Welcome back to the Deep Dive. This is the place
where we take a huge stack of sources. And today,
it's a really comprehensive profile on Vermont's
history, its economy, its politics, and we just
pull out the absolute key things you need to
know about what makes a place tick. And today,
yeah, we're looking at Vermont, a state that
I think for many people gets boiled down to,
you know, a few charming cliches. Maple syrup.
Maple syrup, fall foliage, covered bridges, maybe
a certain ice cream brand, we all know. But if
that postcard is all you see, you are missing
the really radical heart of the place. That's
the perfect way to frame our mission here. We're
using this detailed survey to unpack that fierce
independence, its role as a sort of testing ground
for progressive policies, and how its really
unusual geography shaped everything. From its
politics to its very specialized economy. We
really want to get into why the Green Mountain
State is the way it is. And why that matters.
Yeah. So I think a good place to start is just
the scale of it. Or maybe the lack of scale.
Exactly. Vermont is the 49th most populous state.
So only Wyoming has fewer people. Its capital,
Montpelier, is the least populous state capital
in the entire country. It's got, what, about
8 ,000 residents? It's tiny. And even its biggest
city, Burlington, has a smaller population than
the biggest city of any other state. It just
completely subverts that American idea of, you
know. big urban centers and soaring buildings
right and i love this fact from our sources vermont
is the only state that doesn't have a single
building taller than 124 feet that's amazing
what's so fascinating is how a place so small
so landlocked and so you know sparsely populated
has this this huge reputation for being bold
both politically and socially our deep dive is
all about finding the roots of that attitude
okay let's unpack this where does this deep -seated
independent spirit actually come from You don't
just accidentally become a policy laboratory.
We have to go back to the beginning, right, to
this history of just aggressive self -determination.
And even the name tells you a lot about that
streak. Vermont is just a French translation
of Vermont. Green Mountain. Green Mountains,
exactly. It was adopted in 1777, and the suggestion
came from a man named Dr. Thomas Young, who was
an ally of the very militia that defined the
whole region, the Green Mountain Boys. That's
such a critical point. The state isn't named
for a king or someplace in Europe. It's named
after an illicit, armed vigilante group. Before
it was Vermont, it was even briefly called New
Connecticut. And changing the name to Vermont
in 1777, that was a statement. It cemented the
influence of the Green Mountain Boys on the state's
identity right from the start. Before we get
into all the colonial fighting, we should probably
look back even further. I mean, 11 ,000 years.
right as the glaciers were receding. That's right.
The first people there were paleo -Indians. They
were hunters. And the landscape included a saltwater
body, the Champlain Sea, which eventually turned
into the freshwater Lake Champlain we know today.
And the whole environment changed, right? About
8 ,000 years ago, you get the archaic period.
The big game like mastodons are gone and people
start relying more on smaller game, on plants.
Our sources really paint a picture of a very
developed culture. Sophisticated fishing, stone
cookware, food storage. It suggests... a pretty
stable and successful indigenous society. And
then comes the woodland period, maybe 3 ,000
years ago, and that's when agriculture really
takes hold. Right, the three sisters, maize,
beans, and squash. That allowed for larger, more
permanent settlements. The main groups were the
Algonquian -speaking Abenaki, and then bordering
them, you had the Mohicans and the Iroquois -speaking
Mohawk. And contact with Europeans in the 1600s
was, well, it was a catastrophe, just like everywhere
else. The diseases, things like smallpox, they
just raced ahead of the actual settlers. The
estimates are devastating. Of the roughly 10
,000 indigenous people in the area, somewhere
between 75 and 90 percent died before any major
European settlement even got started. And the
survivors were completely disrupted. They either
had to move north towards French territory in
Canada or try to assimilate. And you see the
legacy of that today. Vermont is unique in that
it has no federally recognized tribes. The state
itself has formally recognized several Abenaki
bands. but not the federal government. So the
colonial era itself, after 1600, it's this kind
of low -level competition. You have French military
interests around Lake Champlain and English settlers
creeping up the Connecticut River. Then France
gives up its territory to Britain in 1763 after
the Seven Years' War, and boom, suddenly this
huge forested land is up for grabs by the colonies
to the south. And this is the moment, this is
the critical point that really defines Vermont's
anti -authoritarian future. The land dispute
over the New Hampshire grants. It's a fantastic
story. The New Hampshire governor, Benning Wentworth,
he starts auctioning off huge areas of land between
Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River back
in 1749. So settlers buy these grants. They set
up towns. They think they have a clear legal
title to their land. But here's the problem.
