structure in a shelter cluster that would eventually encompass four database records and, by Paul and Joanne Woodward’s count, five distinct buildings. Its relationships to the other three shelters define the arc of the entire Noyes Pond complex.
Noyes Pond Shelter (ID 171, 1923–1965): The GMC built this open-front lean-to in 1923 on a bluff about 50 feet above and 100 yards back from the pond — the Club’s direct answer to the inadequacy of ID 170. Where the lodge offered one bunk and a fireplace, the new slope shelter offered bunks for twenty in a structure the Club owned and maintained. The 6th edition (1924) describes the slope shelter under the name "Noyes Pond Lodge," the same name that had been applied to ID 170 in 1920 and 1921 — a naming transfer that effectively demoted the original private lodge to an afterthought. From 1923 onward, ID 171 was the primary overnight shelter at Noyes Pond; ID 170 existed alongside it as a supplementary option that few hikers would have chosen over the larger Club structure. When the Proctor Section rebuilt the slope shelter in 1937, using salvaged material from the old structure, the new camp took the same position relative to the pond that ID 171 had occupied — on the slope, 100 yards back. ID 170 was already deteriorating by that point and did not survive into the postwar period.
Noyes Pond Camp (ID 169, 1925–1965): The Proctor Section and GMC Trail Committee built this log cabin near the south shore of the pond in 1925. The GMC database description is explicit: ID 169 was "a log cabin built near South Pond in 1925 to supplement the privately owned Noyes Pond Lodge" — meaning ID 170 was the specific structure being supplemented. Walter Collins O’Kane (1926) confirmed the new camp as "a shelter owned by the Club, built in 1925," distinguishing it from the existing private arrangement. The construction of ID 169 near the water’s edge was, in effect, the Club’s attempt to provide a shore-level shelter of its own since the private lodge at the water was too small to serve hiking parties. Once ID 169 existed, ID 170 had even less reason to be maintained: hikers could use the Club’s new shore camp, the Club’s slope shelter, or both. The private lodge simply aged in place.
Noyes Camp (ID 168, 1932–1968): The privately-owned frame camp, built in 1932 and 300 feet back from the pond, was the fourth and final structure in the cluster and the one most similar to ID 170 in its ownership arrangement — privately held, open to hikers by agreement, closed during deer season. But unlike ID 170, ID 168 was well-maintained and lasted decades longer. By the time ID 168 was completed, ID 170 was already the "old" structure at the pond; by 1947 it was in ruins; by 1951 it was noted only as a historical feature. ID 168 absorbed whatever hiker traffic the ruins of ID 170 might once have served and remained active — as the only shelter at the original Noyes Pond location — until 1967 or 1968, when it was finally removed.
The Broader Sequence at Noyes Pond
Paul and Joanne Woodward, in their Long Trail System Shelter History (1999), identify five distinct structures that occupied or served the Noyes Pond location in sequence. The original Noyes Pond Lodge (1st) — Shelter ID 170 in the GMC shelter database — was the first: a non-GMC log shelter of uncertain origin, minimal and primitive, first documented in 1920. It was followed in turn by GMC-built open-front shelters in 1923 and 1937, a privately-owned frame camp in 1933, and finally by Rolston’s Rest in 1966 — which moved the shelter site entirely, southward off the pond and onto Jimmie Deane Brook.
Noyes Pond itself remained. The shelter sites, the camp arrangements, the private hunting agreements — all these came and went. The pond was "a lovely little mountain lake with some trout," as O’Kane wrote in 1926, and it still is.
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book 1921 (1921). Green Mountain Club. 23.
- Long Trail News 1932 (1932). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1939 (1939). Green Mountain Club. 4.
- Long Trail Guide Book 1947 (1947). Green Mountain Club. 33.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 2 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1920. Pp. 22.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 4 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1922. Pp. 28.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 37.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 5 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 30.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 5 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 31.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 7 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1928. Pp. 41.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 8 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930. Pp. 36.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 9 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. Pp. 31.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 10 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 29.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 12 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1940. Pp. 34.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 12 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1940. Pp. 35.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 78.
