Trains Affected Growth of East Hardwick, Greensboro Bend

EAST HARDWICK — At the annual meeting of the East Hardwick Neighborhood Organization, neighbors gathered on October 16, at the Grange Hall to hear presentations about the history of the railroad and how it affected the growth of the small neighboring villages of East Hardwick and Greensboro Bend. The talks were lead by Nancy Hill of the Greensboro Historical Society, Jane Johns of the Bend Revitalization Commission and Cheryl Michaels of the East Hardwick Neighborhood Organization.

Johns grew up in Greensboro Bend and remembers the rattling sound of milk cans going into the refrigerated cars of the train they called the Sour Milk Express. She shared a memory of putting pennies on the tracks so the trains would flatten them and recalled riding the passenger train to the Idle Hour Theater in Hardwick. When Johns’ grandmother from Connecticut came to visit, she rode a train to St. Johnsbury and connected from there to Greensboro Bend.

Michaels explained that, with help from the Hardwick Historical Society, she has been putting together some tidbits of information about the railroad in East Hardwick. The purpose is to develop information for an interpretive sign to be placed on the rail trail near the location of the old East Hardwick train depot.

Hill, a native of Greensboro, opened the program. Using a chart that listed dates that were significant in the history of the St. J&LC, she gave an overview of the railroad starting with 1869, the year the transcontinental railroad was connected.

Hill explained that Portland, Me., was vying with Boston to be the major shipping port to transport goods to and from Europe, providing the incentive for the construction between 1869 and 1877 of the line as a segment of the Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad. The P&O was intended to carry goods from Portland to the St. Lawrence Seaway in Ogdensburg, N.Y.

Greensboro Bend (known locally as The Bend) was “the town the railroad built.” At that time, towns competed and paid to have the train come through. In 1869, James Simpson and Henry Tolman, who had built a sawmill in south Greensboro, got the Town of Greensboro to vote a bond of $18,000 to support routing a loop of the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad near the sawmill, and The Bend was born. The Bend may have been named after the loop the trains took because of the steep incline from Walden.

In 1880 The Bend was the place where the steam engines got fuel and water. There was a big water tower which has now been torn down. Initially the steam engines were fired by wood, but eventually converted to coal. Hill noted that coal sheds have recently been rediscovered near the village.

1900 through 1925, said Hill, was a busy time in The Bend. There were 15 houses, a church, a store and a hotel. Products were both exported from and imported to this area. The train took livestock, dairy products, lumber and other goods produced in the area to other Vermont towns and beyond. The train was also the postal system. Hill’s grandfather owned a general store. Upon hearing the train whistle he would run to the station with his orders for merchandise. The station was also the telegraph station.

At around 1900, summer residents started coming to Greensboro Bend by train. They would be picked up by Sam Ladd who took them and their luggage to Greensboro.

The 1927 flood damaged the lines and residents got out and helped to repair them. When the lines were opened again, brass bands came out to celebrate.

Unlike Greensboro Bend, East Hardwick was originally a mill village, settled in 1797. The coming of the railway (the first train arrived in 1871) and growth of nearby farms spurred a new period of prosperity in the village. Michaels reported that a railroad station was built around 1870 in anticipation of the rail line opening through East Hardwick. The station was known as the Lamoille Depot and stood where Stevens Lane now meets the rail trail. Hill provided a photo of the depot, looking similar to the station in Greensboro Bend.

Michaels put this event in context by commenting that the Civil War had ended only five years before, Ulysses S. Grant was the president and gasoline cars would not be sold in the U.S. for more than 20 years.

“The first railroad cars pulled into East Hardwick Village in November of 1871 with the ringing of bells and firing of anvils, mingled with the shouts of men and boys, many of whom saw them for the first time in their lives,” Michaels read from an article in the Times Argus.

Michaels, a native East Hardwick, commented “One can only imagine how exciting it would have been to see this large steam engine pull into East Hardwick Village.”

About passengers, Michaels shared a note from Wiz Dow of the Hardwick Historical Society “Because every morning a train ran east and another ran west people could ride to a shopping or social destination on the line and then catch the returning train in the afternoon. Before the schools provided school bus service, some high school students in the vicinity of East Hardwick rode the Sunday afternoon west-bound train into Hardwick village, boarded with families in the village, and rode the afternoon eastbound train home for the weekend on Fridays.”

Michaels also found a reference to residents of East Hardwick taking the train to Joes Pond for a picnic and a day at the beach.