The colony of New York claimed the exact same
territory. And in 1764, King George III issues
a proclamation and sides with New York. A disaster
for the settlers. A total disaster. New York
immediately starts selling the land all over
again, this time as land patents, to wealthy
New York speculators. So people who have built
homes, cleared farms, they're suddenly facing
eviction by authorities backed by the king. And
this is where that independent spirit just, it
takes a violent turn. The response wasn't to
write a letter to the king. The response was
Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys in the
early 1770s. And we have to be clear, this was
not a formal army. This was an illicit. private
militia whose entire purpose was to protect the
New Hampshire grant holders from New York authorities
by any means necessary. Their methods were. genuinely
brutal. They used arson, mob violence, harassment.
They'd kidnap and beat New York settlers and
sheriffs to drive them out. They were armed vigilantes
and they were successfully resisting colonial
legal authority. That history of self -defense
against what they saw as unjust government overreach,
I mean, that fuels the state's identity even
now. And that internal fight perfectly prepared
them for the bigger fight against Britain. The
Green Mountain Boys got famous almost overnight
when they captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775.
A huge early victory in the Revolutionary War.
It showed they were effective and just solidified
their reputation for, you know, decisive, independent
action. All of this anti -authoritarian action
leads directly to one thing. The Vermont Republic.
January 15th, 1777. The representatives of the
New Hampshire Grants realized they're fighting
New York and Britain, so they just declare full
independence from both. And what they wrote that
summer in a place called the Windsor Tavern was
revolutionary in the truest sense of the word.
The Constitution of the Vermont Republic was,
you could argue, the most radically liberal political
document in North America at the time. Absolutely.
I mean, think about the era. This Constitution
was the first one in North America to explicitly
ban adult slavery. That's right. It had a provision
that said male slaves were free at 21 and female.
males at 18. A huge monumental step for the 1770s.
But maybe even more groundbreaking was the voting.
The Vermont Republic granted universal adult
male suffrage. They gave the vote to men who
didn't own property. which was decades ahead
of the rest of the United States. This little
landlocked territory was experimenting with democracy
on a scale that the big, powerful states were
just too conservative to even try. And they weren't
just writing it down on paper. Vermont was a
fully independent nation for 14 years. A full
-on nation. They had their own postal service.
They issued their own coinage, the Vermont Coppers,
from 1785 to 88. And the only reason it ended...
That 14 year experiment wasn't because they were
defeated. It was just political necessity. They
wanted to join the union, but New York was still
blocking them over the land claims. The solution
was purely pragmatic. In 1790, they reached a
deal. Vermont had to pay New York $30 ,000 to
settle all the outstanding claims. So they literally
had to buy their way into the union. They did.
That payment cleared the way. And on March 4,
1791, Vermont became the 14th state. The very
first one admitted after the original 13. And
that entire founding story resisting authority
governing themselves for 14 years, paying off
their rival, it just left this permanent mark.
A deep inherited skepticism of outside government
control that you can still see in their policies
today. And that fighting spirit moving into the
1800s, it got channeled into the Civil War. Vermont's
contribution for its size was just astonishing.
Over 33 ,000 troops. and more than 5 ,200 deaths.
That's a casualty rate of over 15 % of the soldiers
they sent. And it was also the site of the northernmost
land action of the whole war, the St. Albans
Raid in October 1864. This wasn't a battle, though.
It was more like financial terrorism. About 20
Confederate agents crossed the border from Canada,
robbed three banks in St. Albans, and then fled
right back into Quebec. And the local posse that
chased them into Canada, a neutral country, caused
this huge international incident. Right. But
it's interesting. The Canadian government eventually
reimbursed the banks. They basically admitted
their neutrality had been violated. It just highlights
that unique position of Vermont right up against
an international border. So the state inherits
this tradition that's both radically democratic
and at the same time violently anti -authoritarian.
It's a complex heritage, but it's completely
tied to the land itself. That's a perfect transition.
