Authored by: Genie on Thursday, March 04 2010 @ 10:29 PM GMT+5

Great ideas. About time someone did this. Wantastiquet is very important to this town from a Feng shui perspective. See Patti Newton at Silver Moon Adornments for info on this.

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Wonders Never Cease.

Authored by: cgrotke on Friday, March 05 2010 @ 12:05 PM GMT+5

Be sure to do a search in the Brattleboro Community Brain Trust:

www.ibrattleboro.com/braintrust

Lots of pictures and information. The train station has quartzite
rubble from Wantastiquet, for example. And this:

"We have told you of the Business, the Educational and sanitary
advantages of Brattleboro; what shall we say now of its other greatest
complement of good living — the indescribable charm of its scenery
and surroundings; of its mountain sentinel, Wantastiquet, whereof
Fanny Fern says: " It is just like a church to me. It hushes all my
nonsense and bids me tread with soft and reverent steps toward the
heaven that lies beyond..." from an old business pamphlet.

And, if you find new stories, you can sign up for the wiki and add
them in to create a whole collection of Wantastiquet info.

For me, the view from the mountain was one of the first views of
Brattleboro I ever had. I remember sitting up there with Lise, looking
down and saying something along the lines of "we could do a lot
worse than move here." The view helped cement the decision to move
to town.

Authored by: DaveC on Sunday, March 07 2010 @ 07:00 PM GMT+5

Chris, thanks for that. It really made my day reading the quote from Fanny Fern. Imagine if we listened to Mt Wantastiquet a bit more. Hushing all the nonsense away - we could start a local bio-regional religion just on that!

Authored by: annikee on Friday, March 05 2010 @ 12:12 PM GMT+5

Some ten or a dozen years ago there was a story running around about the "Wildman of Wantastiquet". Apparently a guy who went back to nature and lived alone up there, but who would scare off people who camped too near his camp!

Authored by: Rolf on Friday, March 05 2010 @ 03:34 PM GMT+5

This is my favorite, as it seems to have all the great Brattleboro theme; history, conjurers, psychics, get rich schemes, mountain hiking in the fresh air. Does it get any better than this? heee heee heee ?

The following is excerpted from

http://brattleborohistory.com/connecticut-river-wantastiquet/mine-mountain.html


"There is a mountain in New Hampshire which rises precipitously on the east bank of Connecticut river, just opposite Brattleboro, by the name of West River Mountain, or, as it is now called, Wantastiquet (the latter being the Indian name for West river) running north and south about three miles, whose height, as measured barometrically by Dr. C.T. Jackson and myself some years since, is 1065 feet from the bed of the river.

The northern part of the mountain is in the town of Chesterfield, and its southern in Hinsdale. Geologically the base is argillaceous slate, passing into mica-schist, ascending, and on its highest part gneiss is often seen. It is steep and rugged, and presents nothing very unusual from other elevations of this height in Vermont.

There is also, east of this and running at right angles to it, about one mile distant, separated by a gorge, and some 100 or 200 feet lower, a mountain which is called the Mine mountain, from the fact that near the top of its eastern part there is an excavation of some 30 feet where Mr. Philip Barrett (generally known as Tory Barrett, being a Tory in the Revolution) and two or three of its neighbors, some 70 years ago, were induced to believe by a conjurer--important personages in those days--that in digging at the place of the reported explosion, silver would be found in great abundance. There they built their log hut, (remnants of it are to be seen at this day) and worked at such times as they could spare from their farms for several successive years, and all without any trace of mineral to reward them, save something they found and burnt, yielding a yellow dust, or as supposed, yellow ochre, with which one of them painted his house. Whether it was the baseness of the material or the want of skill in its manufacture, any soil of a slight yellowish color would seem to have answered the same purpose.

The man with his mystical stone and divining rod appears again, and now they are told to dig horizontally into the mountain from the bottom of their first excavation so far, and they would certainly find the desired treasure. This was accomplished, but all in vain, when the work and the mine were abandoned and the hole, perpendicularly and horizontally, is a monument to their folly to this day."

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Dreams Trump Video

Authored by: DanAxtell on Friday, March 05 2010 @ 09:01 PM GMT+5

From the Vermont Phoenix, May 11, 1928:

RUNS AMUCK IN DEN OF RATTLERS

Harry Pierce Takes Three Out of Six and Is Bitten

SURPRISED AS HE GRABS THREE-FOOTER

Hand and Arm Swollen—Never Bitten Before in Many Years of Catching Rattlers Barehanded—Was Exploring Wantastiquet Ledges
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Harry E. Pierce, more commonly known about town as Rattlesnake Pete because of the barehanded methods which he uses in capturing rattlesnakes, was bitten yesterday afternoon by one of those reptiles for the first time in his 40 years of handling live snakes. He was exploring among the ledges of Wantastiquet mountain when he espied a rattler in a small cave under a rock. He edged near his quarry, made a quick pass with right hand and seized the snake back of the head, but the den happened to house six rattlers and one of them bit Pierce on the third finger of the hand holding the captured snake. Pierce emerged with three live snakes, the other three escaping.

Two of the captured rattlers measured three feet in length; the third, which bit him and which he captured in retaliation for the bite, measured a trifle over two feet. The three which escaped were between two and three feet long, Pierce said. The snakes were disposed of after their capture and Pierce returned to town, where he had his bitten finger attended by Dr. C. S. Leach. His hand and lower forearm are somewhat swollen.

Pierce has been capturing and handling snakes of various kinds since he was eight years old. In the last three years he has made many captures along Wantastiquet mountain and has exhibited them here and demonstrated his free hand method of seizing them. He is now 48 years old, and yesterday, he said, was the first time he ever was bitten.

Pierce said he did not know he was getting into a den of snakes, because he saw only one under the rock. If he had known half a dozen were there, he said he would have taken additional measures with a view to bagging the whole family.

* * *

I found this article while scrolling through the microfilm at Brooks Library while looking for information for the upcoming Westminster Town History (a project that I will post about later).