Lamoille County, Vermont: History
The area was buried in a mile of ice during the Ice Age. As the ice melted, Lake Stowe was formed. When the ice melted completely, the water from the lake ran out through the Lamoille River valley.
This area was long occupied by the Algonquian-speaking indigenous Abenaki people and their ancestors. During French colonization of what is now Canada, fur traders began to trade with the Abenaki. There were also French who settled here, coming down from the settlements in Quebec, and named the Lamoille River. The French later enlisted the Abenaki as allies in the frontier raiding and wars with English colonists in the lower New England colonies. For decades there was no border and peoples passed freely through this area.
After the American Revolutionary War and Vermont's admission as a separate state, the county was settled in the 19th century by American migrants from other parts of New England and French-Canadian immigrants from across the border. Some developed small farms. Some came to work in the asbestos mine on Belvidere Mountain, which operated into the 20th century. Some gradually moved to other counties where there were cotton mills, weaving cotton from the South both before and after the Civil War. In the United States, many of the French immigrants were forced to accept anglicization of their names, such as New City for Villeneuve, or Senton for St. Onge. Some of their descendants have reclaimed their family's original names.
Mining continued through the 20th century. By the late 20th century, environmental hazards were better understood, but many of the miners contracted asbestosis and other diseases of the lungs from their work.
In 1972, the Lamoille Community College was the fifth of the several community colleges that became part of the Vermont State Colleges system. At the time, they were renamed as Community College of Vermont.
In 2008, the state notified residents of Belvidere, Eden, Hyde Park, Johnson, Waterville and eight towns in the adjacent counties of Orleans and Franklin, that a review of health records from 1995 to 2006 had revealed that residents within ten miles (16 km) of the former asbestos mine on Belvidere Mountain had higher than normal rates of contracting asbestosis. The state and federal government continued to study this problem.
In April 2009 the Vermont Department of health released a revised study which found that all of deaths related to the asbestos mine were caused by individual occupational exposure. The report concluded that people living near the mines had no more increased risk of asbestos-related illness than people living anywhere else in Vermont.
In 2008, the county appeared to have disproportionate power in the legislature with the House Speaker, Shap Smith, from Morrisville, Floyd Nease, house majority leader, Senator Susan Bartlett, from Hyde Park, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, and Richard Westman, chair of the House Transportation Committee and the sole Republican.
According to a 2020 study by ProPublica, Lamoille County, Vermont may be the safest county in the U.S. from climate-induced disasters such as rising sea levels, wildfires, crop depletion, and extreme heat and humidity.