AT A GLANCE
Why go?
Tucked along Joe's Brook in South Danville, the Forgotten Village at Greenbank's Hollow is a small, quietly atmospheric historic park where a once-busy industrial hamlet has vanished back into the northern Vermont forest. Run by the Danville VT Historical Society, the site pairs evocative mill ruins and numbered historical markers with a short loop trail that drops steeply to a rushing stream, making it an easy, reflective stop for travelers exploring the Northeast Kingdom.
The name recalls a genuine company town: in the mid-1800s a woolen factory here was the largest in the region, surrounded by a gristmill, sawmill, store, post office, school and workers' houses. A fire in 1885 destroyed the heart of it, and the village never recovered—leaving foundations, foundations-in-the-forest and a story that visitors can now read at the markers and walk through on the nature trail.
It suits families, history buffs and anyone wanting a gentle waterside wander rather than a museum with walls: interpretive signs, a visitor log, picnic tables and a peaceful setting by the falls of Joe's Brook are what people remember most.
From Wool to Ruin: The Story of a Company Village
Joe's Brook, once called Merritt's River, tumbles eastward through Danville, and by one account it supplied water power to 39 separate enterprises on its way to the Passumpsic River. The biggest manufacturing complex in town stood right here. For decades a succession of mills produced lumber, flour and woolen cloth, the site changing hands and names—Whitcher Mills, Davis Mills, then Bolton Mills—after each owner.
