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Dorset, VT By Nancy and Richard Woodworth There is marble almost everywhere in Dorset, a town that marble helped build and upon which it has long prospered. You see it on the sidewalks all around the picturesque green, on the porch at the historic Dorset Inn and on the terraces at the newer Barrows House and Cornucopia of Dorset, on the side of the turreted United Church of Christ and on the pillars of the Marble West Inn. The sight of an entire mansion built of marble stuns passersby along Dorset West Road. It seems as if all Dorset has been paved with marble – and with good intentions. Here is what residents and writers alike have called the perfect village. Merchant Jay Hathaway phrased it well in a Dorset Historical Society lecture: What could be better than running "a small country store nestled in the mountains of Vermont in a town that is as close to perfect as Dorset?" A village of perhaps 1,800 (about two-thirds of its population during the height of its marble-producing days a century ago), it's a mix of charm and culture in perfect proportion. Dorset is unspoiled, from its rustic Dorset Playhouse (the oldest summer playhouse in the state) to its handsomely restored inn (the oldest in the state) to its Dorset Field Club (the oldest nine-hole golf course in the state) to its lovely white, green-shuttered homes (many among the oldest in the state) to its two general stores, both of them curiously different relics of 19th-century life. Here is a peaceful place in which to cherish the past. Barely six miles away is Manchester, one of the more sophisticated tourist destinations around. Some of its visitors, who come to shop until they drop, don't know about nor are they particularly interested in Dorset. But people in Dorset can take advantage of all Manchester's urbane attractions as desired. So the Dorset visitor has the best of both worlds – a tranquil respite amid a myriad of activities and attractions. What could be more copacetic? Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places in New England, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2004. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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