The first Seth Warner Camp was a log shelter standing at 2,100 feet on the southernmost division of the Long Trail, about three miles north of the Massachusetts-Vermont border near Bennington. It was built in 1929 — officially named the Colonel Seth Warner Lodge — as a gift from Dr. William H. Beardsley and his family of Springfield, Vermont, and provided bunks for ten hikers with a stove. The camp served as the southernmost overnight shelter on the Long Trail for the better part of a decade, situated on the North Adams water supply reservation near the old County Road, with views of Mount Greylock and the Williamstown valley to the south. After years of use, the patrol reported it needed to be torn down and rebuilt; in 1938, the Long Trail Patrol replaced it with a new structure at the same general location. The first camp’s nine-year lifespan coincided with the revival and coming-of-age of the Bennington Section of the GMC.
Seth Warner and the Name
The camp honored Colonel Seth Warner (1743–1784), one of the foremost military figures in Vermont’s Revolutionary War history. Warner was a leader of the Green Mountain Boys alongside Ethan Allen and a central figure in the Battle of Bennington on August 16, 1777—the engagement commemorated by the tall stone monument visible from the Harmon Hill section of the Long Trail north of Bennington, and from the camp’s own clearing to the north.
At Bennington, Warner’s regiment of Continental soldiers and militia arrived in time to prevent the retreating British and Hessian forces from regrouping, contributing decisively to an American victory that historians consider a turning point of the Saratoga campaign. Warner died in 1784 at the age of forty-one, worn down by the hardships of the war. His rank as Colonel — reflected in the camp’s official name, the Colonel Seth Warner Lodge — honored his command of the Green Mountain Boys regiment. The naming was fitting not only for the historical connection to Bennington but also because the camp was the first shelter a northbound hiker encountered after leaving Massachusetts, marking the threshold of Vermont.
A New Section Finds Its Feet: The 1929 Founding
When the Green Mountain Club annual meeting was held in early 1930, the report on the Bennington Section captured the spirit of the year before: the Section had been "somewhat dormant for some years, but has awakened and is now very much alive." At the opening of the 1929 season it "was confronted by the fact that there was not a shelter in its part of the Trail, so it went to work with a will to remedy this deficiency." The Section built three shelters that year: a cabin on Glastenbury Mountain, Camp Thendara (built with funds from the New York Section), and Camp Seth Warner—built with funds from Dr. Beardsley.
The June 1929 Long Trail News recorded the gift at the time: a new camp near County Road, Bennington, given by William H. Beardsley and his family of Springfield, Vermont. The Woodward Long Trail System Shelter History (1999) confirms that it was officially named the Colonel Seth Warner Lodge and was equipped with a stove and bunks for ten people.
Dr. W. H. Beardsley, as he was known to the GMC, was described in his 1935 obituary in the Long Trail News as "an ardent lover of the mountains, and had made many trips over the Trail, in the course of which he had covered most of it." His gift of the camp was a natural extension of that enthusiasm, connecting his love of the Long Trail with a lasting contribution to the hiking community. He appears in the records alongside William H. Field of Mendon and Rutland — owner and publisher of the Rutland Herald — who funded the stone Governor Clement Camp a little south of Killington Peak. Both men were remembered in the same 1935 obituary column, grouped together as benefactors who had shaped the GMC’s shelter system through personal gifts.
The Camp in Service (1929–1937)
The 8th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1930) offered the earliest description of the camp in use, noting simply that the trail "reaches the Seth Warner Camp (stove, and bunks for ten)." The description remained essentially unchanged through succeeding guide editions: stove, bunks for ten, situated on a wood road approaching from the north. The 9th edition (1932) added the water supply caution and a reminder that the camp stood about one mile west along a wood road from the junction with the old North Adams road, at 3.25 miles from the state line.
The camp was listed among Bennington Section’s shelters in trail inventories throughout the early 1930s. The February 1936 Long Trail News carried a Bennington Section report from the annual trustees’ meeting that noted the Section had nearly twenty new members, that "all of the Trail from the Seth Warner camp to the top of Glastenbury Mountain was cleared and painted, and the cabins all repaired and put in order," and that all debts were paid and money remained in the treasury — a picture of organizational health after the Section’s dormant years.
The camp’s location near the state line and close to an accessible wagon road made it convenient but also exposed. The North Adams water supply reservation on which it stood called for particular care from hikers, and the proximity of roads meant local visitors — not just trail hikers — could reach it without difficulty.
Deterioration and the Decision to Rebuild (1937–1938)
By the fall of 1937, the Long Trail Patrol’s annual report signaled that the first Seth Warner Camp’s days were numbered. Wallace M. Fay, in his patrol activities report published in the November 1937 Long Trail News, listed among the recommendations for the coming season: "Tear down and rebuild Seth Warner lodge unless the Bennington Section can do this." The entry appeared alongside other maintenance priorities: the Emily Proctor Lodge (whose rebuild had already been funded by Miss Proctor), the Tillotson Shelter, and various re-creosoting and seam-tarring jobs across other shelters. The Seth Warner Lodge was among the most pressing structural needs.
At the annual trustees’ meeting covered in the April 1938 Long Trail News, the Club made it official: "Appropriations for the coming season were made amounting to $1,695, being about as heretofore. The appropriation for the patrol was $800, to include the building of a new cabin to replace the Seth Warner camp." This was the largest single patrol appropriation of the year, reflecting the significance of the task.
The 1938 trail work season, summarized in the Long Trail News of September 1938 by W. A. Fay, listed "Seth Warner Shelter — Rebuilt" among the major jobs completed, alongside the rebuilding of Sterling Pond Camp, Battell Shelter, and Emily Proctor Shelter. The treasurer’s report published in the May 1939 Long Trail News confirmed that Seth Warner Camp had cost $150 in the Club’s 1938 accounts, with a separate $75 contribution from the Bennington Section toward the same project.
The Replacement and Its Successor
The Long Trail Patrol built the second Seth Warner Camp in 1938 to replace the first. The new structure provided eight bunks — two fewer than the original — and remained in service for nearly three decades. A February 1966 Long Trail News retrospective on shelter construction noted that the second camp had been replaced in 1965 by "Seth Warner Shelter, 1965. Carpenter trainees from Manpower Development Training Act, replacement of Seth Warner Camp (1938)." That third structure was an open-front lean-to, built through a joint effort of the GMC and the federal Manpower Development Training Act, and was repeatedly noted in subsequent years as the first shelter on the Long Trail north of the Massachusetts line.
The 11th edition guidebook (1937) was the last to describe the first camp at the location before its replacement; by the 12th edition (1940), the second camp had taken its place in the same position in the trail system, continuing the shelter’s role at the southern gateway of Vermont’s Long Trail.
Sources
- “Seth Warner.” Wikipedia. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Warner.
- Long Trail Guide Book. 8th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930.
- Long Trail News 1935 (1935). Green Mountain Club. 3.
- Long Trail News 1936 (1936). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Long Trail News 1938 (1938). Green Mountain Club. 2.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 8 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930. Pp. 48.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 9 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. Pp. 14.
