Site One

🏷️ Category: Outdoors

🏘️ Town: Ludlow, Okemo Valley

📍 Address: Site 1 Road, Ludlow, VT 05140

💬 Site One is the local name for Jewell Brook Site No. 1, a USDA flood-control reservoir on Site 1 Road, right on Route 100 about three miles south of Ludlow village. A short gravel road off the highway tops out on the grassy crest of the 58-foot earthen dam, built in 1969 by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and below it lies a quiet 22.5-acre pond - one of a small network of Jewell Brook dams (Sites No. 2, 3 and 5 stand within two miles) that hold back storm water and release it slowly, keeping Ludlow dry. There are no facilities and no signage to speak of; what there is: shore fishing in a pond that sees more herons than anglers, a walkable dam-top road, mowed grass banks for a picnic, and Green Mountain views in every direction. The high ground east of the pond is Terrible Mountain (2,864 feet), so hard to cross that in 1799 the western half of old Andover was set off as the separate town of Weston because the town could not govern across it. The Route 100 climb along its flank tops out near 2,000 feet while Ludlow village sits at about 1,060, so it routinely snows up here when the valleys on both sides get rain, and fog and wind can be doing something entirely different from the day you left in the valley. It is a working flood-control site - carry in, carry out, and leave the water as you found it.