Mount Ascutney

Mount Ascutney
Mount Ascutney from Claremont, New Hampshire
Highest point
Elevation3,144 ft (958 m)[1]
Prominence2,270 ft (690 m)[1]
Listing#25 on New England Fifty Finest
Coordinates43°26′40″N 72°27′13″W / 43.4445164°N 72.4537019°W / 43.4445164; -72.4537019[2]
Geography
Mount Ascutney
Mount Ascutney
Mount Ascutney (the United States)
Topo mapUSGS Mount Ascutney
Climbing
Easiest routeHike

Mount Ascutney is a mountain in the U.S. state of Vermont. At 3,144 feet (958 m), it is the highest peak in Windsor County. Mount Ascutney is a monadnock that rises abruptly from the surrounding lowlands. For example, the Windsor Trail is 2.7 miles (4.3 km) to the summit with 2,514 feet (766 m) of elevation gain and an overall 18% grade.

The mountain's base straddles several villages — Ascutney, Brownsville, Windsor, and West Windsor — and it is located only several miles off exit 8 on Interstate 91 in Mount Ascutney State Park. The mountain itself is visible from the top of Mount Washington, seventy miles away.

Location and description

Mt. Ascutney is located in the southeastern section of Windsor County, in the Connecticut River Valley. The village of Ascutney, in the town of Weathersfield, is to the south. To the north lie the towns of Windsor and West Windsor. The village of Brownsville, in the town of West Windsor, sits at the northwestern base of the mountain. To the east lie the Connecticut River and the city of Claremont, New Hampshire. To the immediate west stands Little Ascutney Mountain.

Etymology and naming dispute

Since the Colonial era, the mountain has primarily been referred to as "Mount Ascutney" (or such variant spellings as "Aschutney"[3]), a name made official by the U.S. Board on Geologic Names in 1960.[4] While various folk etymologies exist, many modern sources trace the name "Ascutney" to the Abenaki word Ascutegnik, a word meaning "at the end of the river fork,"[5] which was the name of a settlement near where the Sugar River meets the Connecticut River. However, the use of the Abenaki word Kaskadenak (pronounced: Cas-Cad-Nac)–which means "mountain of the rocky summit" or "wide mountain"–as a name of the mountain has long been attested,[6][7][8] and the Board on Geologic Names acknowledges the name as an official variant.[4] In 2016, Hartland resident Robert Hutchins petitioned the Board to change the official name to Kaskadenak, garnering the support of Chief Paul Bunnell of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Abenaki Nation among others. In July 2018, the State of Vermont Board of Libraries, which has the statutory authority to name geographical features, heard arguments to officially rename the mountain to Mount Kaskadenak. The Board of Libraries voted 5–0 to reject the name change, citing the testimony of town managers who reported local opposition at meetings on the name change and the results of polling. The Board also cited an email from Smithsonian linguist Ives Goddard, who proposed that the origin of the name "Ascutney" was the Abenaki word kskatena and wrote that

"Ascutney […] and Cascadnac (from Western Abenaki kaskadenak) are both authentic names meaning 'wide mountain.' Both names reflect variable features of the local Native American language and of English from different times."[9]

Cornish Colony

From the late 1880s to 1930, a community of artists thrived in Cornish and Plainfield, New Hampshire as well as Windsor, Vermont. Besides Augustus Saint-Gaudens, other artists built their homes specifically sited towards the mountain, and it became the focal point of many expansive gardens and Italianate villas.[10]

Geology

Mount Ascutney and adjacent Little Ascutney Mountain are part of the White Mountain plutonic-volcanic series of igneous rocks. These rocks intruded from Triassic to Cretaceous time in southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont with the relatively young Ascutney pluton intruding at ~122 MA (K/Ar date on biotite). The Ascutney pluton is about 8 km × 4 km in map area and intrudes into Precambrian basement gneisses of the Chester dome and overlying Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks. The pluton emplacement is probably related to the formation of transform faults and/or fracture zones during (failed) Mesozoic rifting.[11][12] The pluton consists of stocks of gabbro-diorite, syenite, and granite which locally include xenoliths of trachyte, rhyolite, and phreatomagmatic meta-sedimentary breccia, and is consequently interpreted as having underlain a volcanic edifice.[13][14] Other mafic xenoliths remain unidentified. There are also a partial ring dike and a number of other dikes in the area.[15]

