Burlington's Green Mountains and Progressive Spirit
Church Street Marketplace in Burlington is lined with historic buildings, fountains, and a brick-paved pedestrian mall. | Denis Tangney Jr. via Getty Images
Population: 44,500
Size: 15.5 square miles
Elevation: 200 feet
Sunshine: 157 days
Noted Residents: Trey Anastasio, Bernie Sanders
Coffee: Maglianero
First settled in 1783 as a key port for Canadian trappers and loggers, this little city on the eastern shores of Lake Champlain has evolved, instead, into a place for exchanging progressive ideas. With several colleges and one of the highest numbers of artists per capita in the northeast, it has served as home to dairy kings Ben and Jerry, jam band legend Phish, Burton snowboards and the only openly socialist presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, Bernie Sanders.
Local to Know
“The best beer lineup in Vermont is at Parker Pie, a craft beer and pizza destination located in the back of the Lake Parker Country Store in Glover. It’s a day trip, about 90 minutes from Burlington, but it’s worth the drive.”
– MATT CANNING, Hotel Vermont beer concierge
Here, great minds don’t think alike. They think whatever they want.
No place channels Burlington’s free spirit like the HOTEL VERMONT, which blends rustic Green Mountain living (flannel bathrobes and sap buckets for ice) and urban cool (an in-house yoga studio). Reservations at the hotel’s HEN OF THE WOOD restaurant fill up months in advance, but the 30-seat JUNIPER is a reliable hang for live jazz and Vermont spirits.
For zero-proof entertainment, check out the FLYNN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, a transformed 1930s vaudeville house that draws headliners like Arlo Guthrie and Joan Baez.
In warmer months, rent a board from PADDLESURF CHAMPLAIN and head to Red Rocks Park, where daredevils brave 40-foot drops into the lake.
New England
Field Guide
Bookshops and lobster shacks, lighthouse keepers and fishing guides, maritime lore and colonial charm.
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