Willis Ross Camp stood for forty-three years at the east end of Stratton Pond — by the Long Trail’s own repeated estimation, the most beautiful body of water on the entire trail — before a fire in the spring of 1972 erased it as completely as if it had never been built. Its history is really two stories in one: the story of the Worcester Section’s first and most beloved shelter, and the story of the man it was named for, who by all accounts helped build the Long Trail itself long before anyone built a camp in his honor.
Named for a Trail-Builder
Willis Ross, of Rutland, is credited in the Long Trail Guide Book’s own capsule history with having helped build “many miles of Long Trail” — a legacy substantial enough that the Worcester Section chose to name its first shelter after him while he was still, evidently, active enough to be photographed there himself. Surviving photographs from the shelter database show Ross standing at the camp that bore his name, and again in the 1930s and in 1941, suggesting a continued connection to the site well after its construction. Beyond this, the archival record is thin: no fuller biography of Ross, no birth or death date, and no detailed account of which specific stretches of trail he built survive in the sources consulted for this history.
Five Days to Build a Camp, August 1929
The camp itself went up quickly, if not easily. A party of twenty-three members of the Worcester Section built it in five days, August 17 through 21, 1929, under the leadership of George F. E. Storey and Louis L. Bigelow. The lumber was donated by W. A. Savage of Randolph, Vermont, and every hour of labor was volunteered. Getting the material to the site, deep in the woods beyond the Grout Job, proved to be the hardest part of the job:
“The lumber was contributed by W. A. Savage of Randolph, Vt., and all of the labor was donated. Much difficulty was experienced in getting the material in. It had to be carried by manpower over an old swampy corduroy road, a most arduous undertaking. Fortunately, a troop of Boy Scouts happened along just at the right time and were of great assistance in the transportation work.”
— Long Trail News, October 1929
The finished structure was a frame lean-to with a removable front wall, bunks for about twelve people, and a spring thirty feet to the north. Its setting drew immediate and lasting praise. The same 1929 account described the camp’s isolation in almost reverent terms:
“It is delightfully located in the midst of spruce trees, with no other sign of human habitation visible on the banks of the pond with the beautiful hills rising on each side.”
— Long Trail News, October 1929
Guidebook editions repeated variations of that assessment for decades. The 1932 edition called it simply “one of the most attractive camp sites on the whole trail,” and by the 1960s the guidebook was crediting the setting as much to the pond as to the shelter itself: “Stratton Pond, the largest body of water on the Long Trail, is considered by many hikers to be the most beautiful.”
An “Evil” to Be Remedied
Popularity brought its own problems. By 1933, the Long Trail News was airing a complaint that would sound familiar to backcountry managers in any era — long-term squatters effectively taking over a public shelter:
“It was reported that this camp had been occupied for weeks by a party of young men, causing hikers to pass along or sleep outside. And they may be there yet, as we have not heard that they have been ousted. If trail camps are to be utilized as summer homes, the Club will have to devise some way of remedying the evil.”
— Long Trail News, September 1933
No source found records how, or whether, that particular occupation was ever resolved.
A New Stove and Gingerbread, 1941
Willis Ross Camp’s most cheerfully documented improvement came in November 1941, when Worcester Section members hauled in a new 130-pound stove — wheelbarrow and all — and celebrated its arrival with baked goods:
“Announcing the installation of a new stove, complete with oven, at Willis Ross Camp! Weight, around 130 lbs. Arrived via rubber-tired wheelbarrow on Saturday evening, November 8, 1941, and was connected early Sunday morning. The installers, several Worcester Section members and friends, tried out the oven by baking gingerbread, and testify that stove and gingerbread were an unqualified success. Two gallons of sweet cider were used to toast the arrival of the stove at camp.”
