Lower Connecticut River Valley

Standing tall on the landscape is Mount Ascutney, the 3,144-foot centerpiece of Mount Ascutney State Park. Spectacular views of the Connecticut River Valley await at its summit, which can be reached by hiking from one of the four trailheads or by way of a paved auto road. For an up-close look at the region’s famous waterway, head to nearby Wilgus State Park in Weathersfield. At Vermont’s only developed state park on the Connecticut River, you can camp or picnic by the water, or rent a canoe or kayak to spend a day exploring by boat. Among the river’s sights is the 449-foot-long Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, which was the longest of its kind in the U.S. for over a century.

Housed in a 19th-century factory building in Windsor, the fascinating American Precision Museum brings to life this region’s industrial past. It was here in the so-called Precision Valley that the technique of manufacturing interchangeable machine parts was perfected. The town of Springfield, in particular, became a center of the precision tool industry, a distinction that survived well into the 20th century.

Notably unchanged over the years is the 1787 Rockingham Meeting House, a historic gem in the town of Rockingham. It’s the oldest unaltered public building in Vermont, with a simple classical design that predates Vermont’s fancier steepled churches. Step farther back in time at Bellows Falls, where among the river rocks are Abenaki petroglyphs, or rock carvings, that date back centuries and possibly millennia.