Let's move from that revolutionary history to
the physical reality of the state. If you connect
the history to the geography, the key thing is
that Vermont is the only landlocked state in
New England. It's the easternmost landlocked
state in the entire U .S. It's geographically
small, right? Right. About the size of a country
like El Salvador. But the mountains, they just
dominate everything. The Green Mountains are
the spine of the state, running north -south.
And that spine divides everything up. You have
the fertile Champlain Valley to the west by the
lake. And then the eastern side is all dominated
by the watershed of the Connecticut River. And
those mountains dictate where people live, how
they get around, the weather, everything. The
highest peaks, like Mount Mansfield, they even
have these rare alpine ecosystems above the tree
line. Speaking of the mountains, the geology
is just. It's a cosmic story. The oldest rocks
in the Green Mountains are nearly a billion years
old. But get this. About 400 million years ago,
Those same peaks were estimated to be between
15 ,000 and 20 ,000 feet tall. Wait, so as tall
as the Himalayas are today. Exactly. We are talking
about Himalayan scale mountains that have just
eroded down over hundreds of millions of years.
And you can still see the evidence of that geological
violence. One of the most famous examples is
the Champlain Thwest. It's a visible fault line
where ancient bedrock was literally pushed up
and over younger rock formations. It's a classic
example of tectonic. pressure I've read. Geologists
love that spot. They do. And if you want to go
even further back in time, you can go to a place
called Isle Lamotte, an island in Lake Champlain.
It holds the remains of the Chezy Formation.
Which was one of the world's very first tropical
reefs. One of the first. You can go to a quarry
there and see 200 million year old marine fossils.
It's this incredible reminder that this cold
granite state was once part of Pangaea, floating
in a tropical senior Africa. So the geology set
the stage. And that stage dictates the climate.
It's a humid continental climate, right? Big
seasonal swings. Legendary winters, cold, long,
snowy. You're looking at an average of 60 to
100 inches of snow. And it's not the same everywhere.
The Northeast Kingdom, that rural corner of the
state, is way colder. It is about 10 degrees
Fahrenheit colder in the winter than the southern
part of the state. So even within this small
state, you have these distinct microclimates.
But that climate is changing. And the consequences
for Vermont are... They're severe. Over the last
50 years, they've seen more rainfall and more
intense storms, which leads to major flooding.
The Great Vermont Flood of 1927 was a generation
-defining disaster. And we saw the modern version
of that in 2011 with Tropical Storm Irene, which
caused just massive damage. And all this leads
to the core economic threat, which is the warming
trend. Warmer, shorter winters are predicted
to have a catastrophic effect on the two things
Vermont is most famous for. Skiing and maple
syrup. The ski season is already getting shorter,
which hurts tourism. And the maple sugaring industry
is facing an existential threat. Why is that?
What's the mechanism there? Sugar maples need
a very specific cycle of freezing nights and
warm days for the sap to run properly. As winters
get shorter and more erratic, that cycle gets
disrupted. The trees are stressed. So the trees
themselves are in trouble. Some research suggests
the sugar maples are essentially being forced
to migrate north into Canada to find the climate
they need. This isn't just an economic problem.
It's a threat to a core piece of their cultural
identity. This landscape, this climate, it also
dictates how people live and how the state is
governed. The urban structure is really unusual.
Vermont only has 10 incorporated cities total.
And most of the population centers are legally.
For example, the town of Essex has over 22 ,000
people, which is way bigger than many of the
actual incorporated cities. The town meeting
is still a huge part of their governance. It's
just so decentralized. It values small local
government over the big city political machines
you see everywhere else. And that local control,
it feeds right into their very unique economy.
Vermont's economy is this, this immediate contradiction.
Its nominal GDP, about $45 .7 billion, is the
lowest of any state. But its GDP per capita is
a very strong 21st in the nation. Which tells
you the economy isn't about massive volume. It's
about small -scale industries making really high
-value products or servicing a very wealthy clientele.
And you can see that ethos perfectly in agriculture,
even as traditional farming is in decline. Dairy
farming is a classic example. It's central to
the state's image, right? The big white dairy
barns everywhere. But the number of farms has
just plummeted. It's a nearly 95 % decline between
1947 and 2021. Just over 500 farms left. And
that's not just a number. That's a huge cultural
shift in rural life. The family farm is mostly
gone. And now preserving those iconic barns is
more of a historical project than an economic
one. And here's the paradox. While the number
of cows has shrunk, the total milk production
has actually doubled. It's all because of hyper
efficiency, better technology, better genetics.
