Outtakes - The Smallest Towns

From the March, 1987, Issue. Subscribe to Yankee now!

Text by Art Sordillo
Photographs by Stephen O. Muskie

To read about each town, select from this list:
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts.

o determine the smallest town for each New England state, population can be measured, but the fabric is more elusive. "Living in a small community means knowing the right way to care," says one resident. "You either care enough to help or care enough to mind your own damn business." Visiting them one can find a common thread -- the town center, which may be a person, a place, or a collective notion of the community.

When this story was first published Art Sordillo, was the newest member of Yankee's editorial staff. A native of Boston, he taught English as a second language there until coming to Franklin Pierce College in Rindge, New Hampshire, to work as a librarian. Art's research skills got him involved with Senior Editor Steve Muskie's idea to photograph the smallest towns (by population) in each of New England's six states. In three weeks of nonstop travel, they racked up 2,000 miles and ate more doughnuts than they care to recall. They got stuck in the mud in Victory, Vermont, and were hauled out by a selectman with a road grader. They suffered from seasickness on the ferry to Block Island. To avoid the same fate getting to and from Cuttyhunk, they hired a seaplane with a grizzled pilot called "Storm-in' Norman," who advised them to, "watch everything I do, in case I die." In Centerville, Maine, they managed to get all 20 inhabitants in one place for a group picture. "Seventeen of them were Democrats." Art notes, "and I still don't know if they all came out to get their picture taken or to have a look at Ed Muskie's boy."

Since publication in the October, 1987, issue of Yankee we have heard from readers who disagree with our choices of the smallest towns. Norton, Vermont, supposedly has only one resident and Glenwood Plantation in Maine has two. For another view of small towns see the book, "Big Falls, Blue Eye, Bonanza, & Beyond" by Dennis Kitchen with an introduction by Garrison Keillor (Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1995). It includes panoramic portraits of people in each of the smallest towns in all fifty states!