— Long Trail News, November 1941
War, Winter Squatters, and a $35 Repair
The Second World War interrupted regular Worcester Section outings to the camp, and the building suffered for the neglect. A November 1945 report describes both storm damage and evidence that someone had been living there through the previous winter:
“Camp was leaking badly so last week I got a gang together and we lugged in material and put a new roof on, dug out a decayed back sill, putting stones under the sleeper, straightened up and fastened front doors, repaired broken bunk, replaced stones under front which had been taken out and used for fireplace in front of camp and generally policed the place. It is now in good condition for winter. There was evidence that someone occupied the camp as a home last winter. Cost us $35 to repair Camp but it was good investment.”
— Long Trail News, November 1945
The Worcester Section’s first official postwar outing to the camp came the following October, on a night that turned into one of the shelter’s more fondly recalled evenings:
“A full moon lighted the way into camp… The wind and rain that evening did not dampen anyone’s spirits, for it was dry inside and there was much good fun. When bedtime came, those who had intended to sleep at the annex decided not to venture outside; so, all sixteen spent a comfortable night at Willis Ross.”
— Long Trail News, November 1946
A letter of appreciation reached GMC headquarters from a hiker who had stayed at the camp that spring, prompting a small piece of housekeeping advice recorded at the following Worcester Section meeting: a list of Section officers, the letter’s author suggested, ought to be posted at the camp so future grateful hikers would know whom to thank.
Winter Expeditions and a Log Book of Poetry
Willis Ross Camp drew visitors year-round, including in conditions that made simply reaching it an achievement. A March 1958 trip, made on snowshoes with supplies hauled on a toboggan, took seven hours through fresh snow that buried the trail’s blazes entirely:
“Five members braved the elements on March 1st, and set out on snowshoes with provisions on a toboggan from the Scout Camp turn in Stratton — destination, Stratton Pond, Willis Ross Camp. They found a foot of new snow on top of the five to six feet of old snow, and all blazes were covered. It took them seven hours to reach Willis Ross Camp using maps, compasses, and trying to find blazes.”
— Long Trail News, May 1958
The camp’s log book preserved more than practical trail notes. A 1959 Long Trail News item reprinted entries left by two hikers the previous July, one of them in verse:
“Willis Ross Camp is a beautiful spot, while vacation time flies by. ‘Twas a glorious day with a sunset; then Mars glowed red in the sky. With peace and calm on the waters and a campfire blazing near, I shall always remember this lovely spot and keep it a memory dear!”
— Pauline Campbell, Ashtabula, Ohio, quoted in Long Trail News, May 1959
Her hiking companion, Kathleen Havance of Cleveland, left a more practical entry the same day — noting she had washed the windows and carried the accumulated cans to the dump “to show we appreciated use of this delightful shelter,” and thanking “the Worcester Group, GMC!” by name.
The Annex, and a Namesake Down the Shore
As Stratton Pond’s popularity grew, the Worcester Section supplemented Willis Ross Camp with a second, smaller structure nearby. Willis Ross Annex, an open log shelter with bunk space for six to eight, stood two-tenths of a mile away along the North Shore Trail, sharing the main camp’s water source. It was built in 1953, replacing an earlier annex that had burned the previous fall — meaning fire took a Willis Ross structure at Stratton Pond nearly two decades before it finally took the main camp itself.
The Worcester Section’s connection to the pond deepened further in 1961, when the section built another shelter nearby, this one honoring one of Willis Ross Camp’s own 1929 builders: Bigelow Shelter, a log lean-to named for Louis Bigelow, who had co-led the original five-day construction effort thirty-two years earlier.
Destroyed by Fire, Spring 1972
Willis Ross Camp’s end came, like so many of the era’s log and frame shelters, by fire — though unlike some, the loss here is recorded with unusual restraint and evident grief rather than any surviving account of the blaze itself. The Worcester Section’s own notice, printed that August, mourned the camp as the section’s founding achievement even while looking ahead:
“The Worcester Section was saddened at the loss of this Camp. It was the first shelter built by this section and meant a good deal to us. We have developed a primitive camping area on land owned by Gardiner Lane at Stratton Pond which is a pilot project as a possible solution for the rapidly increasing use of the LT.”