So they're producing more milk with fewer cows
on fewer farms. Exactly. But even with that efficiency,
their share of the bulk milk market is falling
compared to giants like New York and Pennsylvania.
Forestry has a similar story. The state is 78
% forested now, which is a huge comeback from
the 1880s when it was mostly cleared for sheep
pasture. But the industry is struggling. The
prices for wood products, lumber and wood chips
have been flat for decades. Our sources say the
price for a thousand board feet in 2017 was the
same as it was in 1994. So the forests are growing
twice as fast as they're being cut. It's created
a huge supply that keeps prices down. And that
pressure is what forced Vermont to adapt. They
had to hyper focus on high value niche agriculture.
And nothing symbolizes that better than maple
syrup. They are the dominant U .S. producer.
No question. They produce over half of the entire
nation's supply, 2 .55 million gallons in 2022.
That's an industry worth nearly $60 million a
year. And it's not a commodity. It's a premium
brand. Agritourism is another survival strategy.
Apple growing is a big contributor. But consumer
tastes have shifted away from the Macintosh apples
that Vermont is known for. So a lot of orchards
have had to pivot. They now rely on pick your
own experiences and making high value hard cider
to survive. It's all about leveraging that Vermont
brand. And Vermont brand is everything. It's
like an economic shield. They have successfully
monetized this idea of authenticity and quality.
Ben and Jerry's ice cream, Burton's snowboards,
Cabot cheese, King Walter flour. These aren't
just companies. They're extensions of the state's
identity and they command premium prices because
of it. That's how you get a high GDP per capita
with a low overall GDP. But let's set aside the
pastoral image for a second. The single largest
private employer in the state is Global Foundries.
Right. A semiconductor manufacturer in Essex
Junction with 3000 employees. So there is a significant
high tech manufacturing base, even in a state
that's known for being expensive and highly regulated.
But the truly unexpected part of their economy,
the thing that leverages their regulatory niche
is financial services, specifically captive insurance.
This is one of those concepts we really have
to unpack. It's obscure, but it's hugely important
to Vermont's economy. So what is captive insurance
and why is Vermont a global leader in it? OK,
so simply put, a captive insurance company is
when a huge corporation or a group of them creates
its own licensed insurance company just to insure
its own risks. So they become their own insurer
instead of paying premiums to Aetna or State
Farm. Exactly. And they do it for control and
for cost. It lets them bypass the volatile commercial
market. It can lower their premiums and it gives
them huge tax advantages. OK, so why Vermont?
Why not Delaware or somewhere else? Because Vermont
got in early and they did it right. They created
a very flexible but robust regulatory environment.
They have this deep pool of expert lawyers and
accountants, and they can process applications
way faster than their competitors. The success
is pretty staggering. By 2010, Vermont was the
world's third largest home for captive insurance
companies, right behind Bermuda and the Cayman
Islands. Over 900 of these companies are based
there. It's a massive global financial footprint
operating out of a tiny landlocked state. It's
a brilliant exploitation of an intellectual regulatory
niche. And finally, let's look at infrastructure
and energy, where the contradictions just keep
coming. On paper, Vermont generates 99 .9 % of
its electricity from renewable sources. The highest
in the nation. It's a fantastic number and a
huge point of pride. But there's a huge caveat.
Which is that Vermont consumes about three times
more electricity than it actually generates.
Exactly. So while the energy they make is green,
they are a massive net importer of power, mostly
from hydroelectric dams in Canada. So the energy
independence story is, it's complicated. And
transportation is a huge liability. Half of the
state's greenhouse gas emissions come from vehicles.
It's a deeply car -dependent place. Which is
understandable given how rural... it is, but
the physical infrastructure itself is also a
problem. Back in 2010, Vermont had the eighth
worst bridges in the nation. Over a third were
rated deficient or obsolete. So you have this
state that's a global financial hub, but is also
struggling to just maintain its roads and bridges
in a very harsh mountainous environment. That's
the perfect summary of the contradiction. Okay,
let's pivot from the economy to the people themselves,
the Vermonter persona. And we have to start with
the demographics of homogeneity. It is consistently
one of the least racially and ethnically diverse
states in the U .S. About 92 .2 % of the population
identifies as white, non -Hispanic. Only Maine
is whiter. But even within that homogeneity,
there are distinct threads. The largest ancestral
group is French, right? About 20 % of the population.
