The Vermont Country Store

Vrest and Mildred Orton founded The Vermont Country Store in 1945 as a mail-order business, with catalogs printed by Vrest on a 19th-century press. In 1946 the Ortons bought this 1828 building and recreated a late-19th-century general store based on the 1897 store of Vrest’s father, Gardner Lyman Orton, in North Calais, Vermont. In 1952 The Saturday Evening Post featured the business in a story entitled “The Happy Storekeeper of the Green Mountains.” This brought national acclaim with increased mail-order sales and a surge of visitors to Weston. A restaurant was added in 1960, and a second store in Rockingham opened in 1968. Continuously operated by the Orton family, The Vermont Country Store draws visitors from every state.