Mount Ascutney is a mountain in the U.S. state of Vermont. At , it is the highest peak in Windsor County, Vermont, Windsor County. Mount Ascutney is a monadnock that rises abruptly from the surrounding lowlands. For example, the Windsor Trail is to the summit with of elevation gain and an overall 18% grade. The mountain's base straddles several villages — Ascutney, Vermont, Ascutney, Brownsville, Vermont, Brownsville, Windsor, Vermont, Windsor, and West Windsor, Vermont, West Windsor — and it is located only several miles off exit 8 on Interstate 91 in Mount Ascutney State Park. The mountain itself is visible from the top of Mount Washington (New Hampshire), Mount Washington, seventy miles away.

Location and description

Mt. Ascutney is located in the southeastern section of Windsor County, Vermont, Windsor County, in the Connecticut River Valley. The village of Ascutney, Vermont, Ascutney, in the town of Weathersfield, Vermont, Weathersfield, is to the south. To the north lie the towns of Windsor, Vermont, Windsor and West Windsor, Vermont, West Windsor. The village of Brownsville, Vermont, Brownsville, in the town of West Windsor, sits at the northwestern base of the mountain. To the east lie the Connecticut River and the city of Claremont, New Hampshire. To the immediate west stands Little Ascutney Mountain.

Etymology and naming dispute

Since the History of Vermont#British settlement, Colonial era, the mountain has primarily been referred to as "Mount Ascutney" (or such variant spellings as "Aschutney"), a name made official by the United States Board on Geographic Names, U.S. Board on Geologic Names in 1960. While various folk etymologies exist, many modern sources trace the name "Ascutney" to the Abenaki word ''Ascutegnik'', a word meaning "at the end of the river fork," which was the name of a settlement near where the Sugar River (New Hampshire), Sugar River meets the Connecticut River. However, the use of the Abenaki word ''Kaskadenak'' (pronounced: ''Cas-Cad-Nac)''–which means "mountain of the rocky summit" or "wide mountain"–as a name of the mountain has long been attested, and the Board on Geologic Names acknowledges the name as an official variant. In 2016, Hartland resident Robert Hutchins petitioned the Board to change the official name to Kaskadenak, garnering the support of Chief Paul Bunnell of the Koasek Traditional Band of the Abenaki Nation among others. In July 2018, the State of Vermont Board of Libraries, which has the statutory authority to name geographical features, heard arguments to officially rename the mountain to Mount Kaskadenak. The Board of Libraries voted 5–0 to reject the name change, citing the testimony of town managers who reported local opposition at meetings on the name change and the results of polling. The Board also cited an email from Smithsonian linguist Ives Goddard, who proposed that the origin of the name "Ascutney" was the Abenaki word ''kskatena'' and wrote that

"Ascutney […] and Cascadnac (from Western Abenaki kaskadenak) are both authentic names meaning 'wide mountain.' Both names reflect variable features of the local Native American language and of English from different times."

From the late 1880s to 1930, a Cornish Art Colony, community of artists thrived in Cornish, New Hampshire, Cornish and Plainfield, New Hampshire as well as Windsor, Vermont. Besides Augustus Saint-Gaudens, other artists built their homes specifically sited towards the mountain, and it became the focal point of many expansive gardens and Italianate villas.

Geology

Mount Ascutney is part of the White Mountain plutonic-volcanic series of igneous rocks. These rocks intruded from Triassic to Cretaceous time in southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont with the relatively young Ascutney pluton intruding at ~122 MA (K/Ar date on biotite). The Ascutney pluton is about 8 km × 4 km in map area and intrudes into Precambrian basement gneisses of the Chester dome and overlying Paleozoic metasedimentary rocks. The pluton emplacement is probably related to the formation of transform faults and/or fracture zones during (failed) Mesozoic rifting. The petrology of the pluton consists of three stocks which are gabbro-diorite, syenite and granite. There are also a partial ring dike and a number of other dikes in the area. The last glacier broke material off the mountain and distributed it southward into Massachusetts. The trail it left is known as the "Mount Ascutney Train."

Ski resort

Mt. Ascutney was home to the Ascutney Mountain Resort, a ski resort on the mountain's northwest face, in the village of Brownsville, Vermont, Brownsville. The ski area closed in 2010, and became a nature preserve.

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