When location scouts for Paramount needed an impressive cliff from which young James T. Kirk’s car would plunge in the upcoming Star Trek movie, where did they look? Not on Vulcan, not on Romulus or even on the Klingon home world. No, they came to Vermont to film our impressive quarries. The sheer face of Rock of Ages’ Smith Quarry provides the drama in the car chase scene in the latest Star Trek saga. So whether you’re an intergalactic traveler or more earthbound, we invite you to see why our quarries have been featured in films, acclaimed photography and television series, such as Modern Marvels and Made in America.

While touring our quarry, you’ll see our quarriers far below as they cut mammoth blocks from the quarry face and hoist them to the surface with powerful derricks capable of lifting up to 250 tons!

Once you’ve been awed by the cavernous quarry, you’ll want to visit our factory to watch artisans as they cut, polish and sculpt the stone into memorial products, civic statuary and precision products sent all over the world.

Our Visitors Center features computer-based kiosks, a photographic timeline of the Barre granite industry, a video and a gift shop. The gift shop offers beautiful granite gifts, Vermont specialty foods, Vermont-themed clothing, lovely granite and stone jewelry and souvenirs.

Once you’ve seen it, you’ll be inspired to DO IT. Our Cut-in-Stone Center is a BLAST! Step up to the booth, grab the gun and feel the pulsing throb of air and abrasive rush from the nozzle as you learn to cut a design in stone—a fun, affordable family activity. Make a great memory while making a stone gift with your very own hands!

Our one-of-a-kind outdoor granite bowling lane is a real crowd pleaser. And don’t forget to rummage through the grout bin for that perfect granite souvenir before you leave us.

So when you’re warping your way through Vermont, please drop to sub-light speed and beam on over to visit our quarry—soon appearing in a theater near you.

Once upon a time, far away in Germany where Bob and Ruth Morrell from North Conway, NH, were stationed by the US Army during the Korean Conflict, an old woman named Frau Edith Von Arps knocked on their door. She was selling dolls she’d made based on classic children’s fairy tales. After the Morrells bought twenty-five dolls, she planted a suggestion which Bob and Ruth turned into an idea, then grew into a business, and nurtured into an enduring legacy.

Story Land is located on Route 16 in Glen, NH. For more information, call 603-383-4186, or visit www.storylandnh.com

East Burke: A Community Built on Trails!

From the beginning, Burke Mountain, in East Burke, was a racing hill. As early as 1937, nearly twenty years before the first lift was constructed at the ski area, downhill ski races were held on its Toll Road and the annual Bear Den Trophy Race was drawing skiers from all over New England. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, recreational skiing and racing events were regularly organized on the slopes at Burke.

In 1932, a 160-man crew from the Civil Conservation Corp was sent to East Burke to create the infrastructure of the newly formed Darling State Park, named after a prominent local family who had donated the land to the state. That year, the first two ski trails at Burke Mountain were cut and graded. The Bear Den trail, so named by the crew after they discovered two bear cubs nearby, and the Wilderness trail, remain today as they were then, narrow, curving, rugged corridors through the northern alpine forest, symbolic of the sturdy men who built them. And by the fall of 1935, this hearty crew had converted a neglected carriage road built in the 1860s into the Toll Road we know today, a road which serves as the Deer Run trail during ski season.

The racing tradition that started in Burke’s nascent days got a boost when in 1970, Warren Witherall, skiing legend, member of the Vermont Ski Hall of Fame and author of the seminal ski racing book, The Athletic Skier, founded the Burke Mountain Academy, the first such dedicated ski academy of its kind in North America and today the preeminent ski academy in the country, having produced 45 Olympians and over 100 US National Team members since its founding. BMA, as it is known, continues to feed the US National Team with the cream of the crop and has several graduates on the team competing for a spot on the Olympic Team headed to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics.

During the frigid, snowy winter of 1955/56, Abon Atkins and his crew installed the mountain’s first permanent lift to the summit, the Mountain POMA Lift, at the time America’s longest surface lift, and one that after 52 years continues to transport Burke skiers up the Warren’s Way trail today. And thus, in February, 1956, Burke Mountain became a "modern ski area" when Vermont’s "Skiing Governor," Joe Johnson, visited to officially dedicate the state’s newest ski area, and received a guided tour on the inaugural run by current Burke season pass holder, David "Duffy" Dodge.

With its storied history based on the creation of two trails some 73 years ago, it’s no surprise that Burke’s East Bowl trail has been dubbed "New England’s Best Classic" trail and the Boston Globe called the Willoughby Trail the "Northeast’s 9th Most Scenic" trail. Today, East Burke is also home to the Kingdom Trails, a network of over 100 miles of managed and marked mountain bike trails that Dirtrag Magazine, a prominent mountain bike publication, called "home to the best mountain biking in the United States." Come wintertime, the Kingdom Trails Association grooms over 50 miles of its trails, forming some of the finest cross-country skiing in Vermont.

In a feature article in a 1977 issue, Vermont Life Magazine wrote, "The quiet, the solitude, the vast, untouched spaces common in the undeveloped Northeast Kingdom grace Burke with its uniqueness. The least crowded, set in the least developed area of Vermont, Burke’s ski slopes are of incomparable beauty." Over thirty years later, the same can be said of Burke today; and its community, whose very character is defined by the trails it has built over numerous generations, and which offers its visitors a remarkable variety of opportunities in which to explore its magnificent landscape. Submitted by Burke Mountain Operating Company