The Sundarban
At the top of a winding motorway in rural Vermont sits Pierce’s Store, a white-clapboard general store with a wide entrance porch and a steeply pitched roof. By most measures, this region ought to restful non-public closed prolonged ago.
But on a unique cold November morning, a step by Pierce’s entrance door, under the jingle of a bell, and into the warm scent of freshly baked goods, looks to be to be like as if a hug.
These spaces are higher than factual the picturesque backdrops of Hallmark Christmas movies. Along the backroads of Vermont, a general store serves as a lifeline to residents, circulating mail, native wealth, and goods. But with the upward push of Amazon and chain stores, the deck is stacked against them.
Why We Wrote This
They evoke Hallmark movies and more efficient occasions. But in rural locations, general stores are a lifeline to the community, offering fetch trusty of entry to to groceries and serving as a social hub. In Vermont, towns are combating to wait on theirs alive.
There are about 70 independently flee stores left in the tell, says Dennis Báthory-Kitsz, a Vermont historian and creator of “Nation Stores of Vermont: A History and Files.” That’s a plunge from about 125 in 2001. And but, a minute but sturdy different of towns are rising to the explain of conserving their doorways start under the nonprofit model by fundraising, volunteering, and cyber internet cyber internet hosting potluck dinners and music jams.
Kendra Nordin Beato/The Christian Science Monitor
Martha Sirjane (left), assistant supervisor at Pierce’s Store, helps a customer, Nov. 4, 2025. Marjorie Pierce, the historical proprietor, left the store to the Preservation Have faith of Vermont in 2001, with instruct directions that it continue to feature as a grocery store for the minute town of Shrewsbury.
“When somebody’s saving one thing in their community for their neighbors, it brings them joy, and it’s miles hopeful. I hear that each one the time,” says Ben Doyle, president of the Preservation Have faith of Vermont in Montpelier, the tell’s capital.
At Pierce’s, Lee Wilson is ending off a breakfast sandwich at a minute table in the relief room. He’s been coming right here for Forty eight years and now volunteers for shifts in the relief of its counters. Notice Youngstrom is right here, too, swathed in an Icelandic wool sweater. He’s been coming for 46 years. Martha Sirjane, the assistant supervisor, is also right here, attentively swooping between cabinets stocked with requirements and strong point objects, speaking to visitors, ringing up orders, and in some cases introducing neighbors for the first time.
The store’s final proprietor, Marjorie Pierce, wanted to preserve this sense of heat for her minute town of 1,100. Shrewsbury’s general store first opened the year the Civil Battle ended, not factual as a region to rep flour or sugar, but as well as a gathering space the put aside neighbors conducted checkers subsequent to a potbellied stove, got the most modern info, and warded off the isolation of rural life. When she died in 2001, she left her family’s store to the Preservation Have faith of Vermont, a nonprofit group that offers toughen and funding for towns attempting for to attach structures that outline a sense of region. She gave instruct directions that Pierce’s remain a working store, not a museum of occasions past.
It became once an ambitious request. And it took 16 years and the dedication of a couple dozen residents to be fully realized. But today, the Shrewsbury Cooperative at Pierce’s Store owns and runs the property, with the motivate of volunteers and a few paid staff.
Kendra Nordin Beato/The Christian Science Monitor
Notice Youngstrom (left) and Lee Wilson talk over with in the relief room of Pierce’s Store in Shrewsbury. Each are longtime residents of the town and supporters of the store.
“The ambiance of this region and Marjorie’s need that the store continue to attend the community in as many ways because it could perhaps per chance perhaps is factual actually principal,” says Mr. Youngstrom, who’s a board member. He provides that in the years since they reopened in 2009, they’ve devised new ways to plot participants in, akin to chili put together dinner-offs, movie nights, a blueberry festival, and a young participants’s artwork display in a converted storage out relief. Their efforts non-public also change into a source of inspiration for other towns that need to provide protection to their general stores.
“The final colossal egalitarian space”
Even before the pandemic and rising vitality and grocery bills establish the squeeze on Vermont’s general stores, their numbers had been dropping as longtime householders looked to retire. Rising old structures, prolonged workdays, and narrow profit margins led many to scrutinize new proprietors, ensuing in some closing their doorways after a long time of serving their communities.
“We’re seeing closures of independently owned stores as a results of an economy that doesn’t work for rural communities,” says Mr. Doyle. The Preservation Have faith of Vermont has assisted roughly 10 towns in establishing nonprofits to feature general stores. “[They] are the final colossal egalitarian space in our nation,” he says. “They are locations the put aside participants, no topic class, no topic political point of seek, can non-public unintended encounters with one another which could perhaps be actually principal to building community believe.”
Kendra Nordin Beato/The Christian Science Monitor
A historical general store is viewed boarded up in Cambridgeport, Vermont, Nov. 3, 2025. Many general stores across the tell non-public closed in unique years as populations non-public declined and chain grocery stores in greater towns plot industry.
Now not prolonged after Robert DuGrenier and his companion, Kathy, made up our minds to switch to Vermont from Fresh York Metropolis in 1997 to understand their desires of working a farm, the West Townshend Nation Store closed down.
“This became once a ghost town. There became once nothing to behind down for,” says Mr. DuGrenier, a global-successfully-known glassblower who became once once asked to resolve out how to restore the flame on the Statue of Liberty. The property changed fingers a few occasions: first as a catering hub,
