Peru Peak Shelter sits in the Peru Peak Wilderness of the Green Mountain National Forest, in the town of Peru, Vermont, along the Long Trail and the coincident Appalachian Trail. The shelter is positioned approximately a mile and a half south of Griffith Lake, just below the ridge leading to the 3,429-foot summit of Peru Peak. Water is found at a brook near the shelter. The remote, forested location and the shelter’s proximity to both the lake and the peak have kept it in steady use across more than ninety years of Long Trail history.
The CCC Griffith Shelter, 1935
The shelter was built in 1935 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, specifically by the Peru Camp — one of more than thirty CCC camps in Vermont established under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The Peru Camp was the principal CCC presence on the southern Long Trail, and its enrollees undertook a variety of projects in the area: building shelters, girdling unwanted trees, clearing trail slash, constructing the Hapgood Pond recreation area, and building a connector trail from Hapgood Pond to the Long Trail.
The shelter as built was a log structure with space for ten hikers. In the earliest documentation — the 10th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1935) — it appears under the name "USFS Shelter," reflecting the Forest Service’s administrative oversight of the site. By the 17th edition of the guidebook (1963), the shelter was recorded as the "Griffith Shelter," a name that placed it in the same landscape as Griffith Lake, Peru Peak, and the broader terrain associated with the nineteenth-century lumber empire of Silas L. Griffith.
The shelter appeared consistently in the Long Trail Guide Book through the 1950s and early 1960s, and was covered in Long Trail News issues during the same period, indicating active use and periodic attention from the GMC’s trail maintenance programs.
Renaming: Peru Peak Shelter, 1966
In 1966 the United States Forest Service built a new wood-frame lean-to on the east shore of Griffith Lake, approximately a mile and a half to the north. To distinguish the two structures, the USFS assigned the new one the name "Griffith Lake Shelter" and renamed the older CCC log shelter "Peru Peak Shelter." The Long Trail News of November 1966 announced both changes simultaneously, and the 18th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1966) reflected the new name.
The November 1966 Long Trail News noted that the shelter "probably should be listed as two individual shelters for purposes of this History," acknowledging that the pre-1966 Griffith Shelter and the post-1966 Peru Peak Shelter were, in terms of their documented record, distinct entities sharing a single structure.
First Rebuild: Youth Conservation Corps and USFS, 1979
By the late 1970s the original CCC structure required replacement. In 1979 the Youth Conservation Corps, working in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, undertook a full rebuild of the shelter. The YCC was a federal program modeled on the earlier CCC, employing young people in conservation and public lands work. The rebuilt shelter maintained the log construction tradition of the 1935 original and continued to accommodate ten hikers.
Major Rebuild: Long Trail Patrol, 2000
By the turn of the century the shelter had again deteriorated significantly. Severe rotting of the sill logs — caused by water infiltrating the base of the structure — necessitated a comprehensive rebuilding effort. In 2000 the GMC’s Long Trail Patrol undertook this work.
The site’s remoteness posed a logistical challenge: Peru Peak Shelter lies deep in the wilderness with no road access, making materials transport by foot labor-intensive. The crew used a helicopter to fly logs and materials to the site, allowing the project to proceed with structural timber that could not practically have been carried in by trail.
The Patrol rebuilt the log courses using traditional saddle notches — a joinery technique that locks logs at corners without metal fasteners, consistent with the shelter’s historic log construction character. The crew also enlarged the roof to improve weather protection, and installed a drainage ditch around the structure to redirect surface water away from the sill logs, addressing the underlying cause of the rotting that had made the rebuild necessary.
Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who happened to be hiking the Long Trail at the time, participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the completion of the shelter. The crew present at the ceremony included Erik Anderson, Melanie Grubman, Jeremy Raynor, Molly O’Brien, John Bennett, and Clint Fuhr. Photographs from the event are preserved in the GMC’s records. The Long Trail News covered the 2000 rebuild project, and the Killington Section’s Smoke and Blazes newsletter also documented the work.
Floor Rebuild, 2011
In 2011 a construction crew returned to Peru Peak Shelter to replace the rotting floor system — a separate maintenance issue from the sill log and structural work done in 2000. The project was covered in both the Long Trail News and the Burlington Section’s Ridgelines newsletter. Connecticut Section members were also involved in Peru Peak Shelter stewardship during this period, as documented in The Trail Talk, the Connecticut Section’s publication.
Endowment: The Bernard Godfrey Legacy
The shelter’s future maintenance was secured through an endowment established in loving memory of Bernard Godfrey as part of the Green Mountain Club’s Second Century Campaign. The endowment provides a dedicated funding source for ongoing upkeep of the structure, reflecting the GMC’s broader effort to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of its shelter network.
Sources
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington) 0049 (49). Killington Section, Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail News 1961 (1961). Green Mountain Club. 4.
- Long Trail News 1961 (1961). Green Mountain Club. 5.
- Long Trail News 1962 (1962). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1962 (1962). Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 24th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1963.
- Long Trail News 1965 (1965). Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail News 1966 (1966). Green Mountain Club. 7.
- Long Trail News 1989 (1989). Green Mountain Club. 16.
- Long Trail News 1992 (1992). Green Mountain Club. 10.
- Long Trail News 2000 (2000). Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail News 2006 (2006). Green Mountain Club. 14.
- Long Trail News 2006 (2006). Green Mountain Club. 15.
- Long Trail News 2008 (2008). Green Mountain Club. 17.
- Long Trail News 2008 (2008). Green Mountain Club. 12.
- The Trail Talk (Connecticut) 2008 (2008). Connecticut Section, Green Mountain Club. 7.
- Long Trail News 2011 (2011). Green Mountain Club. 9.
- Ridgelines (Burlington) 2011 (2011). Burlington Section, Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 10 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 19.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 10 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 22.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 15 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1956. Pp. 21.
- Green Mountain Club. Guide Book of the Long Trail. 16 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1960. Pp. 29.
- Green Mountain Club. Guide Book of the Long Trail. 16 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1960. Pp. 3.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 17 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1963. Pp. 29.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 18 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1966. Pp. 28.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 18 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1966. Pp. 28.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 19 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1968. Pp. 28.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 19 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1968. Pp. 28.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 20 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1971. Pp. 30.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 22 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1983. Pp. 35.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 50.
