VT Forestry

About forestry service, 12028, Buskirk, NY, US, Vermont

Bellows Falls is an incorporated village located in the town of Rockingham in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 2,747 at the 2020 census. Bellows Falls is home to the Green Mountain Railroad, a heritage railroad; the annual Roots on the River Festival; and the No Film Film Festival. == History == The community was settled in 1753 by colonists of English descent, who called it Great Falls. Later the settlers renamed the town for Colonel Benjamin Bellows, a landowner, but kept the name Great Falls for the waterfall, a translation of their Abenaki name, "Kitchee pontegu." In 1785, Colonel Enoch Hale built at the falls the first bridge over the Connecticut River. It was the only bridge across the river until 1796, when another was built at Springfield, Massachusetts. The bridge was later replaced. Two bridges currently link Bellows Falls to New Hampshire: the New Arch Bridge (also called the Church Street Bridge), which replaced the Arch Bridge in 1982, and the Vilas Bridge. The Bellows Falls Canal, one of the first canals built in the United States, was dug by a British-owned company from 1791 to 1802. The original canal was 22 feet wide and four feet deep, and had 9 locks, each 75 feet long and 20 feet wide, which allowed shipping to go around Great Falls by being lifted 52 feet (16 m) around the gorge.