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About Calais, Vermont 
Washington County
*Area, Population and Density rankings above refer to Calais' relative position among Vermont's 255 civic entities (9 cities, 242 towns, 4 gores and grants). Complete rankings are here.
Don't ask for directions to "Kah-lay": like its counterpart in Maine, the pronunciation rhymes with "palace". One of several towns in which Colonel Jacob Davis held an interest (including Montpelier, where he made his home). In later years, his son-in-law offered explanation for the French names given to the two towns. Primarily, the Colonel disdained the practice of naming new towns in Vermont after ones left behind in England and elsewhere, feeling the new state should have more interesting place-names. Despite adjustments in pronunciation and spelling, the French names were probably chosen because at the time the two towns were granted, there was tremendous enthusiasm and gratitude for French assistance in the Revolution. There are some other interesting place-name stories in the town: The village of Moscow is said to have been named when a giant millstone being lifted into Samuel Rich's gristmill fell, cracking with such a boom that it was likened to the sound of the Russian city's bells during Napoleon's siege. Adamant was originally called Sodom (even with its own Post Office), supposedly because the employees of the Enterprise Granite Company were a rowdy bunch, and similar types from nearby towns were attracted there as well. Some of the more educated locals eventually objected to the town's name commemorating a Biblical city destroyed because of its wickedness, and Enterprise owner Clarence Whittier proposed Adamant, suggesting the hardness that was one of the qualities of granite. Today, the only memory of the village's original name is Sodom Pond. Pekin is after Peking (now Beijing), China, the result of a local farmer who had a friend who was a missionary to China (possibly one of the local Cate family, many of whom did go into missionary work). The missionary sent some Chinese wheat back to Vermont, the farmer planted it, and it flourished. It became the style to give directions using the wheat field as a landmark ("up by the Pekin wheat", or "just past the Pekin wheat"). Eventually, the location of the field came to be known simply as Pekin.
Material excerpted or adapted from Esther Munroe Swift's
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Activities & Points of Interest
Goings-on in and near Calais Covered Bridge
(Check out our new maps and satellite images):
Click Here for a map of all bridges in Washington County. |
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Contact Info Emergency Services (Statewide): 911
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Churches, Ministries, Charitables United Methodist : Adamant Adamant UMC 802-454-8343 |
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Neighboring Towns | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This is a basic geographic reference, intended to show relative location of adjacent towns. Directional accuracy is limited to 16 compass points. There isn't even the slightest suggestion that one can necessarily travel directly from one town to the next (as in "You can't get there from here").
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Utilities Notes about utilities:
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