Went for a walk down Wheelerville last week.
Wheelerville Road is a dirt road nearby that winds along Brewer's Brook for about 9 miles through city and state forests and comes out, finally, near the scout camp in the hills above Rutland.
As kids, my siblings and I rode our horses here. There weren't many houses on the road at that time, and only one or two were used year-round. Some 40 years later, there are probably 10 new places--most of them set back off the road far enough that you might miss them altogether if you weren't looking.
I don't know who the Wheelers were that gave the area its name, but I like to imagine they were brewers who lived in the one 1800s farmhouse on the road, which has a tidy lawn and used to have a concrete dam that held back enough water to make a good-sized pond (and a small gorge downstream).
They must have held wonderful parties before Prohibition shut them down!
When Tropical Storm Irene came through, the surrounding mountains received nearly a foot of rain for several hours and shed all the water that fell on that side of the hills into Wheelerville. The dam and its pond vanished, along with much of the road. Then the water roared on down to Route 4 and
washed away about a mile of the highway, too. Huge stretches of the Wheelerville roadbed and many bridges were washed out and had to be rebuilt, and a number of
footbridges are probably gone for good because the old stone footings on which they were constructed also washed out. The riverbed is still raw. But
most of the devastation is still hidden under the snow, and where the road wanders away from the brook it looks just like it did when I was a kid.
Wheelerville is particularly popular during foliage season, but the locals use it year round. It's not super hilly, so it's popular with cyclists too.
The Long and Appalachian Trails cross the Wheelerville Road at roughly the halfway point, and sometimes skiiers who've gotten lost in the woods on Killington or Pico wind up at the trailhead--out in the middle of nowhere, no lights, no people, no cell reception, and a mighty long walk to town!
Last Sunday was a particularly busy and crowded day because the weather was so fine. I must have met 20 people during the two and a half hours of my walk! One was riding her bike. Dog report: one beagle, two labs, (one golden, one black), one German shepherd, an Australian shepherd, and three Heinz-57s, all off leash and having a Big Time checking out all the critter tracks. And me.
