The first Rolston’s Rest Shelter served Long Trail hikers for thirty-eight years on a ridge five miles north of Sherburne Pass. A frame lean-to built by the Long Trail Patrol in 1966 on private land, it was named for Ben Rolston — guidebook editor, club president, and end-to-ender — at a dedication that caught him entirely off guard. By the time it was demolished in 2004 to make way for a post-and-beam replacement donated by Tom Abbott, it had weathered four decades of Green Mountain winters and outlived the man whose name it carried.
What Came Before: The Noyes Pond Camp
Before Rolston’s Rest, the shelter in this section of Division 6 was the Noyes Pond Camp, a structure built by the Proctor Section in 1937 on private land near the pond’s north end. The camp replaced a still earlier shelter at the same location; the Long Trail News of July 1937 reported that it was "all finished except the roof, doors, shutters and bunks," and the November 1937 issue confirmed its cost at $137.64, kept low by salvaging material from the old structure and the use of volunteer labor. In a note that would prove prophetic, the Long Trail News observed at the time that "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’s obligation to act in the absence of any public ownership.
By the mid-1960s, the Noyes Pond Camp was gone. The owner of the private land had removed it. The Club needed a replacement, and the Long Trail Patrol found a new site approximately three-quarters of a mile to the south, at the crossing of Jimmie Deane Brook. That is where Rolston’s Rest was built.
Ben Rolston
Benjamin Rolston was born in Schenectady, New York, and joined the Killington Section of the Green Mountain Club in 1962, the year his name first appeared among the section’s new members. He quickly became one of the most active figures in the Club’s national affairs. By 1966 he was simultaneously chairman of the Guide Book Committee and the Special Projects Committee, and a member of the GMC Board of Trustees representing members at large.
His most visible contribution was the Long Trail Guide Book. Rolston edited the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth editions — three successive volumes, spanning the years when the trail saw its first wave of through-hiking traffic. He also wrote the "Out on the Trail" column that appeared regularly in the Long Trail News, and he co-wrote the Short Walks on the Long Trail folder that introduced the trail to day hikers. He completed the Long Trail end-to-end four times, more than anyone else in the Club at the time. The Long Trail News of February 1967 summarized his standing plainly: "In short, Ben is a real active member — our most active member."
He was a trail worker as well as an administrator. In 1962, while serving as a Patrol volunteer, he re-screened Cooper Lodge’s window openings to keep porcupines out — "if the public wants it to be an open front camp," the Patrol director wrote dryly, "let them have it so." Rolston maintained trail and shelters personally in the Baker Peak area for decades. He climbed Baker Peak, his favorite mountain, one hundred times. Two informal landmarks near Sherburne Pass carry his name: Ben’s Balcony, a lookout on the Appalachian Trail north of the pass, and Ben’s Bathtub, a swimming hole in Mount Tabor.
Outside the trail season, Rolston worked summers as a ranger at Wilgus State Park in Ascutney, Vermont, and wintered in Mission, Texas, with his wife Dorothy. He had served as GMC president for two terms. He led cycling trips across the U.S.-Mexico border for his Mission community. He was, by every account, someone in continuous motion.
The Naming: October 1966
The Long Trail Patrol built the new frame lean-to in the summer of 1966. The shelter sat at mile 5.4 from Sherburne Pass (US 4), at 2,240 feet elevation, on private land owned by Robert Ashton. The structure followed an open-face design derived from the Barrows Camp model, with a sleeping platform across the back and sleeping space for six to eight. A small brook — Jimmie Deane Brook — crossed the Long Trail just south of the shelter and supplied good drinking water. The cost, as recorded in the GMC’s accounts, was $419.17.
At the GMC Board of Trustees meeting on October 8, 1966, the board voted to name the new shelter Rolston’s Rest. The dedication took place the next day, October 9. Ben Rolston was present. The Long Trail News of February 1967 reported the moment with evident pleasure: "We think we took him by surprise."
The same issue ran the longest tribute to Rolston yet published in the Long Trail News, calling him out by name as the cover story’s subject and cataloguing his contributions to the Club. The shelter naming was presented not as a reward for a single achievement but as recognition for everything — the guidebooks, the end-to-end records, the trail maintenance, the column, the presidency. "At last," the editor wrote, "we have been able to give Ben’s name to a shelter."
The 18th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book, published the same year, was the first to list Rolston’s Rest, and the description it carried — "a frame leanto named for Ben Rolston, active trail worker and GMC Guide Book editor" — remained essentially unchanged across every subsequent edition through the 24th (1996).
Ben Rolston at His Own Shelter
At some point in the late 1960s or early 1970s, Rolston hiked to the shelter that bore his name and wrote about it in the Killington Section’s newsletter Smoke and Blazes. The piece, titled "ROLSTON REST," describes him and a companion named Ray waiting in the rain at the Tucker Lodge shortcut on Route 4 for the main party of Killington Section hikers. A jeep truck pulled up carrying GMC members Doc Howard and Churchill Scott, who offered to drive the two men up the private Noyes Farm Road — a shortcut that would get them to the shelter without the long wet approach via Tucker Lodge and Willard Gap. They compromised: they drove as far as the chain that blocked further vehicle access, then hiked in the rest of the way. "Firemaster Secor got a fire going," the account records. The rest of the trip is cut off, but the image is clear — Ben Rolston reaching Rolston’s Rest by any means available, rain or no rain.
Thirty-Eight Years of Service
The shelter appeared in every edition of the Long Trail Guide Book from 1966 through 1996 with the same description: frame lean-to, open front, sleeping space for six to eight, water at Jimmie Deane Brook just to the south. The Long Trail Guide Book 23rd edition (1985) added a note that would remain in subsequent editions: "Water is scarce between Rolston Rest and David Logan Shelters. Hikers should take advantage of the water sources at those two locations."
