Noyes Pond Shelter was the Green Mountain Club’s first purpose-built structure at Noyes Pond — an open-front lean-to erected in 1923 on a bluff about 50 feet above and 100 yards back from the south end of the pond. Where the existing private log shelter near the water (ID 170, Noyes Pond Lodge) offered only one bunk and a fireplace, the new GMC shelter could accommodate up to twenty people. It was the kind of structure the club was systematically building along the Long Trail in the early 1920s: simple, enclosed on three sides, with bunks and basic cooking gear. For roughly a decade it served as the primary overnight stop at Noyes Pond, until a second GMC structure was built at the water’s edge in 1925 and a privately-owned frame camp was added in 1932. By 1937, the Proctor Section reported that the shelter needed replacement. The section built a new open-front camp on the same general slope, using material salvaged from the old structure to reduce costs. The 1937 rebuild’s capacity — described in subsequent guidebooks as "bunks for 10" in a lean-to "set on the slope about 100 yards back from the pond" — so closely matched the original shelter that the two are difficult to disentangle in the documentary record. The GMC shelter database lists ID 171 as active through 1965, the year Rolston’s Rest replaced the Noyes Pond infrastructure entirely, but the physical structure it references was almost certainly the 1937 building rather than the original 1923 one.
Construction and First Description
The 6th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1924) provides the earliest description of the newly-built shelter:
The Lodge with accommodations for 20 persons is set on a bluff about 50 feet above and 100 yards back from pond.
"A bluff about 50 feet above" the water. The structure was deliberately sited away from the shoreline — in contrast to the private lodge (ID 170), which sat at the water’s edge — and on ground elevated enough to give it a clear view of the pond. Capacity of twenty was generous for a GMC shelter of the period; most lean-tos of the early 1920s were built for eight to twelve. By 1924 the shelter is already called "the Lodge," appropriating the name from the original private log shelter on the shore, a naming overlap that would generate confusion in guidebooks for the next two decades.
The 1924 description appears under the name "Noyes Pond Lodge" — the same name applied to the private log shelter (ID 170) in 1920 and 1921. The two structures occupied different sites, were built at different times, and belonged to different owners, but the guidebooks used the same name for both, apparently because the GMC slope shelter was considered the replacement for rather than the supplement to the private lodge at the water’s edge. Walter Collins O’Kane, who hiked the trail in 1926 and noted a "shelter owned by the Club, built in 1925" near the shore (ID 169), distinguished between the Club-owned shore shelter (ID 169) and the older slope structure (ID 171) by location and date, but his account makes clear that by 1926 there were already at least two separate Club-associated structures at the pond.
Operation in the Late 1920s and 1930s. The April 1927 Long Trail News listed the shelter in its roster of Long Trail accommodations without detail. By the 9th edition (1932), the guidebook’s description of the slope shelter reads:
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.
Capacity had dropped from the 6th edition’s twenty persons to ten. The change likely reflects either a correction of the original figure, a reduction in usable bunk space as the structure aged, or the same guidebook numbering being applied to a partially rebuilt or reconfigured structure. The April 1934 Long Trail News inventory lists both "Noyes Pond Shelter" and "Noyes Pond Camp" as separate active structures, confirming that by the mid-1930s the GMC counted two distinct shelters at this location.
The 11th edition (1937) — published in the same year the Proctor Section undertook its rebuild — describes the pond’s two shelters in a way that makes clear the slope structure was already the older one:
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 word "old" had not appeared in previous editions’ descriptions of this structure. The 1937 edition seems to have been written knowing that renovation was imminent.
The 1937 Rebuild
The July 1937 Long Trail News explained why the Proctor 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.
The November 1937 Long Trail News reported completion:
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.
"Some of the material from the old shelter." The new structure was built partly from what remained of the 1923 original — a common practice on the Long Trail when aging structures were replaced. The rebuilt camp was sited on the same general slope, maintaining the same orientation and approximate distance from the pond. In the 12th edition (1940), the result is described as "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" — nearly identical language to the 1932 and 1937 descriptions, but now explicitly "new."
