Centennial woods has a very long history before it became part of the UVM campus. Now it is one of the great natural areas that UVM manages, but originally it was part of the Abenaki land. The indigenous people lived on the land far before any white settlers came to America. They managed the land very differently than the settlers who removed them from the land. The Abenaki managed the land in a much more sustainable and natural way. They practiced usufruct rights which means everyone was able to use the land for specific uses, there was no one owner. When the settlers got there, they took the land and would not let the Abenaki practice their sustainable management skills. The Abenaki people were pushed off the land and settlers created farms. Sheep were the main livestock for a long time. Stone walls can still be found in the woods. After the farms were established, the university started to buy up the farms for their own use. For a long time the land just sat there and the university did nothing with it. Centennial shrunk considerably when UVM decided to sell some of it to the state to build the interstate in 1963. The land was then used as a dumping ground for the university. They left trash, bio-waste, and even used cadavers from medical school. UVM then sold sections for development, which shrunk the plot even more. Finally, in 1997, the land was conserved in perpetuity. This rocky history has made Centennial woods what it is today, a beautiful natural area for the Burlington community to visit and for UVM students to study.