By the beginning of the 20th century, 124 years ago, when the train stopped in East Hardwick, it would have been to pick up mostly potatoes and butter headed to Boston. The train delivered grain for farmers and it delivered the mail for the East Hardwick Post Office, until 1956. “I’m told,” said Michaels, “the mail train didn’t always stop but sometimes the conductor just threw the mail bag out the door and the post master was there to catch it.” She said East Hardwick resident Mary Jean Hill told her that, as a child, she loved to walk up to the tracks to watch the train go by and once she was allowed to catch the mail bag.

The creameries played an important role in the growth of East Hardwick Village. Refrigerated railroad car design began in the 1860s and by the late 1890s refrigerated shipping of all kinds of perishable foods by railroad had become big business. To cool the cars, laborers loaded blocks of ice through roof hatches at each end into two large bunkers. Fans driven by the axles helped to circulate the cool air.

In 1893 the Lamoille Valley Creamery opened near the rail line in East Hardwick Village to churn butter. As dairy farming increased in the hills around East Hardwick, the creamery continued to grow. Sharing a writing by Paul Wood, a Vermont historian, Michaels read “By the 1910s, the Lamoille Valley Creamery had developed into one of Vermont’s largest creameries, making by June of 1914, 70,748 pounds of butter from 230,980 pounds of cream and representing the product of 246 dairy farms and 3,500 cows.” The creamery sat near the rail trail and Brick House Road. By then, according to Michaels, East Hardwick had truly transformed from a mill village to a commercial center serving the local farmers.

Michaels didn’t know when the Lamoille Valley Creamery closed but stated that the building was razed in 1940. She also mentioned that local farmers were able to take their milk to the Whiting Creamery in East Hardwick through the 1960s and perhaps later. Members of the group remembered this creamery which was located on Church Street where Silvacurl is now and that there was a “milk pond” across the street where local kids went to fish.

Just before noon on February 25, 1948, fire completely destroyed the depot in East Hardwick. According to an article in the Hardwick Gazette, “Following an explosion due to a small oil can, the station, all papers and furniture burned.” Michaels found in another resource that the station was replaced with an old box car. After the station burned, passengers bought their tickets on the train until regular passenger service ended in 1956.

Both Hill and Michaels remembered the excursion trains that ran in the 1980’s and were locally called the Leaf-Peeper Trains.

Many in the group remembered that McFeeters’ Store had a building next to the church where feed grain was unloaded. Michaels mentioned that Barry Dimick, in his memoir, “Second Son,” wrote “Sometimes I’d help unload grain from the railroad car. Got back down to the floor by sliding down the chute.”

The Danville Historical Society and TAL-TALE Productions of Colchester have produced videos of conversations with railway workers. An item of interest in the videos was snow plows. “Working on the St. J&LC wasn’t easy especially in the winter. From Morrisville to St. J we had to use the snow plow almost every day. It took three men to operate the plow which sat on the front of the engine” remembered one worker. Another said, “I loved the snow plow. Used to love to see the snow fly. You couldn’t see anything. The plow had wings on it, there was a front end that went between the track then the wings. Two guys sat up there and rang the bell to indicate to the plow man (who sat in the cupola) to close or open the wings.”

There were two fatal accidents on the line. One is known as the East Hardwick Train Wreck of 1907. A St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad train left the rails and plunged down an embankment two miles east of the Hardwick train station. A passenger was killed.

Another accident was May of 1944 when two trains collided head-on in the town of Hardwick about a mile west of The Bend. Nancy Hill said she was there. The collision was just beyond East Main Street, around the corner at milepost 28. A fireman was killed because he was pinned against the boiler when the train exploded. Several others were injured and the tracks and trains were severely damaged. Hill remembers how horrific this accident was and that the train master in Greensboro took responsibility for this because he misunderstood the orders to hold the west-bound train on a siding at The Bend, a mistake that haunted him for the rest of his life, according to Hill. Johns reported that she has identified the location of the accident and has tied a yellow ribbon to a tree. She hopes that the East Hardwick Neighborhood and Bend Revitalization groups might collaborate on signage to mark the event.

To learn more of the history of Vermont’s east-west railroad line, the Greensboro Historical Society Museum at 29 Breezy Avenue has an exhibit called “Rails to Trails.” The exhibit opened in the summer of 2024 and will be held over through the summer of 2025. It focuses on the arrival and departure of the St. Johnsbury & Lamoille County Railroad in Greensboro Bend as well as the transition of the rail line to the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail.

The East Hardwick Neighborhood Organization is currently working with a fabricator and plans to have an unveiling event for their interpretive sign next summer.