Mount Ascutney

Mt. Ascutney is located in the southeastern section of Windsor County, in the Connecticut River Valley. The village of Ascutney, in the town of Weathersfield, is to the south. To the north lie the towns of Windsor and West Windsor. The village of Brownsville, in the town of West Windsor, sits at the northwestern base of the mountain. To the east lie the Connecticut River and the city of Claremont, New Hampshire. To the immediate west stands Little Ascutney Mountain.

Since the Colonial era, the mountain has primarily been referred to as "Mount Ascutney" (or such variant spellings as "Aschutney"{{Cite book|last=Dwight|first=Timothy|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001261726|title=Travels in New-England and New-York.|date=1821–2022|publisher=T. Dwight|isbn=|volume=2|location=New-Haven|pages=106}}), a name made official by the U.S. Board on Geologic Names in 1960.{{Cite news|last=Hongoltz-Hetling|first=Matt|year=2016|title=Man Seeks to Rename Mount Ascutney|work=Valley News|url=https://www.vnews.com/Man-seeks-to-change-name-from-Mount-Ascutney-to-Mount-CasCadNac-4260669|access-date=January 10, 2021}} While various folk etymologies exist, many modern sources trace the name "Ascutney" to the Abenaki word Ascutegnik, a word meaning "at the end of the river fork,"{{Cite book|last=Swift|first=Esther|title=Vermont Place-names: Footprints of History|publisher=Vermont Historical Society|year=1977|isbn=|location=|pages=563}} which was the name of a settlement near where the Sugar River meets the Connecticut River. However, the use of the Abenaki word Kaskadenak (pronounced: Cas-Cad-Nac)–which means "mountain of the rocky summit" or "wide mountain"–as a name of the mountain has long been attested,{{Cite book|last=Thompson|first=Zadock|url=http://hdl.handle.net/2027/ien.35556040857286|title=History of Vermont, natural, civil and statistical, in three parts, with a new map of the state, and 200 engravings.|date=1842|publisher=Burlington|isbn=|volume=3|location=|pages=5|hdl=2027/ien.35556040857286}}{{cite book|author=Bob Lindemann|title=50 Hikes In Vermont: Walks, Hikes, and Overnights in the Green Mountain State|publisher=The Green Mountain Club|year=2003|isbn=9780881505382|editor=Dave Hardy|page=74}}{{Cite news|title=State board to consider changing mountain's made-up name|language=en-US|work=AP News|url=https://www.apnews.com/4b8ee7f4ef4c466db8ec4d57e58fe6cc/State-board-to-consider-changing-mountain's-made-up-name|access-date=July 13, 2018}} and the Board on Geologic Names acknowledges the name as an official variant. In 2016, Hartland resident Robert Hutchins petitioned the Board to change the official name to Kaskadenak, garnering the support of Chief Paul Bunnell of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Abenaki Nation among others. In July 2018, the State of Vermont Board of Libraries, which has the statutory authority to name geographical features, heard arguments to officially rename the mountain to Mount Kaskadenak. The Board of Libraries voted 5–0 to reject the name change, citing the testimony of town managers who reported local opposition at meetings on the name change and the results of polling. The Board also cited an email from Smithsonian linguist Ives Goddard, who proposed that the origin of the name "Ascutney" was the Abenaki word kskatena and wrote that

"Ascutney […] and Cascadnac (from Western Abenaki kaskadenak) are both authentic names meaning 'wide mountain.' Both names reflect variable features of the local Native American language and of English from different times."{{Cite web|last=Landen|first=Xander|date=2018-07-17|title=Library board kills proposal to rename Mount Ascutney|url=https://vtdigger.org/2018/07/17/vermont-library-board-kills-proposal-rename-mount-ascutney/|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=2021-01-10|website=VTDigger|language=en-US}}

From the late 1880s to 1930, a community of artists thrived in Cornish and Plainfield, New Hampshire as well as Windsor, Vermont. Besides Augustus Saint-Gaudens, other artists built their homes specifically sited towards the mountain, and it became the focal point of many expansive gardens and Italianate villas.{{Cite web|url=http://www.snyderdonegan.com/blog/posts/2015/03/01/new-hampshire-s-cornish-colony-along-the-connecticut-river/|title=Cornish, New Hampshire Cornish Colony Artistic and Agricultural|last=Carlisle|first=Julia|website=Snyder Donegan Real Estate Group|access-date=April 17, 2016}}

Mount Ascutney is part of the White Mountain plutonic-volcanic series of igneous rocks. These rocks intruded from Triassic to Cretaceous time in southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont with the relatively young Ascutney pluton intruding at ~122 MA (K/Ar date on biotite). The Ascutney pluton is about 8 km × 4 km in map area and intrudes into Precambrian basement gneisses of the Chester dome and overlying Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks. The pluton emplacement is probably related to the formation of transform faults and/or fracture zones during (failed) Mesozoic rifting.Ballard, R.D. and Uchupi, E. (1975) Triassic rift structure in the Gulf of Maine. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin 59, 7, 1041–1072Foland, K.A. and Faul, H. (1977) Ages of the White Mountain intrusives-New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, USA. American Journal of Sciences, 277 888–904. The petrology of the pluton consists of three stocks which are gabbro-diorite, syenite and granite. There are also a partial ring dike and a number of other dikes in the area.Schneiderman, J S. (1991) Petrolog and mineral chemistry of the Ascutney Mountain igneous complex. American Mineralogist, Vol 76 p 218-229

The last glacier broke material off the mountain and distributed it southward into Massachusetts. The trail it left is known as the "Mount Ascutney Train."{{cite book |title=The nature of Vermont |author=Charles W Johnson |year=1998 |page=20 |format=eBook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uGV-lUjfBf0C&pg=PA20 |isbn=9780585224497}}

File:Mount Ascutney aerial.jpg

Mt. Ascutney was home to the Ascutney Mountain Resort, a ski resort on the mountain's northwest face, in the village of Brownsville.{{cite web |url=http://www.ascutney.com/article/view/9363/1/1179 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100718154129/http://www.ascutney.com/article/view/9363/1/1179 |archive-date=July 18, 2010 |title=The History of Skiing on Mt. Ascutney |author=Jonathan Robinson}} The ski area closed in 2010, and became a nature preserve.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

• List of mountains in Vermont
• List of New England Fifty Finest

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.windsorvt.com/ Windsor Mt. Ascutney Region Chamber of Commerce]
• [https://www.ascutneytrails.com/ Ascutney Trails Association] - The non-profit organization that cares for the hiking trails, mountain biking trails and backcountry snow trails on Mount Ascutney.

{{Protected areas of Vermont}}

{{Mountains of Vermont}}

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Category:Mountains of Vermont

Category:Brownsville, Vermont

Category:Weathersfield, Vermont

Category:West Windsor, Vermont

Category:Windsor, Vermont

Category:Inselbergs of North America

Category:Mountains of Windsor County, Vermont

Category:Protected areas of Windsor County, Vermont

Category:Vermont placenames of Native American origin