Ritterbush Lodge was an early GMC shelter on the Long Trail in northern Vermont, situated near Ritterbush Pond and just north of the rocky gorge known as Devil’s Gulch in the town of Eden. Built in 1924, it served hikers for nearly a decade between Parker Camp to the south and Belvidere Mountain to the north. By 1931 the patrol crew was patching and creosoting it against persistent porcupine damage, and by 1933 its damp location had become untenable enough that the GMC’s Long Trail Patrol tore it down, moved the materials, and rebuilt it on higher, drier ground with a view of Ritterbush Pond. That rebuilt structure — a classic Buchanan-era camp — stood until 1998, when the Laraway Section replaced it and the old building was removed and burned in early 1999. The original 1924 lodge is the subject of this history. (GMC ID 000186)
Setting: Devil’s Gulch and Ritterbush Pond
Ritterbush Lodge stood in a secluded corner of northern Vermont, in the forested country between the Sterling Range and the northern highlands that rise toward the Canadian border. The Long Trail in this section, having come north from Butternut Mountain past the Badger lumber camp, enters the rocky defile of Devil’s Gulch — a narrow gorge that Walter Collins O’Kane, in his 1926 trail guide, described as a "rocky defile" through which the trail threads for a short distance before emerging near the lodge. A few minutes beyond Devil’s Gulch, Ritterbush Pond appears: a quiet body of water that the lodge sat two hundred yards from, in the flat, damp terrain at the pond’s margin.
The lodge lay between Parker Camp to the south (6.9 miles) and Belvidere Mountain to the north (4.5 miles), providing a mid-point rest for hikers traversing this remote section of the trail. The Long Trail through this area had been extended to reach the Canadian border only in 1930, and in the mid-1920s the northern divisions were still being built out with shelters. The town of Eden and the neighboring Belvidere country were among the last parts of the trail corridor to receive reliable overnight infrastructure.
Construction (1924)
Ritterbush Lodge was built in 1924 as one of a series of GMC shelters added to the Long Trail’s northern sections in the years following the trail’s completion from Massachusetts to Jay Peak in 1927 (and later to Canada in 1930). The 1924 date places its construction during the period when the GMC was actively filling gaps in the northern trail’s shelter system, which had relied on a thin scattering of camps, private farms, and improvised accommodations.
The original lodge was a modest structure. O’Kane described it in 1926 as "a Club shelter with bunks for eight," sited two hundred yards from Ritterbush Pond. The Long Trail News of April 1927 listed it in the Club’s official roster of camps and shelters along the trail, positioned between Parker Camp and Belvidere Mountain, with no meals or blankets available — like all other GMC camps of the era except the Long Trail Lodge, Camel’s Hump, Mount Mansfield, and Killington Peak. There is some discrepancy between sources on capacity: O’Kane’s 1926 account gives eight bunks, while later Long Trail Guide Book editions may have recorded a higher figure, possibly reflecting improvements made to the structure in the late 1920s.
The Challenge of Damp Ground and Porcupines
The lodge’s location near the pond proved problematic from the outset. The ground was wet, and the structure sat in terrain that did not offer the drainage or views that later GMC standards would require of a good shelter site. These issues were compounded by the perennial nemesis of early Long Trail shelters: porcupines, called "pigs" or "hogs" in the vernacular of patrol workers of the time.
The August 1931 Long Trail News reported on that summer’s trail work, cataloguing conditions at shelters across the system. Ritterbush Lodge received this entry: "Repaired by patrol and partially creosoted to keep off the ‘pigs’." Creosote — a wood preservative with a strong smell — was applied to exposed woodwork as a deterrent to porcupines, which chewed obsessively on wooden structures, particularly where salt from human perspiration and cooking had soaked into the grain. The 1931 repairs kept the lodge serviceable for another season or two, but they were treating symptoms rather than causes. The damp site and the aging structure were ultimately the lodge’s undoing.
The 1931 patrol season was also notable for the inauguration of what the GMC called an "all season patrol" — Professor Roy Buchanan of the University of Vermont driving his Long Trail Patrol crew in "Patrol Truck No. 1," a new 1931 Chevrolet pickup, to work camps and trail conditions across the entire system. The crew reached Ritterbush that summer and made the repairs noted above, as part of a sweep that also addressed conditions at F. H. Tucker Lodge, Tillotson Camp, Badger Camp, Parker Camp, and the Haunted House shelter.
The 1933 Decision and Rebuilding
By February 1933, the annual report to the GMC recommended action: "Ritterbush lodge be removed to a dryer spot with a view." The recommendation came alongside calls to build a camp near the Canadian line and replace Cooley Glen Lodge — part of a broader assessment of which structures needed rebuilding and where new investments were most needed.
The recommendation was carried out that same year. The February 1934 Long Trail News, reporting on the 1933 patrol season, stated: "The old Ritterbush camp was torn down, moved and rebuilt on a site a little farther from Ritterbush pond where there is a fine view." The work was done by Buchanan’s Long Trail Patrol crew. The rebuilt structure was placed on higher, drier ground at a remove from the pond — the damp ground that had plagued the original — where it commanded a view over the water and the surrounding country.
The 1933 rebuild was one of several significant shelter projects that year. The same patrol season produced Journey’s End Camp at the northern end of the trail and new work on Glen Ellen and Butler Lodge. Forest and Crag, Laura and Guy Waterman’s history of northeastern hiking published in 1989 and excerpted in the 1990 Long Trail News, placed "Journey’s End and Ritterbush in 1933" among the definitive contributions of the Buchanan era to the Long Trail system.
The rebuilt camp was a characteristic Buchanan structure: as described in Forest and Crag, "a small enclosed cabin with bunks, shuttered windows, a single table with benches, and a wood stove." These Buchanan camps were not elegant, but they were warm, tight against the weather, and built to survive the rough conditions of the northern Long Trail. Buchanan himself described a typical camp as accommodating "six hikers or six porcupines, but not six hikers and six porcupines" — a joke that captured both the scale of these modest structures and the ongoing porcupine problem.
Sources
- Long Trail News 1927 (1927). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1931 (1931). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1933 (1933). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 423.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 425.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 431.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 434.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 435.
