Vermont History Timeline

8500-7000 B.C.: Glacial activity creates Champlain Sea; Paleo-Indians explore and hunt in Vermont.

7000-1000 B.C.: Archaic Period; Native Americans move seasonally around Vermont to live, hunt, gather, and fish.

1000 B.C.-1600 A.D.: Woodland Period; Native Americans establish villages and develop trade networks, and ceramic and bow & arrow technology.

1535: French explorer Jacques Cartier is first European to see what is now Vermont.

1609: Samuel de Champlain discovers Lake Champlain.

1666: Fort Ste. Anne constructed on Isle LaMotte, site of first white settlement and first Catholic Mass.

1690: Small British fort built at Chimney Point.

1724: British build Fort Dummer at Dummerston.

1731: French build fort and begin settlement, under Seigneur Gilles Hocquart, at Chimney Point.

1749: Gov. Benning Wentworth makes first New Hampshire grant for town of Bennington.

1759: French abandon settlement at Chimney Point.

1760: Crown Point Military Road, from Springfield, Vermont to Chimney Point, Vermont, completed east-west across Vermont.

1761: Gov. Wentworth resumes New Hampshire Grants.

1770: Green Mountain Boys organized to protect New Hampshire Grants.

1774: The Scottish-American Land Company brings Scottish settlers to Ryegate & Barnet.

1775: Ethan Allen captures Fort Ticonderoga.

1776: Construction of American fort, Mount Independence in Orwell.

1777: Vermont declares itself a republic in Windsor; adopts first constitution with universal male suffrage, public schools, abolishing slavery; battles of Hubbardton & Bennington.

1779: Bayley-Hazen Military Road blazed from Peacham to Lowell; Vermont establishes property rights for women.

1780: Royalton Raid by Mohawks and British.

1783: Hyde Log Cabin constructed in Grand Isle.

1785: Eureka Schoolhouse constructed in Springfield; first marble quarry opened in Dorset.

1787: Castleton, Vermont's first college, established and chartered by the Vermont General Assembly.

1791: Vermont becomes 14th state; University of Vermont chartered; Thomas Jefferson and James Madison visit Vermont; 85,341 people in Vermont.

1801: Brigham Young born in Whitingham, later led the Mormons from Illinois to Utah & founded Salt Lake City; George Perkins Marsh, America's first conservationist, born in Woodstock.

1805: Montpelier chosen as capitol; Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, born in Royalton.

1810: Justin Smith Morrill of Strafford born; 217,895 people in Vermont.

1823: Alexander Twilight is the first African-American to earn college degree in U.S. at Middlebury College.

1826: Martin Henry Freeman, born in Rutland (becomes, in 1856, first black college president in the U.S.); Horace Greeley of West Haven begins first newspaper apprenticeship at Northern Spectator in Poultney.

1829: Chester Alan Arthur born in Fairfield.

1837: John Deere patents steel plow; Thomas Davenport patents first electric motor.

1855: First Republican governor elected; Republicans control that office until 1962.

1859: John Dewey, philosopher and pioneer in modern education born in Burlington; present State House constructed.

1864: St. Albans Raid, northern most engagement of the Civil War.

1865: State Agricultural College set up at the University of Vermont as a Land Grant College.

1872: Calvin Coolidge born on the Fourth of July in Plymouth Notch.

1881: Chester A. Arthur of Fairfield becomes U.S. President.

1891: Bennington Battle Monument completed in Old Bennington.

1900: 343,641 people in Vermont.

1918: Women vote in town elections.

1919: Poet Robert Frost moves to Vermont.

1920: Vermont Cooperative Creameries, Inc., organized; 352,428 people in Vermont.

1921: Women's Suffrage adopted.

1922: Grandstand constructed at UVM's ballpark, Centennial Field (one of the oldest still in use).

1923: Calvin Coolidge of Plymouth becomes U.S. President; gasoline tax adopted; airplanes regulated.

1930: 359,611 people in Vermont; vattle outnumber people.

1950: Marlboro Music Festival established; 377,747 people in Vermont; Pearl Buck moves to Winhall, Vermont.

1953: S.S. Ticonderoga makes last steamboat trip on Lake Champlain.

1954: Consuelo Northrup Bailey elected first woman lieutenant governor in U.S.

1962: First Democratic governor in over 100 years elected.

1964: Victory, Granby, & Jamaica last towns in Vermont to receive electricity.

2000: 608,827 people in Vermont.