— Long Trail News, August 1972
A brief follow-up the following winter confirmed the loss in the barest terms: “Destroyed by fire in spring of 1972.” By May 1976, the Worcester Section was reportedly considering a proposed replacement shelter, sized to accommodate twenty campers with overflow space for ten more — a scale considerably larger than the original camp’s twelve bunks. No source found confirms whether that proposed replacement was ever built under the Willis Ross name; the shelter database records no successor structure, and Stratton Pond’s shelter needs in the following decades appear to have been served by other camps in the area.
A Volunteer’s Return, and a Memory as Vanished as the Camp
The most evocative postscript to Willis Ross Camp’s story comes not from the Worcester Section but from Daan Zwick — the same volunteer whose long relationship with Taft Lodge and Taylor Lodge runs through much of the Green Mountain Club’s shelter history. In May 1988, reporting on a week spent as a volunteer assistant caretaker at Stratton Pond alongside caretaker Stu Kane, Zwick reflected on a visit to the site he had last seen half a century before:
“My last trip to Stratton Pond and Willis Ross Camp had been more than half a century earlier, and my memory of it had disappeared in the interim as completely as has Willis Ross Camp. So I experienced anew the beautiful view that greets the hiker who arrives at the clearing at the northeast end of the Pond.”
— Daan Zwick, “Confessions of an Addicted Volunteer,” Long Trail News, May 1988
Zwick’s 1988 dispatch captured a Stratton Pond that had moved on in other ways too — camping now organized around multiple shelters and numerous designated sites, a caretaker collecting fees from a steady stream of Appalachian Trail end-to-enders (the Long Trail here doubling as the AT), and abundant wildlife: mink, a loon that took up residence on the pond for a night, beaver working the shoreline, and, memorably, Zwick’s first-ever photograph of a Vermont moose, a cow with two calves that crossed the trail behind him while he ate lunch near the old camp’s former site.
Sources
- Long Trail News, October 1929.
- Long Trail News, July 1933, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, September 1933.
- Long Trail News, November 1941, p. 14.
- Long Trail News, August 1942, p. 10.
- Long Trail News, November 1945, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, May 1946, p. 7.
- Long Trail News, November 1946, p. 7.
- Long Trail News, May 1958, p. 4.
- ‘Long Trail News, May 1959, p. 4.
- Long Trail News, May 1988, p. 8 (“Confessions of an Addicted Volunteer,” by Daan Zwick), p. 1 (photo caption).
- Long Trail News, August 1972.
- Long Trail News, February 1973.Long Trail News, May 1976.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 9th ed. (1932), p. 18.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 10th ed. (1935), pp. 15, 17.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 11th ed. (1937), pp. 19, 21.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 12th ed. (1940), pp. 19, 20, 22.
- Long Trail Guide Book, (1947), pp. 17, 19, 21.
- Long Trail Guide Book, (1951), pp. 19, 21.
- Long Trail Guide Book (Supplement), 14th ed. (1955).
- Long Trail Guide Book, (1956), pp. 16, 17, 18, 62.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 50th Anniversary ed. (16th) (1960).
- Long Trail Guide Book, (1960), pp. 24, 25, 26, 70.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 17th ed. (1963), pp. 23, 24, 25.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 18th ed. (1966), pp. 23, 24, 25.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 19th ed. (1968), pp. 23, 24, 25.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 20th ed. (1971), pp. 24, 25, 26, 80.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 20th ed. (undated excerpt).
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne, Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. (Green Mountain Club, 1999), pp. 24, 137, 138, 139, 159.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), no. 58 (2005), p. 2 (trivia reference to Willis Ross Camp / Stratton Pond).
- Vermont Life, Vol. 6, No. 1 (photo caption: “L.S. Walker of Burlington and John Vondell of Amherst dine in comfort in Willis Ross Camp”).
