St. Johnsbury

The capital of the Kingdom [1], St. Johnsbury (or “St. J” to residents) is the largest town in the area with a whopping 7,500 people. Its entire downtown is a monument to the Victorian era, during which St. Johnsbury saw its fortunes made thanks to the ingenuity of Thaddeus Fairbanks and his family. Since ancient times, weight had been measured by the cumbersome balance scale. Fairbanks invented the modern platform scale, with sliding weights on an arm above a spring-loaded platform.

Construction of the scales instantly made Fairbanks—and the town—rich. His brother Erastus was later responsible for bringing the railroad to town in 1850, and later twice became the governor of Vermont [2].

The Fairbanks family never forgot where they came from, and generations of the family invested heavily in the town, building an academy, natural-history museum [3], and art gallery, all of which they hoped would educate their fellow citizens.

Today, St. J’s train station has been turned into a visitors center and the town has turned into more of a country backwater than sophisticated center of industry. But it’s worth a stop for the Fairbanks legacy and the access to recreational offerings of the Kingdom [4].