Vermont adopted the sugar maple as state tree on March 10, 1949. West Virginia and Wisconsin adopted the sugar maple that same year. But no state is more closely associated with sugar maples than Vermont.
Maple trees with sap buckets are depicted on a Vermont quarter issued by the U.S.
MintUntil the 1800s when cane sugar was introduced, Americans relied on Vermont’s maple sugar for much of its sugar supply. Today, maple sap flavors a wide variety of goods, from pancake syrup to candy.
Vermont is in a sense named for trees. Nowhere are maples honored more than in Vermont, which is widely identified with maple syrup. Indeed, “sug’rin”—gathering maple sap in winter—could be Vermont’s official state sport. (Instead, maple was adopted as Vermont’s official flavor.)
Yet not even maple syrup matches the sweet grandeur of Vermont hillsides ablaze with sugar maples’ fall foliage. Vermont school children have suggested that the orange on the state insect, the monarch butterfly, represents Vermont’s fall forests.
The Spirit of America
One of the most famous sugar maples is known as the “Spirit of America.” Located in Dorset, Vermont, it may be 400 years old (assuming it’s still standing). Under its spreading limbs is the house of Cephas Kent, one of the original organizers of Vermont’s struggle for independence and statehood. The owner of the property, artist Dean Fausett, claims that the Green Mountain Boys were organized in the house in 1775. They were famous soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
The Spirit of America became the subject of a legal dispute over property lines. The Conservation Society of Southern Vermont rallied behind the tree. During the bicentennial, the Green Mountain Singers and Players recorded a song about the old maple.
Though New England was once represented by the “New England pine,” the sugar maple is king of the deciduous trees, or hardwoods.
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