Saxtons River, VT

Saxtons River is an incorporated village in Rockingham, Vermont, arranged along its namesake river in Windham County. The 2020 census counted 479 residents. Most of the village lies in the Saxtons River Village Historic District, where Main Street, houses, commercial buildings, former mills, bridges, and public buildings follow a river corridor about a mile long. The waterway once powered local industry and remains the organizing feature of the village’s physical layout.

Vermont Academy has been part of Saxtons River since 1876 and now occupies a 450-acre campus on the terrace above the village. Earlier economic life centered on woolen mills and small shops; later the Bellows Falls and Saxtons River Street Railway reached town in 1900, carrying freight and passengers to Bellows Falls five miles away. Today, the school, historic district, and riverfront streets give Saxtons River a layered local map: an old mill village with an active campus above it and the regional rail corridor’s memory still built into its bridges and roads.