Vine Street Bridge: What IS a Samill, Anyway?!

I think of this part of town as one of Montpelier’s hidden gems. This pedestrian bridge crosses over a picturesque section of the North Branch called Waterman Falls, and it leads to a leafy green and shaded neighborhood that we are going to walk through next. This is the area where that Greek Revival homeowner, Alfred Wainwright, started his iron foundry. Before that, in the earliest days of Montpelier the boundlessly industrious Jacob Davis sited a mill near the waterfall.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I thought of the term “sawmill” I always envisioned an old barn board building with a waterwheel next to a river. That’s not exactly wrong, but a sawmill is more accurately described as the actual machinery that’s inside it and used to…well, saw the wood. Tinkering with sawmill machinery was the particular genius of Dennis Lane, and I’ll tell you a bit about why that was so important. Cross over the bridge and turn right to begin strolling through the Lane Shops neighborhood.