Meghan,

This discussion of historical landscapes in always a problem - one only has to see the cars and buses zooming around Colonial Williamsburg after breaching in encircling pancake houses and hotels on the way there.

It is also a major problem with every Charcoal Iron Furnace site I have ever seen. These days they appear as peaceful buccolic park lands surrounded with second growth forests and bird song. Historic prints and photos belie that scene as those sites had sometimes tens of thousands of acres of denuded land from the intensive charcoal production necessary to feed these furnaces (a colonial era furnace could burn an acre of timber a day). Plus, all of the soot and noise and sounds of one of these things in operation.

Monticello, so near to Montpelier, also is missing signiifcant aspects of its historic landscape (one only has to think of Mulberry row - with its shops and slave quarters.)

So, Montpelier is not alone in having an altered historic landscape I suspect.

Cheers!
Dave

David Harvey
Artifacts
2930 South Birch Street
Denver, CO  80222
303-300-5257
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