Havens | Plymouth, Vt.
Tranquility Between Killington and Okemo
Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times
Quiet Plymouth, Vt., is the site of the homestead of Calvin Coolidge, aptly known as Silent Cal.
By JULIA LAWLOR
Published: March 21, 2008
Plymouth, Vt.
ON a weekday in the dead of winter, silence descends over the wide fields of Plymouth, Vt., where sheep and horses graze in the shadows of the Green Mountains. Roads are nearly empty, and business slows to a crawl at the Plymouth Country Store.
Eighty percent of the property in town belongs to second-home owners, which accounts for the ghostly midweek quiet. But even on weekends, when the throngs from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey crowd the slopes of Killington, 10 miles to the north, and pack the lifts at Okemo, 11 miles to the south, Plymouth manages to maintain its ethereal calm.
That rare quality of serenity, coupled with the town’s easy access to two of Vermont’s busiest ski resorts, is what drew Mark Slane of Easton, Conn., to Plymouth. “The nice thing is there’s no commercial activity,” said Mr. Slane, a financial consultant who, with his wife, Cindy, bought a four-bedroom house at the Hawk Inn and Mountain Resort nine years ago for $350,000. He estimates that its value has doubled. “My blood pressure drops 10 points when I cross the border into Vermont,” he said.
Plymouth’s rural beauty — its rolling hills and fields framed by lumbering peaks — has changed little since the area was settled in 1761. Compared with other tourist-heavy Vermont towns, Plymouth has kept development to a minimum. There are no night life, strip-mall development or upscale boutiques. Cellphone service is mostly nonexistent. And there is no downtown, unless you count the Plymouth Country Store, a combination general store and gas station along two-lane Route 100.
One project that has gotten the green light, though, is the expansion of the Bear Creek Mountain Club, a private country club for skiing that opened in 2002. The 900-acre resort recently sold the first 4 of 14 new two-, three- and four-bedroom condominiums it will soon begin building. The resort sits on the site of a 1960s-era ski hill called Round Top. There are 15 trails and a new, New England-clapboard-style 7,800-square-foot clubhouse with a restaurant, bar and mahogany-paneled locker rooms. The club currently has 47 member families.
The Scene
A former lumber and iron-mining town, Plymouth is also one of the country’s best-preserved presidential sites. The Calvin Coolidge State Historical Site is in the hamlet of Plymouth Notch, where Coolidge was born and lived until he left for school at age 12.
Set in a valley with the East and Salt Ash Mountains towering nearby, the site includes the Coolidge family’s modest farmhouse (where the nation’s 30th president was sworn into office in the middle of the night by his father, a notary public), a general store, a church, a post office, a schoolhouse, a working cheese factory and a room above the general store that served as the summer White House in 1924.
Joseph J. Ellis, a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,” was unaware of the Coolidge connection when he and his wife bought a vacation home in Plymouth six years ago. Since then, he has visited the site a half-dozen times, given talks there and met Coolidge’s descendants. “Before, I sort of made fun of Coolidge,” he said. “But he was no fool. He wrote one of the best memoirs of any U.S. president.”
The other big draw in Plymouth is the range of outdoor activities. In winter, besides Killington and Okemo, there is downhill skiing at Bear Creek (the general public is welcome to buy a daily lift ticket up to six times before being required to join). Snowmobile and cross-country ski trails wind through forests of sugar maple, birch and pine. Bear sightings are common, and it’s not unusual to spot a moose at dusk.
The 1,200-acre Hawk Inn and Mountain Resort, a development of single-family houses, condos and an inn that opened in the 1980s, has seven miles of cross-country ski trails, three miles of snowshoe trails, two outdoor ice rinks, a sledding hill that is lighted at night and sleigh rides.
Though there is no golf course in Plymouth, the area is a golfer’s paradise, with the Green Mountain National Golf Course in Killington, Okemo Valley Golf Club in Ludlow, the Woodstock Country Club and two 18-hole courses in Quechee.
Golfing was one of the things that attracted Bob and Carol Stohrer of Beach Haven, N.J., to Plymouth when they bought their first condo for $210,000 at Hawk in 1990. But they also love to hike, bike, ski, snowshoe, ride horseback, swim and prowl the antiques stores in nearby towns like Woodstock, Weston and Quechee.
“We’re out more than we’re in,” Mr. Stohrer said. The couple decided to sell their condo in 2005 for $340,000 and just completed a $1.5 million Arts and Crafts-style home on a two-acre lot at the resort to have more room to entertain their grandchildren.
A popular gathering place for locals and part timers alike is the bar at Bear Creek, which does a brisk business on weekends and often features live bands.
Pros
Plymouth’s location between two big ski resorts means it has escaped the pressure to overdevelop while being convenient to area attractions.
Cons
Property taxes can be hefty. The Stohrers were shocked when they got a property tax bill for $20,000 after their house was completed.
The Real Estate Market
As in just about every place else in the country, the real estate market in Plymouth has slowed, said Kevin Davis, president of Mary W. Davis Realtor & Associates in Ludlow. There were just 20 single-family homes sold in 2007, down from 35 in 2005. The median price of a single-family home was $266,250 in 2007, down from $362,500 in 2006.
Houses and condos in Plymouth are priced slightly lower than comparable properties in Ludlow, Mr. Davis said, simply because they are farther from the slopes of Okemo. There are country homes that come with a lot of land; small homes on a half acre; resort condos and homes at Hawk, Bear Creek and another 1980s-era condo development, Birch Landing on EchoLake.
Prices at the Hawk resort, which has 130 single-family houses and 45 condo units, have risen 30 percent to 50 percent, and in some cases doubled, in the last five years, according to Jennifer Hickey, a broker with Hawk Resort Realty. Older single-family homes start at about $350,000 for a 1,300-square-foot, two- or three-bedroom home and go up to $750,000. Newer houses range from $600,000 to $2 million, she said.
There are guidelines regarding the materials and exterior colors used in the building of homes, Ms. Hickey said, which has resulted in a development that is remarkably invisible from the road, with the wood and cedar shakes of the buildings blending into the surrounding hills.
At Bear Creek, houses built in the mid-1970s and early 1980s range from $260,000 for a three-bedroom to $320,000 for a four-bedroom trailside home. New condos being built at the base village go from $546,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath on one level to $915,000 for four bedrooms and four baths on three levels.
LAY OF THE LAND
POPULATION 580, according to a 2006 Census Bureau estimate.
SIZE 48.7 square miles.
WHO’S BUYING Couples with young children and retiring baby boomers from the Northeast.
GETTING THEREPlymouth is in central Vermont. From Albany, take Interstate 787 north to Route 7 east toward Troy-Bennington. Route 7 becomes Route 9 east. In Bennington, take Route 7 north to Route 11 east. Take Route 11 east to Londonderry, then turn left onto Route 100 north and drive 26 miles north to Plymouth.
WHILE YOU’RE LOOKING The Salt Ash Inn (4758 Route 100A; 802-672-3748; is a bed-and-breakfast that has rooms starting at $109 a night. The Hawk Inn and Mountain Resort (75 Billings Road; 800-685-4295; has accommodations starting at $270.