Which makes perfect sense given the history and
the proximity to Quebec. And the population trends
are really key to understanding modern Vermont.
Inward migration really slowed down in the 2010s,
but then it reversed sharply in the early 2020s.
It did. And this is a pattern. The big influx
of domestic migrants in the 1960s and 70s was
a critical turning point for the state. These
were the so -called back to the landers. Right.
often highly educated people escaping the cities
looking for a simpler life. And they brought
with them fundamentally different political and
social ideas than the native born moderate Republican
population. That collision of worldviews is what
set the stage for the state's huge political
shift. So let's talk about how Vermonters sound.
The local dialect is Western New England English.
And the key thing is that they pronounce all
their arse sounds. It's what linguists call a
rurotic accent, which sets them apart from the
classic non -rurotic Boston accent where you
pock the caw. And there's another quirk, right?
Especially the rural areas. The glottal stop
for the letter T. That's right. So you might
hear some rural speakers drop the T sound at
the end of a word. So Vermont sounds more like
Vermont. It's a very subtle regional marker.
And because of Quebec, French is still the second
most spoken language in Vermont homes, one of
only three states where that's the case. Right.
The local dialect is New England French, which
comes from Quebec French. Moving on to the spiritual
landscape, Vermont always ranks as one of the
most secular states in the country. The data
is really striking. As of 2022, a plurality of
the population of 48 % identified as religiously
unaffiliated, no religion, agnostic, atheist.
And only 45 % identified as Christian. with Catholicism
being the largest single group within that. This
high rate of secularism, it creates an environment
where there's just less institutional religious
resistance to progressive social policies like
same -sex marriage or cannabis legalization.
And finally, let's look at health and safety,
because there's a real paradox here. By many
measures, Vermont is a national leader. It was
ranked number one for health outcomes in 2010.
It has low violent crime rates. It seems idyllic,
but the substance use numbers tell a very different
story. Vermont leads the nation in the rate of
young people who've consumed alcohol in the past
month. And it was ranked second for marijuana
use among young people. About 30 % of adults
aged 18 to 25 reported using it in the past month.
So you have this paradox, a state that's safe,
healthy, and well -educated, but also struggles
with substance use among its youth at rates that
are far above the national average. It's a complex
problem that really defies the postcard image
of Vermont. It certainly does. And that complexity
is front and center in its politics. The political
history of Vermont is one of the most remarkable
transformations in the country. We talked about
its founding. But even in the modern era, the
shift has been just tectonic. For most of its
history, from 1856 all the way to 1988, Vermont
was the most reliably Republican state in the
entire country. In that whole 132 -year period,
they only voted for a Democrat for president
once. Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 64. But since
1992, it has completely flipped. It's now one
of the most reliably Democratic states. And that
is a direct result of that cultural clash we
talked about, the old moderate Republican base
blending with the influx of liberal domestic
migrants from the 60s and 70s. And that created
this unique political ecosystem that welcomes
nontraditional candidates. And you can't talk
about Vermont politics without talking about
Bernie Sanders. Exactly. An independent, a self
-described Democratic socialist who was represented
Vermont for decades. His success just speaks
to a political culture that cares more about
ideology and personality than it does about strict
party labels. And this fluidity, this willingness
to experiment, combined with its small size,
has let Vermont act as a progressive policy laboratory
for the whole country. The list of legislative
firsts is just profound. In 2000, it was the
first state to create civil unions for same -sex
couples, but then they went further. In 2009,
they became the first state to legalize same
sex marriage through a vote of the legislature,
not a court order. They even overrode the governor's
veto to do it. And that boldness just continues.
In 2018, they were the first state to legalize
recreational cannabis through legislative action,
not a voter referendum. They led on consumer
issues, too. In 2014, they were the first to
mandate the labeling of GMOs in food. And on
national politics, they are still channeling
that anti -authoritarian spirit. In 2014, Vermont
became the first state to officially call for
a constitutional convention to overturn the Supreme
Court Citizens United decision. That shows a
real willingness to challenge the highest legal
authority in the country right from the state
level. And this progressive tendency is backed
up by some very strict regulations, all designed
to protect the landscape that defines the state.