The last glacial advance broke material off the mountain and distributed it southward into Massachusetts. The trail it left is known as the "Mount Ascutney Train."[16]

Ski resort

Main article: Ascutney Mountain Resort

Mount Ascutney was home to the Ascutney Mountain Resort, a ski resort on the mountain's northwest face, in the village of Brownsville.[17] The ski area closed in 2010. The resort's 470 acres and remaining facilities were purchased in 2015 by the Trust for Public Land in collaboration with the town of West Windsor and the Upper Valley Land Trust for conservation and recreation.[18] The nonprofit organization Ascutney Outdoors now maintains a smaller ski area of eight trails and an 1,800-foot T-bar lift on the property.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Mount Ascutney, Vermont". Peakbagger.com. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
  2. ^ "Mount Ascutney". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved December 4, 2010.
  3. ^ Dwight, Timothy (1821–2022). Travels in New-England and New-York. Vol. 2. New-Haven: T. Dwight. p. 106.
  4. ^ a b Hongoltz-Hetling, Matt (2016). "Man Seeks to Rename Mount Ascutney". Valley News. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  5. ^ Swift, Esther (1977). Vermont Place-names: Footprints of History. Vermont Historical Society. p. 563.
  6. ^ Thompson, Zadock (1842). History of Vermont, natural, civil and statistical, in three parts, with a new map of the state, and 200 engravings. Vol. 3. Burlington. p. 5. hdl:2027/ien.35556040857286.
  7. ^ Bob Lindemann (2003). Dave Hardy (ed.). 50 Hikes In Vermont: Walks, Hikes, and Overnights in the Green Mountain State. The Green Mountain Club. p. 74. ISBN 9780881505382.
  8. ^ "State board to consider changing mountain's made-up name". AP News. Retrieved July 13, 2018.
  9. ^ Landen, Xander (July 17, 2018). "Library board kills proposal to rename Mount Ascutney". VTDigger. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  10. ^ Carlisle, Julia. "Cornish, New Hampshire Cornish Colony Artistic and Agricultural". Snyder Donegan Real Estate Group. Retrieved April 17, 2016.
  11. ^ Ballard, R.D. and Uchupi, E. (1975) Triassic rift structure in the Gulf of Maine. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 59, 7, 1041–1072
  12. ^ Foland, K.A. and Faul, H. (1977) Ages of the White Mountain intrusives-New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, USA. American Journal of Sciences, 277 888–904.
  13. ^ Walsh, Gregory J., Valley, Peter M., Thompson, Peter J., Ratcliffe, Nicholas M., Proctor, Brooks P., and Sicard, Karri R. (2020). Bedrock Geologic Map of the Mount Ascutney 7.5- x 15-Minute Quadrangle, Windsor County, Vermont, and Sullivan County, New Hampshire (PDF) (Map). 1:24000. U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Map 3440. USGS. Retrieved January 1, 2026.{{cite map}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ Schneiderman, Jill S. (June 1989). "The Ascutney Mountain Breccia; Field and Petrologic Evidence for an Overlapping Relationship Between Vermont Sequence and New Hampshire Sequence Rocks". American Journal of Science. 289: 771-811. doi:10.2475/ajs.289.6.771. Retrieved January 1, 2026.
  15. ^ Schneiderman, J S. (1991) Petrology and mineral chemistry of the Ascutney Mountain igneous complex. American Mineralogist, Vol 76 218-229
  16. ^ Charles W Johnson (1998). The nature of Vermont (eBook). p. 20. ISBN 9780585224497.
  17. ^ Jonathan Robinson. "The History of Skiing on Mt. Ascutney". Archived from the original on July 18, 2010.
  18. ^ Woodstock; Pomfret; Hartford; Hartl (June 1, 2016). "Back on Course: Despite a funding hurdle, Vermont's Mount Ascutney is successfully conserved". Backcountry Magazine. Retrieved February 2, 2022..
  19. ^ O'Grady, Patrick (February 9, 2025). "Ascutney Outdoors reinvigorates recreation hub in Upper Valley". Valley News. Newspapers of New England, Inc. Retrieved January 1, 2026.
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