The first Swezey Camp was not a shelter the Green Mountain Club built — it was a private logging-era building at the Buck Job lumbering center above Downer Glen near Manchester, Vermont, which the Club fitted up with bunks and a stove around 1923, making it an overnight stop on the southern Long Trail. It bore the name of Christopher Swezey of Manchester, the man who owned and operated the Buck Job, and it appeared in GMC guidebooks from the 6th edition (1924) onward simply as "Swezey Camp. Stove, bunks." The arrangement proved fragile: hunters and lumbermen nearly wrecked the building during the winter of 1926–27, and rather than repair the original, the Club purchased a nearby building, repaired it, and declared that replacement the permanent Club property. The first Swezey Camp thus had a life of only four or five years; its significance lies less in its duration than in the name it passed on — a name that attached itself to two more structures at the same location and survived on the Long Trail until 1977.
Setting: The Buck Job and Downer Glen
The Buck Job was a lumbering center in the town of Winhall, about one mile south of Prospect Rock and roughly three and a half miles from Manchester Depot via what the guides called the "Rootville Road." Downer Glen, the steep valley that drops from Prospect Rock westward toward the Battenkill, gave the area its geographic character — and its dramatic views. The 6th edition guide noted that Prospect Rock, at 2,000 feet, commanded "fine view into Downer Glen, Battenkill Valley and up Dorset Valley." The Buck Job itself lay a mile beyond the rock, farther into the forest.
On the Long Trail, the camp sat at approximately trail mile 194 from the south, with Prospect Rock a mile to the north and Bourne Pond two and a half miles to the south. Walter Collins O’Kane’s 1926 trail narrative placed it within a network of old logging centers that shaped the southern trail’s character in those years: "At the Dufresne Job the Trail leads to the left in a westerly direction to Stratton Pond, thence to Bourne Pond, and from Bourne Pond to the Buck Job, another lumbering center." South of Stratton Mountain lay the Grout Job; north of Prospect Rock lay Manchester. The Long Trail in this section ran not through wilderness in the modern sense but through an active or recently active industrial landscape of logging roads, abandoned lumber towns, and residual camp buildings — many of which the GMC adapted for hiking use during the 1920s.
The camp building was not visible from the trail. The 9th edition guidebook (1932), describing the successor camp at the same location, noted it was "300 ft. off the Trail to the right and is not in sight from the Trail, but is beyond the lumber shacks which are visible."
Christopher Swezey and the Buck Job
The camp bore the name of Christopher Swezey of Manchester, Vermont from its earliest appearance in the GMC record. The fact that the building was already known as "Swezey Camp" when the Club adopted it — and that O’Kane’s 1926 book refers to "a building known as ‘Swezey Camp’" as if the name needed no explanation — indicates that Swezey was the owner or operator of the Buck Job, not a GMC benefactor in the conventional sense. The name came with the camp.
Little more than this can be established from the surviving record. The December 1935 Long Trail News Trail Patrol report — describing the construction of the third camp — identifies him only as "Mr. Swezey of Manchester," giving no first name; the first name "Christopher" appears only in the GMC’s own internal shelter history for the third camp. No birth date, death date, or occupation is recorded in any GMC publication. There is no obituary in the Long Trail News, no membership notice, no personal profile. He appears in the Club’s literature purely as the name behind the property.
What the circumstantial record does suggest is that the Swezey family had deep roots in the Manchester area. Swezey Road in Manchester Center, Vermont — a named road that exists today — signals the kind of local prominence that accrues to an established family, not a transient one. And Swezey’s continued connection to the Buck Job site is confirmed by the 1935 donation: when the Long Trail Patrol rebuilt the camp that year, they used "lumber torn from old lumber camp buildings, donated by Mr. Swezey of Manchester," implying that two decades after the first camp was adopted, he still owned or controlled structures on that land.
The Buck Job itself was one of several lumbering centers in the Winhall/Stratton area that left their mark on the Long Trail. The Rich Lumber Company’s Lye Brook Railroad ran from Manchester up through Lye Brook Hollow to Bourn Pond, and the trail in this section followed its abandoned grades for decades. Whether Swezey had any connection to the larger industrial lumber operations or ran an independent logging camp at the Buck Job is not established by the record. What is certain is that the building he owned or operated at the Buck Job became, in the hands of the Green Mountain Club, the first overnight shelter on the Long Trail south of Stratton Mountain.
The GMC Adopts the Camp (c. 1923)
The Green Mountain Club’s arrangement with the Buck Job camp appears to have been informal by the standards of later shelter acquisitions. Rather than purchase or construct a building, the Club simply "fitted up" an existing structure — equipping it with bunks and a stove, making it usable for hikers without taking ownership. The GMC database places the start of this arrangement in 1923, and the camp’s first guidebook appearance, in the 6th edition (1924), is consistent with that date.
The 6th edition lists it in the trail table with laconic efficiency: "Swezey Camp. Stove, bunks." — appearing between Prospect Rock (mile 193.0) and Bourne Pond (mile 196.7). The same edition notes, in its timing section, that the hike from Swezey Camp to the Dufresne Job (beyond Stratton Pond) took six hours, and from Swezey Camp to Stratton Mountain eight hours. No description of the building’s character, history, or ownership appears. For the earliest hikers who used it, the camp was simply there, named, and available.
O’Kane’s 1926 trail book, the most descriptive source for the camp during this period, gave it a paragraph in the "Grout Job to Swezey Camp" section: "Here a building known as ‘Swezey Camp’ has been fitted up by the Green Mountain Club with bunks and a stove. The distance from the Dufresne Job to the Buck Job is six miles." He added that an alternate, shorter route from the Dufresne Job to the Buck Job existed along an old road, but was "relatively uninteresting." His trail narrative then moved immediately south, in the "Swezey Camp to Camp Aolus" section, noting the descent to Prospect Rock and the highway to Manchester Depot. The camp served as the pivotal shelter linking the Stratton Mountain area to the Manchester gateway.
The 7th edition guidebook (1928) still listed "Swezey Camp. Stove, bunks." at mile 201.1 (the overall trail mileage had shifted slightly by this edition), and the timing table retained the same estimates. By this edition, however, the camp in question was already the second iteration — the original had been replaced the previous year.
Ruin and Replacement (Winter 1926–1927)
The first camp’s end came quietly. The December 1927 Long Trail News reported: "The Swezey camp at the Buck job above Manchester was nearly ruined by lumbermen and hunters last winter, so that another building near by was made suitable for the purpose after repairing. This was purchased and is now the permanent property of the Club, and is called the Swezey camp."
Several things are notable about this account. The damage came from "lumbermen and hunters" — not weather or decay — suggesting the Buck Job area remained active enough that the club’s informal arrangement with the building left it exposed to the demands of those working or sheltering on the land. The solution was not to repair the original but to shift to a nearby building, and this time the Club purchased it outright, making it "the permanent property of the Club." The name transferred intact: the new camp was still "the Swezey camp." Whether this acquisition was made with Christopher Swezey’s cooperation — or whether he provided or sold the replacement building — the record does not say.
The first camp thus ended not with ceremony but with practical necessity. It had served hikers for four or five seasons. Its successor would serve another five before meeting a more definitive end.
Sources
- Long Trail News 1927 (1927). Green Mountain Club. 1.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 47.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 43.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 6 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1924. Pp. 48.
- Walter Collins O’Kane. Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains. The Riverside Press , 1926. Pp. 385.
- Woodward, Paul and Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History. 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999.
