Waterbury

History

The townsite was once the frontier between the Mahican and Pennacook people. European settlement dates from 1763, when King George III granted a charter for land in the Winooski River valley. James Marsh became the first permanent white settler in the region in 1783. Many of the early settlers came from Waterbury, Connecticut, and named their new town in honor of the hometown. The village of Waterbury was incorporated in 1882 with a population of over 2,000. The Central Vermont Railroad came to Waterbury in 1849. The railroad expanded a passenger station for the railroad in 1875, making the station a more major stop on the Vermonter. The hospital, renamed the Vermont State Hospital, grew to occupy over 40 buildings, but by the 1980s the number of patients had declined to the point where only one building was required. The remainder of the campus came to be used for state offices. Like many New England towns, Waterbury's economy was based around the local river mill industry and the surrounding agricultural producers. The mills produced products such as lumber and finished wood products, wicker products, leather, starch, and alcohol. The agriculture was based on sheep through the 19th century but switched over to dairy farming by the 20th century. Waterbury had a ski factory in the 1940s, the Derby & Ball Company. In 1927, Waterbury, like many other Vermont communities, was devastated by flooding. Inscriptions on the sides of some buildings in Waterbury village purport to show where the level of the water rose during the 1927 flood. The village recovered, and in 1938 the Waterbury Dam was built on the Little River by the Army Corps of Engineers to control future flooding in areas downstream of the town center. On August 29, 2011, Tropical Storm Irene flooded…

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