Bradford, VT

Bradford is the village center of Bradford town, set above the Waits River where a steep drop once provided waterpower. Asa Low built a brick grist mill in 1847, and the village grew into a commercial and industrial center with Main Street buildings, the old mill, and a former railroad depot nearby. The Bradford Village Historic District holds that nineteenth-century layout, while the Waits River runs through the story and joins the Connecticut River east of the village. The village disincorporated in 2004 and became a CDP in 2008, but the old form is still easy to see: a narrow Vermont center shaped by a river, a mill, and the businesses that followed.