Thendara Shelter — referred to in early sources as "Camp Thendara" or "Thendara camp" — stood near Harmon Hill in the Bennington section of Vermont for nearly three decades, from 1929 until heavy snows collapsed it in early 1958. Located at mile 9.3 of Division I, at 2,480 feet elevation on the Long Trail, on the old Bennington-Heartwell Road long since abandoned to forest, it replaced a predecessor known as Deerview Cabin and was itself succeeded by Deer View Shelter, built by the Bennington Section in the same year it was destroyed.
The shelter took its name from Camp Thendara, the New York Section’s private gathering place on Lake Tiorati in Harriman State Park — a camp in New Jersey that funded the Vermont shelter’s construction and lent it its name. Readers should note that the name "Thendara" applies to two distinct places: the Vermont Long Trail shelter described in this narrative, and the New York Section’s Harriman camp that sponsored it. A separate narrative covers Camp Thendara in Harriman State Park.
Deerview Cabin: The Predecessor
Before Thendara Shelter stood at this location, a shelter known as Deerview Cabin occupied the same site near Harmon Hill. By 1929 it had deteriorated beyond salvage. The December 1929 Long Trail News described it plainly: the new camp "takes the place of the old Deerview cabin, which died of old age."
The name would come back to this location twice: once as the original Deerview Cabin that Thendara replaced, and again as Deer View Shelter, built in 1958 after Thendara was destroyed. Paul and Joanne Woodward’s Long Trail System Shelter History (1999) calls the Vermont Thendara "Thendara Lodge (2nd)," placing it second in a sequence at this location between two shelters bearing the Deerview name.
Construction and Funding (1929)
The December 1929 Long Trail News announced the new shelter in a brief notice under "New Camps":
"Thendara camp is finished. This camp is located near Harmon Hill in the Bennington section and takes the place of the old Deerview cabin, which died of old age. It was built with funds supplied by the Thendara camp of the New York Section in New Jersey."
The 8th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1930) confirmed its completion. The shelter offered ten bunks and a stove, with views of Bennington Valley through the clearing.
The structure visible in early photographs is a board-sided, gable-roofed camp building with a covered open porch along the front face, three horizontal logs forming the porch railing. Unlike the open-front Adirondack lean-tos common elsewhere on the Long Trail, this was a more enclosed building — a covered camp rather than a lean-to — consistent in character with the enclosed style of the New York Section’s Harriman camp that funded it. The porch provided covered outdoor seating, with a picnic table visible in the 1932 photographs.
The shelter’s name honored its benefactor, acknowledging the cross-regional generosity that made its construction possible.
The 1930s: A Shelter in Use
The earliest photographs of the Vermont shelter date from around 1932. The default photo for the shelter in the GMC database — a hand-tinted color photograph from around that year — shows three men seated at a picnic table on the covered porch: L. B. Puffer, Glen Aiken, and Mr. Major Jenks. Puffer appears in other GMC records of this era as an active Burlington-based member and photographer; his presence in the early Thendara photograph links the shelter to the broader GMC community that moved between sections.
A black-and-white photograph from August 1936 — captioned "Al Githens, Long Trail, Camp Thendara, Aug. 1936" — shows a single hiker standing near the shelter in a clearing overgrown with summer vegetation. The Githens name appears in New York Section records of the period; his presence at the Vermont shelter in 1936 suggests that New York Section members used it as a stopping point on Long Trail trips, maintaining a personal connection to the camp their section had funded.
In February 1933, the shelter was enlarged. The February 1933 Long Trail News noted the enlargement without elaborating on what was added — a reflection, presumably, of the shelter’s popularity in the years since construction.
A late-1930s sepia photograph offers a wider view of the shelter from a conifer clearing: the open front porch visible, a stovepipe rising from the roof, tall evergreens framing the structure on both sides.
1940s and 1950s: Continued Use
Through the 1940s and into the 1950s, the shelter appeared in guidebook listings and in the background of New York Section correspondence and news. The section’s Vermont Trails chairman had oversight of the shelter alongside the trails in the Bennington area.
A 1954 color photograph — taken in winter conditions — shows three hikers on the shelter’s front porch, icicles hanging from the eaves and snow covering the surrounding clearing. The hikers are dressed in wool layers typical of mid-century winter hiking. The shelter’s wood has weathered to a dark reddish-brown in the quarter-century since its construction. Metal railings and a short stair mark the porch approach. The structure looks sound but aged, a working shelter that had served many seasons. This photograph was taken four years before the structure was destroyed.
Destruction by Snow (1958)
Early in 1958, heavy snows collapsed the Thendara Shelter. The destruction was complete enough that repair was not attempted. The Bennington Section built the replacement — Deer View Shelter — later that same year, continuing the tradition of a shelter at this location near Harmon Hill. Woodward’s Shelter History notes the succession plainly: first Deerview Cabin, then Thendara Shelter (1929–1958), then Deer View Shelter (1958 onward). The name reverted to the Deerview form, and "Thendara" passed from the Vermont landscape.
Sources
- "Long Trail News." , no. December (1929).
- "Long Trail News." , no. February (1933).
- "Long Trail News." , no. February (1950).
- "Long Trail News." , no. November (1972).
- "Long Trail News." , no. August (1977).