The most famous example is Act 250. Act 250 is
a legendary piece of legislation. It was passed
in 1970 to limit major development and stop suburban
sprawl. It basically says any big development
has to go through this intense environmental
review process. And the result of that is clear.
Vermont was the last state in the nation to get
a Walmart. They made a conscious choice to prioritize
their small -town image over unchecked commercial
growth. And that dedication to aesthetics, it
extends to the roads. Vermont is one of only
four states, along with Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine,
that has completely banned advertising billboards.
They just see them as visual pollution that ruins
the scenic views that are so crucial to their
tourism economy. And you see it in their environmental
policy, too. They have a strict ban on spreading
manure in the winter to prevent agricultural
runoff from polluting the waterways. Which puts
real economic pressure on those struggling dairy
farms, but they do it to protect the water quality,
especially in Lake Champlain. Now here's where
the contradictions get really interesting. Despite
this image of progressive regulation, Vermont
has some striking regulatory quirks, especially
when it comes to personal liberty. You're talking
about gun laws. I am. It's a genuine outlier.
A reliably blue state with some of the least
restrictive gun laws in the entire country. No
permit needed to buy or carry a firearm. Open
and concealed carry are legal for anyone over
16. Which connects all the way back to that 250
-year -old tradition of the citizen militia and
the Green Mountain Boys. Exactly. Another contradiction
is taxes. The property tax burden is among the
highest in the nation relative to income. That
is largely because of a very controversial law
called Act 60, the education funding law. We
should probably explain this. We should. was
to create equity in school funding so students
in poor towns had the same resources as students
in wealthy towns. And the mechanism was redistribution.
The state pooled local property taxes from everyone
and then redistributed the money based on the
number of students in each town. This meant wealthy
towns were, in effect, subsidizing schools in
poorer towns. And that created huge resentment.
So much so that the town of Killington, a wealthy
ski resort town, actually tried to secede from
Vermont and join New Hampshire over the tax burden.
It's the modern version of the exact same anger
that fueled the Green Mountain Boys, resisting
what they see as an unjust external authority
taking their money. And finally, let's touch
on one last unique law. that ties back to that
fierce individualism the law protecting public
nudity it's true the state's constitution has
been interpreted to protect public nudity as
a right as long as it's not lewd and lascivious
and the context here is fascinating It was done
in part to protect the longstanding tradition
of skinny dipping in the state's many secluded
swimming holes. So it's a legal protection for
a harmless personal liberty, which contrasts
so sharply with the strict environmental laws
like Act 250. So you have a state where you can
start a global insurance company. You have to
store your cow manure all winter. You're constitutionally
protected to go skinny dipping. And you can open
carry a handgun without a permit. All of it happening
under the gaze of mountains that were once taller
than the Himalayas. That pretty much sums it
up. So what does this all mean? When we look
at this deep dive into Vermont, the pattern is
just. It's unmistakable. Its small size and its
challenging geography have fused with this radical
inherited commitment to self -determination.
We saw that independence in the original Vermont
Republic, banning slavery, establishing universal
male suffrage before the U .S. even did. And
you see it today in their willingness to be a
policy pilot program for the country. Whether
it's social legislation or strict land use policy
like Act 250, they're often just leaping ahead
of bigger, more politically stuck states. It's
fascinating how the Vermont brand works so well.
precisely because they use regulation, like the
billboard ban, to aggressively defend that sense
of authenticity. They legislate to protect the
very identity they sell to the rest of the world.
So if we connect this to the bigger picture,
Vermont's history of self -determination, combined
with its geographic isolation and small population,
lets it bypass the kind of political inertia
that just bogs down larger states. This turns
it into a functional, if maybe limited, policy
laboratory for the nation. For you, the learner,
this raises a really important question. Does
a smaller scale and a strong unified identity
rather than just size or wealth define a state's
capacity for political innovation? Think about
the challenges of trying to scale Vermont's local
successes like its tax distribution or its growth
limits to larger, much more diverse populations
across the rest of the country.