The first Tillotson Camp was a three-walled open-front lean-to that stood about three-quarters of a mile east of the Long Trail in the hills above Lowell, Vermont, at roughly 2,600 feet elevation. It was built in 1930 by Red Tillotson, a farmer’s son from the valley at the base of Belvidere Mountain who had already helped cut the northern Long Trail and served as the fire lookout on Belvidere’s summit. The shelter stood for roughly a decade — appearing in every edition of the Long Trail Guide Book from 1930 through 1937 — before it was torn down and entirely rebuilt in 1939 by Professor Roy O. Buchanan and the Long Trail Patrol. What replaced it, the second Tillotson Camp, still stands today as the last surviving Buchanan Camp in its original location.
Red Tillotson: The Man Behind the Name
Everything about the first Tillotson Camp begins with one man. Red Tillotson grew up on his family’s farm at the base of Tillotson Peak — a farm that stood at what would become the trailhead of the Frank Post Trail, one of the eastern approaches to the Long Trail in this section of the range. The Tillotson name was already embedded in the landscape: the peak, the pond, the farm, and eventually the mill were all Tillotson. It was fitting that when a shelter went up on the ridge above, it took the family name too.
Before he built the shelter, Red had already done his share of work on the Long Trail itself. Working with Harry Page of Eden, he helped cut the original Long Trail from one mile north of Belvidere Mountain’s summit tower to Hazen’s Notch — a stretch of exposed ridge and dense spruce-fir forest through some of the most remote terrain in Vermont. This work was foundational: without a trail route through this high section, the Long Trail could not have been extended to the Canadian border. In 1928, he served as fire lookout on Belvidere Mountain, packing 88-pound loads of food and supplies up the mountain in a knapsack of his own making. Hikers who called ahead were welcome to stay, Red recalled in his old age, as long as they could stomach biscuits for supper and dinner.
The GMC’s Long Trail News, in its Spring 2000 issue, published a tribute to Red after his death that January at the age of ninety-two. Dave Hardy, GMC Director of Field Programs — who had interviewed Red the previous winter alongside Susan Harris and Maureen Roberts, two volunteers from Randonnée Aventure — recalled the specifics: Red was "the fire lookout on Belvidere Mountain in 1928." He "helped cut the original Long Trail (with Harry Page of Eden) from one mile north of Belvidere’s tower to Hazen’s Notch." And then, with characteristic precision about the sequence of events:
"Red built the first Tillotson Camp during the summer of 1930 after hauling the lumber after first snow in 1929."
The timing tells a story. The lumber went up the mountain before winter closed the logging roads — after the first snow of 1929, while the ground was still firm enough to haul. Then Red waited out the winter. In the summer of 1930, he built the camp. Four days, the Long Trail News would later record, was all it took.
Building the Original Shelter
The original Tillotson Camp was a lean-to: an open-front, three-walled rustic structure positioned about three-quarters of a mile east of the Long Trail, reached by a side trail off the ridge. Its elevation was approximately 2,600 feet, on a sheltered slope near the small pond that later generations would call Lockwood Pond. A cook stove provided warmth and a means to heat food. Water was available from a nearby source. Bunks accommodated hikers — early guidebooks give the capacity as sixteen, though later descriptions settle on eight, suggesting either a revision to the structure or an error in the early listing.
The 9th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1932) included a visitor’s-eye description of approaching the shelter from the north: "As the trail bears left, away from the pond, there is a sign which says ‘CAMP 50 RODS.’ It is down a side trail, an open frame camp, cookstove, water, bunks for 16."
The later guidebooks were more specific about the spur distance. The 10th edition (1935) recorded the sign at the junction as reading "Tillotson Camp, ¾ mi." and described the shelter as "Tillotson Shelter (2,600 feet), open front with cook-stove, water and bunks for 8." The 11th edition (1937) repeated this: "Tillotson Shelter (2,600 feet) is ¾ mile east of The Long Trail; open front, stove, water and bunks for 8."
The distance from the Long Trail — ¾ mile via a side trail — set the original camp apart from what came after. When Roy Buchanan and the Long Trail Patrol rebuilt the shelter in 1939, the new structure was placed only about thirty feet from the Long Trail itself, a fundamental change in the shelter’s relationship to the ridge route it served. For hikers in the 1930s, reaching the original Tillotson Camp meant a real detour.
The Shelter in the Guidebooks
The first Long Trail Guide Book to list the shelter was the 8th edition, published in 1930. In the Division A summary (Jay Peak to Belvidere Mountain), "Tillotson Camp" appears in the tabulation between Haystack Mountain and Tillotson Peak, indicating the shelter was in place when the edition went to press. This is consistent with the lumber being hauled in autumn 1929 and the camp built in summer 1930.
