Hardwick, VT

Hardwick is a Caledonia County town organized around the Lamoille River and its villages of Hardwick, East Hardwick, and Mackville. The town's first mills went in at the river falls in 1798; merchants, tradespeople, a church, and government followed. The Bayley-Hazen Military Road brought early settlement, then the railroad changed the scale of the place by moving timber, hay, hides, cheese, butter, and locally made goods.

Hardwick's later identity was granite. The Woodbury Granite Company built a small industrial city of cutting sheds, while downtown acquired the Jeudevine Memorial Library, built in 1896, the restored railroad depot, the 1911 Memorial Building, and the town house. Today the town remains the commercial center for surrounding farms, with the Lamoille River and Jeudevine Mountain setting the edges. Hardwick has the feel of a place that kept adding layers: military road, mills, rail, stone, library, food, and farming. That layering is the town's best local clue. You can see it walking the main streets.