TOWNS
Chittenden County Courthouse is located at 175 Main Street, Burlington VT, 05401; phone: 802-863-3467.
Beginnings [1]
The County of Chittenden, named in honor of Thomas Chittenden, the first governor of Vermont, was set off from Addison County and incorporated into a distinct county, October 22, 1787. It then embraced all of the territory between the north lines of Ferrisburgh, Monkton, Bristol, Lincoln, and Warren, and the Province line, and was bounded on the west by the west line of the State, which followed the deepest channel of the lake, passing east of the Four Brothers, and west of Grand Isle and Isle La Motte, and on the east by the west lines of Northfield, Montpelier, Calais, Woodbury, Hardwick, and Greensborough, to the northwest corner thereof, and then in the most direct course on town lines to the north line of the State. But the population and business of the county increased to such an extent that it soon became necessary that its turn should come to be reduced in territory; and on November 5, 1792, a new county on the north was incorporated by the name of Franklin. ... Still further deductions have been made from the original limits.
The county is diversified by lofty mountains, deep gorges and ravines, gentle acclivities, wide-spread verdant valleys, rivers, small lakes and brooks, affording a landscape that is not only unexcelled in Vermont, but which vies with many far more pretentious localities in foreign lands.
The principal streams are the rivers Winooski or Onion, Lamoille, La Plotte, Brown's and Huntington. The Winooski, one of the largest rivers in the State, enters near the center of the eastern line of the county, flows a westerly course, and falls into the Champlain between Burlington and Colchester, thus completing its course of seventy miles, during which it waters 970 square miles of territory, and affords sites for unlimited mill-power.