The GMC shelter database records ID 171’s end date as 1965, not 1937. This almost certainly means that the database counts the 1937 rebuilt structure as a continuation of the same record — the same location and GMC management — rather than as a new entity. Woodward’s Long Trail System Shelter History treats the 1937 rebuild as the "5th" Noyes Pond structure and the 1923 original as the "2nd," meaning at least one researcher considered them distinct enough to warrant separate entries. The database took a different view.
Relationship to the Other Noyes Pond Shelters
Noyes Pond Shelter was the second of four database entries for the Noyes Pond shelter cluster. Its relationships to the others were direct and consequential:
Noyes Pond Lodge (ID 170, 1920–1951): The private log shelter at the water’s edge was ID 171’s immediate predecessor and, for the first two years of its existence, its neighbor. ID 170 had only one bunk; ID 171 had bunks for ten or twenty. The GMC built ID 171 specifically to provide a reliable, capacity shelter at Noyes Pond independent of the privately-owned ID 170. For the next decade the two shelters coexisted — the old private lodge near the water, the new Club shelter on the bluff above.
Noyes Pond Camp (ID 169, 1925–1965): Two years after ID 171 was built on the slope, the Proctor Section and GMC Trail Committee built a second Club structure — a log cabin just a few yards from the pond’s shore. The Long Trail News of December 1925 announced this construction. ID 169 was built near the shore precisely because ID 171 had been positioned 100 yards back; the new Camp filled the gap between the bluff-side lean-to and the water’s edge. The two GMC structures (ID 171 on the slope, ID 169 near the shore) served complementary niches. When the Proctor Section rebuilt its Noyes Pond shelter in 1937, the material from ID 171’s 1923 structure was cannibalized for the new building — a fact that underscores how closely bound the two were throughout their shared history. Both ID 171 and ID 169 are recorded in the database with a formal end date of 1965, suggesting the GMC counted them both as decommissioned in the same administrative action.
Noyes Camp (ID 168, 1932–1968): The privately-owned frame camp built in 1932 was a later addition that further crowded the Noyes Pond shelter landscape. The Long Trail News of July 1933 described it as "intended to supplement the old camp," suggesting it was understood as supporting rather than competing with ID 171 (or ID 169). By the 11th edition (1937), ID 168 was "the Camp" near the pond and ID 171 was "the old Shelter" on the slope — the privately-owned camp had effectively become the newer and better-maintained of the two. ID 168 outlasted ID 171 by several years: it remained in use until at least 1967–68, nearly a decade after the GMC’s slope shelter had ceased to be mentioned in guidebooks.
Last Years and Formal Decommissioning
After the 12th edition (1940) described the rebuilt slope shelter as the "new camp on the slope," references to a distinct GMC slope shelter gradually disappear from guidebooks. The 13th edition (1947) mentions only "a newer camp on the slope," and by the 15th edition (1956) the narrative focuses entirely on the privately-owned Camp. It is possible that by the 1950s the 1937 shelter had itself deteriorated and was no longer being actively maintained, or that guidebook writers had simply absorbed it into their description of the privately-owned camp without distinguishing the two.
The formal decommissioning of ID 171 is listed in the database as 1965 — the year before Rolston’s Rest was built on Jimmie Deane Brook, three-quarters of a mile south, as a replacement for the GMC’s Noyes Pond shelter presence. The November 1966 Long Trail News described the construction of Rolston’s Rest "to replace Noyes Pond Shelter," using the singular — suggesting that by 1966 the GMC considered one structure (not two) to be its Noyes Pond shelter, and that Rolston’s Rest was that structure’s replacement.
Sources:
Long Trail Guide Book, 6th Edition (1924); Long Trail Guide Book, 9th–13th Editions (1932–1947); Long Trail News, April 1927; Long Trail News, April 1934; Long Trail News, July 1937; Long Trail News, November 1937; Long Trail News, November 1966; Walter Collins O’Kane, Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains (1926); Paul and Joanne Woodward, Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. (Green Mountain Club, 1999).
