When I read Owen Wister’s famed Western novel The Virginian a couple of years ago, I was, ironically enough, particularly delighted by a few passages taking place in the East. Several chapters dealing with Wister’s New England-born heroine Molly Wood casually drop the names of half a dozen places in Vermont and New York that I’m very familiar with in real life. It’s delightfully strange to find mentions like that in the pages of a classic novel, especially of places that are smaller and not well known outside the area. I thought it would be fun to go on a photographic scavenger hunt of these locations, so readers who might know plenty about what Wyoming looks like could also get a glimpse of what Wister’s Molly came from when she set forth to teach school in the West—or at least what it looks like today.

Bennington

Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont…could have been enrolled in the Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain Daughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial Chatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose name she bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle where her lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his name thrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys.

Molly’s hometown of Bennington was the site of the Colonial storehouses that the British sent a detachment to capture just prior to the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The actual Battle of Bennington was fought near Hoosick on the New York side of the line, but it is here at Bennington that the monument commemorating the battle stands, along with a statue of Brigadier General John Stark.

Monument Avenue is lined with beautiful old houses, most of which bear plaques with 18th-century dates and the names of notable people who once lived there. A statue marks the location of the Catamount Tavern, which served as headquarters for Stark and for Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, and a little further on is the beautiful Old First Church, where poet Robert Frost is buried in the lovely old cemetery.

Mount Anthony

On a visit back East, Molly is taken for a drive to see the home sights by her Eastern suitor—though there are hints that Molly’s heart is evidently elsewhere:

…While they drove up the valley of the little Hoosic: “I had forgotten it was so nice and lonely. But after all, no woods are so interesting as those where you might possibly see a bear or an elk.” And upon another occasion, after a cry of enthusiasm at the view from the top of Mount Anthony, “It’s lovely, lovely, lovely,” she said, with diminishing cadence, ending in pensiveness once more. “Do you see that little bit just there? No, not where the trees are—that bare spot that looks brown and warm in the sun. With a little sagebrush, that spot would look something like a place I know on Bear Creek. Only of course you don’t get the clear air here.”

I had never been up Mount Anthony before this weekend. Though we were unable to reach the summit, which is only accessed by what is now a private road, the narrow dirt road winding around the side of the mountain, through colorful woods and past hidden farms tucked deep in the hills, was unbelievably beautiful. Above is the peak of Mount Anthony taken from below, and this is a view from the far side of the mountain:

An old chimney beside the road up on the side of the mountain, marking the site of a house long gone. I felt like we were up on Walton’s Mountain.

Hoosic Junction & Eagle Bridge

At Hoosic Junction, which came soon, she passed the up-train bound back to her home, and seeing the engineer and the conductor,—faces that she knew well,—her courage nearly failed her, and she shut her eyes against this glimpse of the familiar things that she was leaving. To keep herself steady she gripped tightly a little bunch of flowers in her hand.

But something caused her eyes to open; and there before her stood Sam Bannett, asking if he might accompany her so far as Rotterdam Junction.

“No!” she told him with a severity born from the struggle she was making with her grief. “Not a mile with me. Not to Eagle Bridge. Good-by.”

I found this little railroad crossing, with a bridge over the Walloomsac River in the background, not far from the location of Hoosic Junction. The junction itself, where the railroad tracks coming from Bennington join another line heading west toward Rotterdam, is hidden back in the woods after the nearest road stops at a dead end.

And at Eagle Bridge, less than five miles from Hoosic Junction, I made my most exciting discovery of the day: the old abandoned railway depot! I’d driven past this place many times (the main road runs parallel with the tracks, off to the left of this shot) but never even noticed the old building tucked behind the trees.

The railroad from Rutland, Vermont to Eagle Bridge, New York was originally built in 1851 by the Rutland and Washington Railroad. By 1870 it was a part of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, which was leased by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. If you look at this 1886 map of the D&H railroads, you can see the Eagle Bridge station prominently marked just east of the larger cities of Schenectady and Saratoga.

I had to wonder—was this the same building that stood here in the 1880s, at the time The Virginian is set? One can imagine it as a bustling little village station, with timetables chalked up by the ticket window, telegraph machine clicking away inside and passengers waiting on the platform—the center of the town, just across the road from a cluster of buildings that included a small brick hotel. I wonder if any real-life New England girl, excited, frightened, and watching familiar homelike scenes slip behind her as the engine picked up speed, passed through here on a westbound train, headed for unknown adventures in the wild West.