Technology & Engineering

The marble deposits in Vermont are some of the richest in the world. Vermont's Marble Industry takes readers deep inside the quarries of the Green Mountain State to show how stone was sawed and raised from the earth to be cut, polished, and carved into monuments and structures that today are spread across the country. During the late 1800s, the marble industry flourished and the mighty Vermont Marble Company was started by a local family. The patriarch of the Proctor family built the Vermont Marble Company into the largest stone company in the world. They hired immigrant workers to fuel the company, and the region became a melting pot of nationalities. After World War II, demand for blocks of heavy dimension stone diminished and the slow demise of the Vermont Marble Company began. Vermont's Marble Industry proudly tells the history of the marble workers, their skilled craftsmanship, and the communities that relied on this industry.

When we think of covered bridges, we think of Vermont. Today, the state still boasts a hundred covered bridges, and records tell of hundreds more such historical structures no longer in existence. Vermont Covered Bridges offers views of the most interesting and beautiful of these bygone covered bridges, as well as old photographs of existing structures. The images are drawn from the archives of the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges (NSPCB), including the incomparable Richard Sanders Allen Collection and the work of noted photographers Henry A. Gibson, Raymond Brainerd, and others. Royalties from the sales of this book will benefit the NSPCB.

Since its opening in 1867, the Tunbridge World's Fair has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to its one-of-a-kind event, showcasing the best of regional agriculture and entertainment. The fair, originally intended to determine who owned the fastest horse or best-looking cow, began as an improvised event in farmer Elisha Lougee's North Tunbridge pasture and quickly grew into the complex it is today, with well-developed fairgrounds centered around a half-mile racetrack. During the 1929 fair, the Log Cabin Museum was opened with many local residents reenacting the skills of the early settlers. Over the generations, the fair has matured into the best of its kind in northern New England.

Burlington Firefighting richly illustrates the triumphs and tragedies, the hauntings and secrets of the Burlington Fire Department. Originating as a series of bucket brigades, the fire department developed from competing companies that served as elite social clubs into a professional organization that was incorporated in 1895. The transitions from hand-drawn to horse-drawn carts and pumpers to steam engines and motorized trucks largely shaped the evolution of firefighting in Vermont as a whole.