The 9th edition (1932) carried a fuller description. Hiking northbound, the route from Ritterbush Camp to Tillotson Camp covered about seven miles through Division XI. Southbound from Tillotson Camp, the guide described the trail to Haystack and beyond: "From the Tillotson Camp sign, The Long Trail climbs to Tillotson Peak (3,040 ft.) 1½ mi. beyond. In 2 mi. more of crooked trail it reaches Haystack Mt. (3,223 ft.)…" — and then down 1,200 feet to the Fred H. Tucker Lodge to the north.
The 10th edition (1935) and 11th edition (1937) carried nearly identical descriptions. Both named the sign at the junction, gave the shelter’s elevation as 2,600 feet, its character as "open front" with stove and bunks for eight, and noted that Ritterbush Camp was 7.7 miles to the south (5½ hours northbound, 4½ southbound).
No edition described the shelter’s builder or its origins. Red Tillotson’s name is absent from all the guidebook entries from this period. He was simply the farmer’s son who had built a useful structure in a useful place, and hikers signed the register and moved on without knowing whose hands had shaped the wood.
The Forester’s Connection
The 1935 and 1937 guidebooks described the Belvidere saddle trail system, including "a Forester’s trail to the Tillotson Homestead." The same trail network eventually led down the mountain to the Tillotson family’s holdings in the valley: the homestead itself, the secondary road connecting Eden Mills and Lowell west of Route 100, and eventually what guidebooks called the "Tillotson Mill" or "Warner Farm," on the asbestos mine road between Eden Mills and Vermont Route 58 west of Lowell.
It was in this same family landscape that the first Tillotson Camp sat. The shelter wasn’t named for a donor or a GMC official. It took the name of the terrain and the family that had worked it for decades. Chief Forester Perry Merrill, in requesting the shelter’s construction, was drawing on a local resource — a man who already knew the mountain better than anyone.
The Porcupines and Roy Buchanan
One particular memory surfaced when Dave Hardy and his colleagues interviewed Red Tillotson in 1999. Red recalled the day Professor Roy Buchanan came to the original camp. Buchanan — who would later rebuild the camp in 1939 — visited the first Tillotson Camp at some point before that reconstruction, and what Red remembered was this: Buchanan nailing chicken wire around the base of the camp to keep the porkies out.
Porcupines were a persistent problem at Long Trail shelters. They gnawed at wooden structures, particularly any surface that had been touched by human hands and carried the trace of salt. The chicken wire defense was a standard remedy of the era. That Red Tillotson remembered it specifically — and recalled it to Dave Hardy seven decades later — says something about both men. Roy Buchanan was already, in those early years, a fixture on the Long Trail: the crew supervisor who visited and improved shelters all across the northern sections, methodical and practical, reaching even this remote three-quarters-of-a-mile-off-the-trail lean-to to keep the porcupines out.
The End of the Original Camp, 1938–1939
By the late 1930s, the original Tillotson Camp had given out. A decade of Vermont weather and heavy hiker use had taken their toll. The October 1939 Long Trail News reported what had happened without sentiment:
"It was found that the old Tillotson Shelter on the mountain of the same name had given in to time and the elements, and it was necessary to tear the old building down and entirely rebuild it. This was done and the northern section can now boast of another well-built stopping place with all modern conveniences."
The GMC database records the first Tillotson Camp’s end year as 1938, suggesting the structure was demolished the year before the replacement was completed. Roy Buchanan and the Long Trail Patrol undertook the rebuild in 1939, constructing a fully enclosed Buchanan Camp on the same general site — but now positioned only thirty feet from the Long Trail rather than three-quarters of a mile away. The new shelter was a different type entirely: not a lean-to but a closed frame cabin, with two-tier bunks, a stove, and the enclosed four-sided design that became the Buchanan Camp trademark.
Red Tillotson’s Later Life
Red Tillotson outlived the camp he built by six decades. He spent the rest of his life in the valley at the base of Belvidere Mountain, watching hikers make their way up the trails he had helped cut and past the mountain he had once kept watch from. When the GMC came to interview him in the winter of 1999, he was ninety-one years old. He remembered everything: the lumber hauled before the first snow, the four-day build, the porcupines, the route he and Harry Page of Eden had cut through the spruce and fir to Hazen’s Notch. He chuckled when Dave Hardy noted he might not have picked the easiest route off Haystack.
He died on January 8, 2000, at the age of ninety-two. His daughter Elsie, writing to the GMC in the summer of 2007 when the second Tillotson Camp was being restored, put it simply: "I want you to know that if Dad were still here he would be turning 100 tomorrow, and I can’t think of anything he would have loved more than knowing that the camp is being taken care of."
Sources
- Long Trail Guide Book. 9th Edition ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932.
- "Long Trail News." , no. Fall (1999).
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 8 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1930. Pp. 12.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 9 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. Pp. 57.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 9 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1932. Pp. 58.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 10 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 60.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 10 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1935. Pp. 54.
- Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book. 11 ed. Green Mountain Club, 1937. Pp. 58.
