Birdwatching in Vermont, p. 102.

Starts out from parking lots at the end of Camel’s Hump Road in North Duxbury on the eastern flank of the mountain. There is a seasonally staffed caretaker’s quarters and a cemetery adjacent to the upper lot. Winter trail access is provided 0.3 miles below the main lots. Will Monroe and his sister Catherine and several of Will’s dogs are buried in the cemetery; there is also a plaque commemorating the crew of a B-24 Liberator bomber that crashed on the mountain in 1944. This trail is one of the most popular on Camel’s Hump. The Monroe Trail joins the Dean Trail at 1.3 miles and the Alpine Trail at 2.5 miles. The Monroe Trail ends at Hut Clearing where it joins the Long Trail. It is 0.3 miles to the left, uphill, to the summit, on the Long Trail.

Camels Hump State Park is an undeveloped, free-entry, state park with no phone or visitor facilities.

Waubanaukee Indians first named it “Tah-wak-be-dee-ee-wadso” or Saddle Mountain. Samuel de Champlain’s explorers in the 1600s called it “lion couchant” or resting lion. The name “Camel’s Rump” was used on a historical map by Ira Allen in 1798, and this became “Camel’s Hump” in 1830.

The park came about as an original gift of 1000 acres including the summit from Colonel Joseph Battell, who originally bought Camel’s Hump to preserve the wooded mountainous view from his home. In 1911, care of the mountain was entrusted to the State Forester who managed intending to keep it in a primitive state according to Battell’s wish.

The State of Vermont eventually adopted a policy of development regulation on all state forest lands to preserve aesthetic values. It fought proposed intrusions by communications towers and ski resorts until the summit’s Natural Area was set aside; then special legislation was passed in 1969 to create a Forest Reserve whose state-owned acres (about 20,000 by 1991) form Camel’s Hump State Park.

There are designated parking areas at trailheads on Camel’s Hump Road on both sides of the mountain. Also, there are parking areas along River Road in Duxbury for the Long Trail.

Monroe Trail – 3.4 miles (6.8 round-trip), Moderately Difficult.