Benson (Vermont)

Benson
The Village Store in Benson
Location in Vermont
Benson
Basic data
Foundation :	May 5, 1780
State :	United States
State :	Vermont
County :	Rutland County
Coordinates :	43 ° 43 ′  N , 73 ° 18 ′  W Coordinates: 43 ° 43 ′  N , 73 ° 18 ′  W
Time zone :	Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 )
Residents :	1,056 (as of 2010)
Population density :	9.3 inhabitants per km 2
Area :	117.9 km 2  (about 46 mi 2 ) of which 113.9 km 2  (about 44 mi 2 ) is land
Height :	158 m
Postal code :	05731
Area code :	+1 802
FIPS :	50-05200
GNIS ID :	1462040
Website :	www.Benson-VT.com

Benson is a town in Rutland County of the state of Vermont in the United States with 1,056 inhabitants (according to the 2010 census).

geography

Geographical location

The village is located in the plains southeast of Lake Champlain and west of the Green Mountains on the Poultney River , which is also the border with the state of New York. The terrain is slightly hilly and sloping towards the northwest; there are no special elevations or large watercourses. However, there are some sources, some of which have been ascribed medicinal properties. In the northeast of the town is the Sunset Lake , which is used as a fishing spot, especially for trout, to a limited extent for tourists.

Neighboring communities

All distances are given as straight lines between the official coordinates of the places from the 2010 census.

• North: Orwell , 2.6 mi
• Northeast: Sudbury , 9 mi
• East: Hubbardton , 9.3 mi
• Southeast: Castleton , 9.4 mi
• South: Fair Haven , 3.4 miles
• Southwest: West Haven , 4.3 mi
• West: Dresden, New York , 11.2 mi
• Northwest: Putnam, New York , 8 miles

climate

The mean mean temperature in Benson ranges from −6.7 ° C (20 ° Fahrenheit ) in January to 21.7 ° C (71 ° Fahrenheit) in July. This means that the place is around 10 degrees cooler than the long-term average in the USA. At more than two meters, the snowfall between October and May is considerably higher than the average snow depth in the USA, the daily sunshine duration is at the lower end of the range in the USA. In the period from mid-October to mid-December, it was even considerably lower.

history

The area of ​​the later Town of Benson was originally an area claimed by the New York colony, which was supposed to be part of a large-scale land sale. B. also the neighboring parishes Fair Haven and West Haven belonged. Because of this, the town was not sold when New Hampshire declared land sales, in contrast to many other areas in the eastern area, but was also not settled by the New York side due to the disputes with the Vermonters and the subsequent war of independence . With the separation of New York as the Vermont Republic in 1777 and the - at first unilateral - demarcation with New York, the unpopulated land fell into the jurisdiction of the new republic and was declared for sale on October 27, 1779 with 25,214 acres (about 102 km²) . The actual sale, the charter , took place on May 5, 1780. It is considered to be the founding date of the area.

The first settlers made the area arable from 1783; the constituent city assembly took place around 1786. Exact dates are no longer available. The land was fertile and easy to cultivate, so that the population grew rapidly; the first census already names 658 inhabitants.

A first epidemic of 1796 and the measles epidemic of 1812, which claimed 60 deaths, mostly adults, in Benson within two months, represented severe setbacks in the town, but also in the wider area. Nevertheless, the population grew rapidly. The first major wave of emigration to the west to the Du Page River in what would later become Will County , about 40 km (25 miles) west of Chicago , has been documented for 1832 . Further waves of emigration to the west are mentioned in the sources. The migration to the developing nearby industrial centers Fair Haven, Rutland and Whitehall from the 1850s is also documented. Both emigration movements led to a marked decline in population that lasted into the 1960s.

As before, with the advent of trains and steamboats, Benson stayed on the lake - by 1840 there were two warehouse-equipped steamboat docks on the Poultney River: Kinyan's Bay and Gibbs' Landing - a purely agricultural town. However, the use changed, as was generally observed in the plains around the lake: while sheep breeding, wool and the cultivation of potatoes and maize dominated the economic data of the censuses around 1840, there was a switch to grain and dairy farming by around 1880 observe. These products are still the determining economic factors of the community today.

Largely unaffected by the Civil War , World War I, Great Depression, New Deal and World War II, Benson remained in a historically quiet niche; there are no events worth mentioning. From the 1960s onwards, there has been an influx of residents who use Benson as a place of residence but work in the surrounding communities.

Religions

The first parish in Benson was organized by the Congregationalists in 1790 ; on September 5, 1792 they also hired the parish's first full-time pastor. Three large proselytizing campaigns brought a large increase in followers (1804, 1816, 1821), but the waves of emigration towards the west from 1832 onwards weakened the community again significantly. The Baptists and Methodists were also represented with smaller churches; Both faith groups each built their own meeting house in 1841 .

Today there is a United Church of Christ congregation in the town .

Population development

Census Results - Town of Benson, Vermont
year	1700	1710	1720	1730	1740	1750	1760	1770	1780	1790
Residents										658
year	1800	1810	1820	1830	1840	1850	1860	1870	1880	1890
Residents	1159	1561	1481	1493	1403	1305	1256	1244	1104	880
year	1900	1910	1920	1930	1940	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990
Residents	844	813	807	636	572	573	549	583	739	847
year	2000	2010	2020	2030	2040	2050	2060	2070	2080	2090
Residents	1039	1056

Economy and Infrastructure

traffic

Benson is connected to Orwell to the north and Fair Haven to the south by Vermont State Route 22A , which runs north-south through the village. A train station and a local airfield can be found in Fair Haven; other stations with stops for Amtrak trains can be found in Ticonderoga and Whitehall .

Public facilities

In addition to the elementary school and library, only the usual municipal facilities are publicly available in Benson. The closest hospital is the Rutland Regional Medical Center in Rutland .

education

Benson is part of the Addison-Rutland Supervisory Union with Castleton, Fair Haven and Orwell .

The eight-class Benson Village School with around 150 students is located in Benson . Secondary school types are in the surrounding communities, especially Fair Haven. Castleton and Rutland, available.

Personalities

sons and daughters of the town

• Stephen Wallace Dorsey (1842–1916), politician and US Senator for Arkansas

Personalities who have worked on site

• Valery Nikolayevich Chalidze (1938–2018), Russian dissident; Publisher in Benson

literature

• Zadock Thompson: History of Vermont, natural, civil and statistical, in three parts . 3rd volume. Chauncey Goodrich, Burlington 1842, p. 21st f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Abby Maria Hemenway: Gazetteer of Rutland County . Burlington 1877.

Web links

Commons : Benson, Vermont  - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files

• Homepage of the municipality (English)
• Profile of the municipality on the official portal www.Vermont.gov
• Entry on VirtualVermont (English) ( Memento from August 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Benson in the United States Geological Survey's Geographic Names Information System , accessed October 1, 2014
2. ↑ Population data from the 2010 US Census in the American Factfinder
3. ↑ Coordinates of the locations of the Census Authority 2010
4. ↑ Climate data at www.City-Data.com (English)
5. ↑ Population 1790–2010 according to the census results
6. ^ Addison-Rutland Supervisory Union | Believe, Inspire, Achieve. In: arsu.org. Retrieved July 28, 2017 (American English). 
7. ↑ Homepage of the Benson Village School (English)