Saturday, August 12, 2017

The Inn at Long Trail

After completing our hike on the Long Trail to US-4, Nancy and I stayed overnight at the Inn at Long Trail in Killington, Vermont:


Live Irish music in McGrath's Irish Pub, Guinness on tap, a delicious dinner, and a shower and bed sure beat a two hour drive home after 15 miles on the trail. We did not stay up long.

Nor did we, on this trip, hike to the top of the cliff in the photo above. That is Deer Leap Mountain. I understand the views are spectacular, but it is not on the Long Trail and therefore it was not on our itinerary for this trip. Another time.

At breakfast this morning, I was interested to read the history of the Inn at Long Trail and McGrath's Irish Pub:


It's a storied history beginning in 1923, even making the New York Times at one point. (Click on the image to enlarge.) The last sentence reads:

In July 1977 Kyran and Rosemary McGrath purchased the lodge renaming it "The Inn at Long Trail", and created "McGrath's Irish Pub", the first in Vermont to serve Guinness on draft.

The first sentence is also interesting:

The Long Trail Lodge [the original name] itself was conceived by Mortimer R. Proctor as a clubhouse for the Green Mountain Club.

My sister Beth and I recently mentioned Mortimer Proctor in our history of Cloverdale presentation that we did together for the Cambridge and Westford Historical Societies. We grew up in the 1950s and 1960s on the Putnam Farm at one end of the Cloverdale neighborhood. Mortimer Proctor's mother, Minnie Robinson Proctor, grew up in the 1860s and 1870s on the Cloverdale Farm at the other end of the Cloverdale neighborhood. Why was this noteworthy? Mortimer's grandfather, father, uncle, and Mortimer Robinson Proctor himself were all governors of Vermont. We said in our presentation: "Cloverdale was always proud of its own First Lady of Vermont."

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