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Vermont
Montpelier, the capital city of Vermont
Settled 1787 Incorporated (village) 1818 Incorporated (city) 1895
Elevation 600 ft (182 m) Population 7,855
Montpelier is the smallest state capital in the United States. Montpelier is in the heavily forest foothills region east of the Green Mountains, which are part of the Appalachians.
For thousands of years before the arrival of European colonists, the land that is now Montpelier was the forest home of the Iroquois Native Americans.
The first European settlers arrived from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in May 1787.
They were Colonel Jacob Davis and General Parley Davis arrived. General Davis surveyed the land, while Colonel Davis cleared an area of forest and used the logs to make a house on the west side of the North Branch of the Winooski River, using the convenient flat land of a low river terrace. It was good enough for him to bring his family to live
the next winter. In the long term the site would make Montpelier liable to flooding as storms on the Green mountains cause the rivers to rise quickly and frequently burst their banks.
The site was important because the river cuts a valley from Lake Champlain right through the Green Mountains and goes close to the Connecticut River Valley, so that only a short stretch of portage overland was needed. In the early days of
