Vermont Route 100: Stowe to Killington

About this drive

Vermont Route 100 runs 216 miles along the spine of the Green Mountains from the Massachusetts border near Readsboro to the Canadian border near Newport, threading through a landscape that shows up on every "most beautiful small state" ranking in the country. The road passes farmsteads with red barns, church steeples visible above maples from half a mile out, covered bridges, and a procession of small towns — Wilmington, Jamaica, Ludlow, Stockbridge, Waitsfield, Stowe — each one distinctly Vermont without feeling staged. The section between Ludlow and Stowe through the Mad River Valley is the strongest stretch of the route. Waitsfield and Warren have developed a food and drink culture that punches well above their size — artisan bakeries, farmhouse cheese, cider from the region's apple orchards. Stowe is the most polished town on the route: well-maintained Victorian architecture, a famous covered bridge on the edge of town, and Mount Mansfield above it with a road to the summit worth adding if the clouds cooperate. October transforms the whole route into something that looks almost too saturated to be real. The foliage peaks slightly earlier in the north — mid-October in the Northeast Kingdom — and slightly later in the south, giving a two-to-three week window of reliable color. The road is narrow and genuinely winding for most of its length; budget more time than the distance suggests.