From Sherburne Pass to the New Boston Trail, the Long Trail in this division ran on private land throughout the shelter’s life; camping and fires were prohibited except at the shelters themselves. Rolston’s Rest was therefore an essential waypoint — the only legal overnight stop between Tucker-Johnson Shelter (1.8 miles south, later rebuilt as Tucker Johnson) and David Logan Shelter, some 7 to 8 miles to the north.
The shelter was maintained by the GMC and managed through the Club’s trail and shelter adoption program. In November 1981, the Long Trail News singled out Debbie Mader and Ken Hatch of Hartland, Vermont, for "doing a consistently excellent job at Rolston Rest." The 1986 Adopt-a-Shelter program list, published in the Long Trail News, showed Rolston Rest as shelter #21 — listed with the notation "Haven’t heard," indicating no adopter had been confirmed that year.
Through the late 1980s and 1990s, Killington Section outings visited Rolston Rest regularly. A 1987 hike report in Smoke and Blazes described the section’s party stopping at the shelter for an early lunch before continuing north toward Tucker-Johnson and Deer Leap — the shelter functioning exactly as intended, a place to rest and eat in the middle of a long day’s walk.
By 1997, the privy needed replacement. The Long Trail News (Summer 1997) listed Rolston Rest in the season’s volunteer repair projects: "Replace privy." The work was carried out that summer. In the field season of 2000, the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation assisted with another privy upgrade at Rolston Rest, and volunteer Don Whitney completed privy repairs at both Tucker Johnson and Rolston Rest.
Ben Rolston’s Death
Ben Rolston died on December 11, 1996, at the age of seventy-seven. He was riding his bicycle to pick up his mail when a hit-and-run driver struck him. He died at his winter home in Mission, Texas.
The Long Trail News of Spring 1997 ran an obituary noting that Rolston had climbed Baker Peak for the one-hundredth time that past summer. It recorded his end-to-end completions, his guidebook work, his trail maintenance. Many club members, the paper noted, had written to express their grief. The Killington Section’s Smoke and Blazes (Vol. 50, No. 1, 1997) published a tribute from Roma Pulling noting that "several locations on the trail provide reminders of Ben: Rolston Rest Shelter, built by the Long Trail Patrol in 1966, is a little over 5 miles north of Rt. 4 in Sherburne. Ben’s Balcony is a lookout just north of Sherburne Pass on the Appalachian Trail. And a favorite swimming hole in Mt. Tabor has for years been known as Ben’s Bath Tub."
The End: Demolition, 2004
By the early 2000s, Rolston’s Rest had deteriorated past repair. The Long Trail News (Spring 2004) reported that "the roof deteriorated long ago and its timbers were in need of complete replacement." The GMC obtained permission from landowner Robert Ashton, arranged for a donated replacement from Tom Abbott — the same New Hampshire farmer who had built the Laura Woodward Shelter in 2001 and the Lost Pond Shelter in 2002 — and applied for the necessary permits.
In early April 2004, Mike Macy and a group of Boy Scouts dismantled the old shelter and bagged the unburnables. Property caretaker Mike Kennison hauled the bagged material off the mountain. Once permits were in hand, a second crew carried diesel fuel and firestarter to the site. On April 21, 2004, the remains of Rolston’s Rest were burned. The Killington Section Newsletter reported the event under the headline "Rolston Roost razed; replacement to be raised," noting that Dave Hardy, GMC Director of Field Programs, and Marge Fish of the Manchester Section had supervised the work. "Rolston Roost Shelter," the item observed, "built in 1966, had seen many porcupines and better days."
The shell of the 1966 structure — the one the trustees had surprised Ben Rolston with on an October morning thirty-eight years before — was gone.
The Replacement
The second Rolston’s Rest Shelter was built on the same site on August 7, 2004, by nearly thirty volunteers directed by Tom Abbott, carpenter Joe Okarmus, and lead volunteer Marge Fish. Abbott pre-built the post-and-beam lean-to at his farm in Sanbornton, New Hampshire, from white pine lumber cut on the property. Despite rain, the shelter was completed by early afternoon. Tom Abbott died one week later, on August 14, 2004 — his third Long Trail shelter, and his last.
Sources
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington) 0082 (82). Killington Section, Green Mountain Club. 4.
- Long Trail News 1975 (1975). Green Mountain Club. 8.
- Long Trail News 1981 (1981). Green Mountain Club. 12.
- Long Trail News 1986 (1986). Green Mountain Club. 16.
- Long Trail News 1987 (1987). Green Mountain Club. 22.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington) 41 (1988). Killington Section, Green Mountain Club. 11.
- Long Trail News 1993 (1993). Green Mountain Club. 9.
- Long Trail News 1994 (1994). Green Mountain Club. 11.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington) 50 (1997). Killington Section, Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1997 (1997). Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail News 2000 (2000). Green Mountain Club. 6.
- Long Trail News 2000 (2000). Green Mountain Club. 9.
- Long Trail News 2001 (2001). Green Mountain Club. 8.
- Long Trail News 2001 (2001). Green Mountain Club. 5.
- Long Trail News 2004 (2004). Green Mountain Club. 7.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 18 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1966. Pp. 75.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 19 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1968. Pp. 35.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 19 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1968. Pp. 37.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 20 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1971. Pp. 41.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 21 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1977. Pp. 44.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 22 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1983. Pp. 43.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 23 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1985. Pp. 90.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 23 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1985. Pp. 46.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 23 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1985. Pp. 45.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 79.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 85.
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. Pp. 162.
