Fair Haven, VT

Fair Haven is a Rutland County town in southwestern Vermont, chartered and settled in 1779 around the falls of the Castleton River and the Poultney River country. The 2020 census counted 2,736 residents. Colonel Matthew Lyon helped turn the Castleton River falls into a mill center, and slate quarrying took over as the town's next big industry in the mid-1800s. The town's late-19th-century buildings still give the center a distinct Victorian shape. Fair Haven's downtown park sits at the heart of the local map, with the library, shops, brewery, and town events gathered around it.

The slate story is never far away, and the rivers helped this mill town take hold in the first place. The park gives the old industrial town a daily gathering place through the seasons. It is a place people still recognize by its stonework and river roads. Fair Haven is a western Vermont crossroads with a quarry past, a village center inside the town, and a river landscape that keeps the old industrial story visible.