The Mount Mansfield area has always enjoyed a bit of quaintness thanks ironically in part to the benign ownership of its biggest sort — the Stowe Mountain Resort — the insurance giant American International Group (AIG). However development is changing that ambiance.
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The News Observer reports the Tubbs Snowshoe factory in Stowe, Vermont, is moving to China. Founded in Norway, Maine, in 1906, Tubbs once supplied snowshoes to the South Pole expedition of Richard Byrd and to the U.S. armed forces during World War II. Hunters and woodsmen made up the bulk of the customers for many years. Owner Ed Kiniry, who said production last year was 110,000, was named Vermont’s “Exporter of the Year” by the state’s Chamber of Commerce two years ago. The move occurred after he sold the company to K2. Incidentally, tubbssnowshoes.com still lists Stowe as its contact number.

One of the hottest buttons in environment conscious Vermont are the Mansfield T.V. Towers. Our newsblog has a article about replacing three of them. They can’t be more than 200 feet tall because they would have to be lit at night and they can’t be too short because they would emit electronic waves that would prohibit hiking to the Vermont summit (which was the case at one point!). Fybush has an excellent article on the towers and their history.
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