Lia calls it Vermont's Little Grand Canyon and refuses to let me argue the nickname is overselling it. Standing on the bridge over Quechee Gorge with the river a hundred and sixty-five feet below, I stopped arguing too.
The Ottauquechee River doesn’t look like much where it enters Quechee Gorge — narrow, unremarkable, the kind of stream you’d cross without a second glance — but over thousands of years it cut a chasm a hundred and sixty-five feet deep through the bedrock, and locals have taken to calling it Vermont’s Little Grand Canyon with a straight face that I now understand. Lia and I walked out onto the road bridge that spans the gorge, traffic rumbling past behind us, and looked straight down at the river working its way over rocks far below, granite walls rising sheer on either side draped in hemlock and birch.
Glass, fire, and a mill that never stopped working
A short walk from the gorge, Simon Pearce runs a glassblowing studio built directly into an old mill that once used the same falls to power its machinery, and now uses that same water to generate the electricity for the glass furnaces. We watched through a glass wall as a gaffer pulled a molten blob from the furnace and turned it, impossibly fast, into a stemmed goblet, sweat visible on his forearms even from where we stood. Upstairs, the restaurant serves dinner on plates and glasses made a floor below, and we ate looking straight out a window at the falls themselves, water sheeting white over the old dam.
Balloons over the gorge
We happened to be in Quechee during the hot air balloon festival, held most years in the state park that borders the gorge, and it might be the single best reason to time a visit deliberately. Dozens of balloons lifted off from the open fields at dawn, drifting low enough over the gorge that we could hear the burners firing from the overlook, color against a pale morning sky. Even without the festival, Quechee State Park has trails that drop down into the gorge itself, letting you stand at river level and look straight up at the walls you’d been peering down from the day before.
Getting There
The closest major airport is Manchester-Boston Regional in New Hampshire, about an hour and forty minutes east, though Burlington International is also workable at just over an hour and a half northwest. From Boston, it’s a straightforward two-hour drive west on I-93 and I-89. A car is essential — Quechee’s sights, from the gorge to Simon Pearce to the state park, are spread along a couple of miles that aren’t practical on foot alone.
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