Downsville Watershed My Home Town Sense of Place.
Over break I decided not to work, but rather to enjoy nature and spend many days hunting. Fortunately, our Thanksgiving break lines up with the last week of Vermont’s 16-day rifle season. This year I decided to venture away from hunting near my home on Moretown Mountain, and instead I headed across the valley to the Downsville Watershed to explore and hunt larger woods.
The Downsville “Valley” has a long history with Vermont and even my family. Downsville has always been used for one purpose and that is logging. Since settlers came to the Mad River Valley, they have always harvest timber from this massive mountain that abuts Camels’ Hump. The 5,000-acre property was once owned by the Ward family who owned hundreds of thousands of acres throughout the state and operated a handful of mills. The ward family sold the property in the 1950’s to a New York timber company who managed the property up until a few years ago when the State of Vermont purchased the property. The land is now part of the 30,000-acre Camels Hump State Forest.
Downsville is a working land scape with mixed habitat from young hardwood forest with maple, paper birch, yellow birch, and beach, to old growth spruce and balms at higher elevations. This type of habitat is wonderful for black bear, moose, white-tailed deer, grouse, and snowshoe hare. Well hunting I saw hare tracks, moose sigh, and even bear tracks!
I have been told and read that Downsville has always been used for logging, however I saw evident of old homesteads and fields. This evident came in the form of old stone foundations, and random stone walls. Therefore, I believe sheep farming may have come before logging during the 18th century.
Downsville holds a special place in my sense of place for many reasons. The main reason is because the land is so remote and wild, and those characteristics are something I value. In addition, my father’s relatives used to log Downsville for over 100 years. It is a very interesting feeling when you walk on the land that your family used to worked with.
