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Summer
Throughout the nineteenth century, summer saw an explosion of outdoor leisure activity. Although the season was a busy time for work, Vermonters still managed to find time to revel outdoors - fishing, hiking, camping, boating, swimming, cycling, roller-skating, croquet, tennis, baseball games, carriage rides, train and boating excursions. Churches, literary and musical clubs, women's groups, schools and individuals hosted ice cream and cake sociables, strawberry festivals and lawn parties, usually for the benefit of deserving causes such as local libraries or town bands. Formed by local amateur musicians in their leisure time, town bands began to organize in earnest after the Civil War. Brass bands gave summer concerts on town greens, marched in parades, and played at patriotic celebrations, music festivals and dances. A genuine source of civic pride for generations, some lasted into the twentieth century. Entertainments, featuring local musical and dramatic talent, also continued throughout the summer. Despite summer's heat, dancing remained popular, with the Commencement Ball and the Independence Ball on July 4, annual social highlights of the season. Soon after the invention of the steamboat, excursions to destinations on the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake George began as early as 1814. Addison County residents enjoyed boating and picnics on Lake Champlain, Lake Dunmore, Lake Hortonia, and Otter Creek. The waning appeal of Vermont's mineral springs and spas after the Civil War gave rise to the importance of local hotels as resort destinations. Once again, the railroad brought waves of outsiders into Vermont and, thanks to their proximity to both lakes and mountains, many local hotels in Addison, Rutland and Chittenden counties prospered. "The season of travel is at its height," reported a Vergennes resident in July 1883. "Our modest little place is no exception, so we find down the river and over the lake parties almost daily, and camping and picnicking are very popular. Boat riding, fishing and moonlight trips engross much attention." Transformed from the earlier Mattocks Tavern and Vermont Hotel, the Addison House in Middlebury became a major summer residence as well as hosting many of the most important social events in the region well into the twentieth century. The Lake Dunmore Hotel, converted from the Lake Dunmore Glass Company, was a frequent destination to both local residents and out-of state visitors and considered a "fashionable resort" by the 1880s. Silver Lake was perhaps the most exclusive of the numerous church camps in the region. The most unique of all local resorts was, perhaps, the Bread Loaf Inn in Ripton. In April 1866, Joseph Battell bought a 300-acre farm near Bread Loaf Mountain in Ripton, where he had gone to restore his health with hunting, fishing, and light exercise. In less than three months, he had renovated the house and called it the Bread Loaf Inn. Soon, local residents as well as visitors from New England, Middle Atlantic and Midwest states were among the guests. Battell became a great purveyor of leisure and healthy diversions - trout fishing, hiking, healthful dinners, lawn games, a library, and music. By the mid 1880s the house had been expanded to include a music hall for concerts and dances, a men's smoking lounge and a bowling alley. To ensure the natural beauty of the Bread Loaf setting, Battell blocked the impending deforestation of the Green Mountains by eventually buying nearly 30,000 acres of the surrounding area and jump-starting the conservation movement in Vermont. With its ability to capture the images of loved ones, photography appealed to sentimental Victorians. Soon after the Civil War, the appearance of at least one photography studio in nearly every town made formal portraits affordable. Middle and even working class individuals and families, who never could have commissioned a painting, now had family portraits decorating their homes. Stereoviews, which reproduced exotic as well as familiar images in three dimensions when viewed through a stereopticon, provided year-round home entertainment as early as the 1860s. Matthew Brady's stark and often harrowing Civil War photographs demonstrated the potential of outdoor photography and images of outdoor activities became common. George Eastman's invention of the box camera in the 1880s, made personal photography possible and affordable. Still, the inability of the medium to capture people in motion made images of recreational groups look grim and stilted. While these photographs document leisure activities, dress, equipment and resort facilities of the period, actual pleasures experienced during leisure hours only could be conveyed in contemporary letters and diaries, in engravings in popular journals such as Harper's Weekly, and in works by Currier & Ives and Winslow Homer. The year-round cycle of outside troupes and lecturers
continued with less frequency through the summer. The most eagerly anticipated
and spectacular of all summer events was the arrival of the circus, including
P.T. Barnum's in 1876, which usually appeared in July or August.
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