The Oliver LaChance Tourist Camp was a small roadside lodging on Vermont Route 11 — the old Peru Turnpike — in the southern Green Mountains, situated just east of where the Long Trail crosses the highway between Manchester and Peru. First noted in the 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book in 1932, it offered hikers several small cottages, meals, and overnight lodging "at reasonable rates," and accepted mail and parcel post on behalf of hikers in Oliver LaChance’s care. The GMC listed it continuously across the editions of the 1930s as a convenience facility for hikers stepping off the trail at one of the most accessible road crossings in southern Vermont. Paul and Joanne Woodward, writing in 1999, described it as still a "popular stop for AT thru hikers," with showers and the option to work for food. The database records the camp as extant, with no end year.
Setting: Vermont Route 11 and the Long Trail Crossing
The Long Trail crosses Vermont Route 11 on a stretch of road that the early guides called the "Peru Turnpike" — a reference to the toll road history of this corridor through the southern Green Mountains. By the 1930s the toll road was long gone and the route had been incorporated into the Vermont state highway system as Route 11, formally established in 1931. The crossing point is approximately six miles east of Manchester Center (then known as Manchester Depot) and four miles west of the village of Peru.
This was, and remains, a significant junction. Route 11 is one of the few paved roads that cross the Green Mountains on an east-west axis in this part of the state, connecting the Battenkill Valley and Manchester on the west side with the village of Londonderry, Chester, and Springfield on the east. The 1930s guide books identified this section as part of the GMC’s "Ideal Tour" — a designated circuit combining road travel with sections of hiking that was promoted as a way to introduce visitors to Vermont’s mountain landscape. Auto stages (intercity bus lines) passed the crossing daily, making it an accessible re-entry point to civilization for hikers coming off the trail from either direction.
To the north of the road crossing, the Long Trail climbs to Bromley Lodge — built by the Manchester Section in 1933 — a comfortable enclosed lodge on a brook with bunks for twelve and an inside fireplace, less than a mile from Route 11. To the south, the trail descends past Swezey Camp toward Willis Ross Camp and Stratton Pond. At the road itself, hikers in the 1930s found LaChance’s camp waiting.
The Tourist Camp: Origins and Character (1932)
Oliver LaChance’s camp first appears in the 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book, published in 1932. The entry is brief: "On the road, a little east of the Trail, is the tourist camp of Oliver LaChance, who has several small cottages, and will supply the hiker with food and lodgings at reasonable rates. Mail and parcel post may be sent here in his care. Address: Manchester Depot, Vt."
The term "tourist camp" had a specific meaning in early-1930s America. It described a roadside establishment catering primarily to automobile travelers — the motorists who had begun exploring rural roads in large numbers after the First World War. A tourist camp typically consisted of a main building (office, kitchen, sometimes a common room) and a cluster of individual cabins or cottages rented by the night. It was the predecessor of the motel, offering independent travelers a more affordable alternative to the established hotel, with the privacy of a separate cottage rather than a shared boarding house. Vermont saw a rapid proliferation of such establishments in the 1920s and early 1930s as the state’s roads improved and motoring tourism grew.
LaChance’s camp was positioned to serve two markets simultaneously: the automobile tourists passing through on Route 11, and the hikers stepping off the Long Trail at its road crossing. For hikers, particularly those doing multi-day traverses of the southern Long Trail, the combination of a meal, a bed, and the ability to receive mail drops was significant. The guide book’s inclusion of a mailing address — Manchester Depot, Vt. — reflects a practice that was common then and remains essential now: the "mail drop" at a hiker-friendly establishment near a road crossing, where resupply packages could be held for pickup. Oliver LaChance, or a member of his household, served that function at the Route 11 crossing for at least the better part of a decade.
The LaChance name is French Canadian in origin and common throughout Vermont — a legacy of the large-scale migration of French Canadians into New England over the course of the nineteenth century. By the 1930s, families of French Canadian descent were well established in both agricultural and commercial life throughout Vermont’s smaller towns and villages.
Continuity in the Guidebooks (1932–1937)
The LaChance camp entry is unchanged across the three guide book editions in the GMC collection. The 9th edition (1932), 10th edition (1935), and 11th edition (1937) all carry the same language: several small cottages, food and lodgings at reasonable rates, mail and parcel post accepted, address Manchester Depot, Vt. The consistency of the language across five years of guide book publishing suggests the camp was a stable, reliable operation — not a seasonal experiment or a brief experiment in hiker hospitality.
The same years saw significant changes in the immediate neighborhood. Just east of the LaChance camp on Route 11 stood what had been Ivan Sesow’s Wonder View Log Pavilion — a Russian immigrant’s dance hall and entertainment venue built in 1924, which Sesow abandoned in 1932 (the same year LaChance first appeared in the guide) and which was foreclosed the following year. The Peru Turnpike corridor was in flux in the early 1930s; the Depression had shuttered some enterprises and created openings for others. LaChance’s modest tourist camp, with its focus on practical shelter rather than entertainment, may have been better positioned to weather the economic contraction than its more ambitious neighbors.
The Camp in Later Decades and Its Legacy for Thru-Hikers
Paul and Joanne Woodward, compiling their Long Trail System Shelter History in 1999, added a note to the LaChance entry beyond the 1932 guide book quotation: "This is a popular stop for AT thru hikers. There are showers and many more amenities than are found along the trail. One can also work for food."
Written in present tense, this note suggests that in 1999 an establishment at or near this location was still actively serving long-distance hikers — offering showers and the option to work in exchange for food, which are hallmarks of the trail hostel model that became common on the Appalachian Trail beginning in the 1970s and 1980s. The specific mention of showers and work-for-food places the operation squarely in the hostel culture of the late twentieth century, distinct from the commercial tourist camp of the 1930s but serving the same essential function: a place of rest, restoration, and resupply at a road crossing for travelers on the trail.
Whether Woodward was describing the LaChance property itself, under continued family ownership or new management, or a successor establishment occupying the same ecological niche on the Route 11 corridor, is not documented in the available record.
Sources
Long Trail Guide Book, 9th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. P. 19. Oliver LaChance tourist camp entry.
Long Trail Guide Book, 10th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. P. 16. Oliver LaChance tourist camp entry.
Long Trail Guide Book, 11th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1937. P. 20. Oliver LaChance tourist camp entry.
Woodward, Paul and Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. P. 148.
"Vermont Route 11." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_Route_11
"Johnny Seesaw’s." Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Seesaw%27s
