Averill's Stand near the present village of Wilmington serves as a reminder of the time when inns or ordinaries served as overnight stopping-places for the stages and six-horse freight teams that traversed the Molly Stark Trail over the mountains to Troy and the Erie Canal...Gone are these old places.

Charles Edward Crane, “Let Me Show You Vermont”

I roll down Route 9 past Searsburg and Medburyville—or so the map tells me, as there are no signs to mark the spot—and am surprised at the bottom of the hill to find myself in an actual town. Since I don'‘t know which one, I pull out my iPhone to see if the internet can explain where the heck I am. Up on google maps comes Wilmington, which happens to be my destination for this afternoon. Hooray!

The map links me to a very informative town website full of facts, figures and photos, and plenty of helpful municipal information—including a quote from Plato on the value of a just citizenry. So Vermontish….

Wilmington is understandably proud of its Memorial Hall, designed by the renowned New York firm of McKim, Mead (who was a native of Brattleboro) & White--yes, that would be Stanford White, the most famous American architect of the 19th century—and most notorious, because he was murdered by the irate husband of his lover.

Peek through the Hall’s front door, because though this building is plain and brown as a Puritan saltbox on the outside, the interior is an astounding miniature version of Boston's Symphony Hall, with acoustics to match.

Right before the turn of the century, local Civil War hero and Wilmington’s richest citizen Major Childs had a hunch that the economic future of Vermont was in tourism, so he invested in this high-concept concert hall and the handsome adjoining Child's Tavern, now Crafts Inn. As a side note, there were, and are, a high volume of well-moneyed, well-meaning, sometimes know-it-all individualists like Major Childs tucked away in Vermont hamlets.

In 1891 the railroad finally reached Wilmington, and fulfilled Child's prediction that his town would be a tourism mecca.

I'll have to come back for another hour's stroll up East and down West Main Street, and take a longer and better look at its wealth of architecture. Dot's Restaurant ("A National Treasure!" according to the late, lamented Gourmet magazine) beckons, and a number of little shops, like the 1836 Country Store with its homemade fudge, invite.

Most of all, I’d like to stand again on Main Street Bridge and take a long look up and down the Deerfield River as it meanders its way through the little town of Wilmington like slow, unstoppable time.