Finding the heritage of the American Revolution in Okemo Valley begins, paradoxically, with a problem. When the American Revolution happened, Okemo Valley did not exist. Of course, the majesty of its hills, the serenity of its streams, and the firmness of its forests have always existed. They have inspired the valley’s visitors since the glaciers receded 12,000 years ago and the first humans left their moccasin prints on the soil.

Nor was the region entirely devoid of colonial stock, either. Indeed, by 1776 all of Vermont had seen a series of Abenaki, French, and British trappers and traders seeking to survive and thrive within the powerful wilderness.

Nor does it signal that the region did not contribute to the revolutionary era itself. To the contrary, the Vermont Historical Society lists 33 patriots who lived in the town of Chester and had fought for American liberty.

Their names evoke both the distance of that past and its connection to our present. David Earl, Stephen Randall, and Jason Rice might well be our Vermont friends and neighbors today. Yet others—Ephraim Clark, Ebeneezer Farrington, and Archeious Putnam— could really only exist under a tricornered hat, wrapped in a greatcoat, holding a musket at “present arms,” and waiting for the command to ready, aim, fire at an approaching column of redcoats.

But they served honorably, and when Solomon Wilson died in Chester in 1840, his headstone in Brookside Cemetery spoke for all his peers when it commemorated him as a “Hero of the Revolution.” It stands there still, a silent sentinel throughout the bursting blossoms of spring, lush greens of summer, bright foliage of fall, and serene snows of winter. For families so inclined (and possessing a sheet of poster paper and at least one crayon), it’s a prime place to teach a child how to make a rubbing while inspiring them with history as well.

The revolutionary spirit resonates nearby, too. In Westminster, 82 representatives from across Vermont convened in the bitter mid-January cold of 1777—without, we can be assured, the benefits of Gore-Tex and microdown. Nevertheless, their sojourn was worth it. Along the ice-strewn banks of the Connecticut River they ratified their own Declaration of Independence from both Great Britain and New York.

They finished the work that summer in nearby Windsor with a constitutional convention that formally created the Vermont Republic. That independent nation was revolutionary as well: it became the first government within the boundaries of the modern-day United States to both guarantee universal adult male suffrage and also to abolish enslavement for all adults.

The revolution also shines forward through the flag of the Green Mountain Boys that they adopted as their own. Visitors to Okemo Valley today will still see it flying at homes and businesses as a testament to Vermonters’ proper pride of heritage.

The flag’s verdant field evokes the strength of the Green Mountains, while the 13 stars scattered across its blue canton pay homage to the 13 colonies from which the Vermont Republic initially came and eventually rejoined in 1791 as their 14th star.

And history buffs and nature lovers alike could do far worse for a long weekend than to secure space in one of Okemo Valley’s many historical inns and take a beautiful drive across Vermont’s pastoral landscape to tour the region’s revolutionary battlefields and sites at nearby Crown Point, Ticonderoga, Hubbardton, and Bennington—all of which shaped the course and success of the Revolution.

But at the same time, history requires us to acknowledge that the entire region hardly existed during the Revolution at all: of the 12 towns that encompass the region today, Mount Holly, Baltimore, and Weston were not even chartered until the 1790s. Seven more—Andover, Cavendish, Chester, Ludlow, Plymouth, Shrewsbury, and Weathersfield—came into existence as part of a marathon series of 63 separate charters in 1761 by New Hampshire’s royal governor to stake his colony’s claim to the region. And last but not least, Grafton and Londonderry date to 1754 and 1770, respectively.

Yet charters do not make communities, and in most cases these regions remained sparsely populated until well into the 1780s. Nothing like Boston’s “freedom trail” can unite these towns for a simple reason: there was no one there to blaze it.

“VERMONT IS A STATE I LOVE BECAUSE OF HER INDOMITABLE PEOPLE.”

The story, however, does not end there. Because as it turns out, freedom trails need freedom destinations, too.

And if the sites of Boston show how the colonists came to fight the British, the towns of Vermont show what they were fighting for—which was not the transcontinental railroad, interstate highway system, transoceanic flight, or the international space station. The vast majority of patriots—especially the everyday New Englanders who shouldered muskets and swelled the rank—were fighting for something much closer to home: They were fighting for the future of a home itself.

That was what brought them to Okemo Valley: the chance to chart their own courses, rise by their own labor, and make a better life for their children. Some came because they received land grants, a common form of payment for service in the Revolution. Others did so because it was where they could afford to settle. But all brought with them the ideal that men could democratically direct their destiny. That heritage continues in the towns they built, and the cultures they created.

Finally, one more regional revolutionary feature remains, simultaneously unknown and essential. Sometime in 1776, a revolutionary soldier whose name is lost to history died while traveling on the old military road that ran through Plymouth, Vermont on its path from Crown Point, New York to Charleston, New Hampshire. His comrades piled stones to mark his resting place, which persist to this day, now with an accompanying marker installed nearby by the Daughters of the American Revolution to this modest tomb of an unknown soldier. Plymouth literally grew up around his sacrifice.

And there, 96 years to the day after July 4, 1776, Calvin Coolidge was born—our only president to ever share a birthday with our nation. He grew up in the same revolutionary tradition that the unknown soldier had died for, with stately brick federals and white clapboard Greek revivals demonstrating the wealth and success of their builders, but the village green and annual town meeting day reminding them their community needed to cooperate if all wanted to individually rise.

That Okemo Valley aesthetic shaped the future Massachusetts governor and vice president, and it was only fitting that he was visiting the home of his youth when President Warren G. Harding died suddenly. “Silent Cal” spoke his oath for the highest office in the land in his family’s modest parlor, with his father as officiant.

How one feels about Coolidge’s presidency depends on their own political beliefs. But any visitor to Okemo Valley should know of his words about the revolutionary heritage here, spoken in 1928. “Vermont is a state I love,” Coolidge declared, “because of her indomitable people” whom he called “a race of pioneers.” “If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the union,” he finished, “and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.”

The unknown soldier and all his revolutionary peers could hardly have hoped for a better future than that one—straight from a son of Okemo Valley, nestled in the brave little state of Vermont.