Northeast Kingdom Anniversary

Floor Speech

Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, sixty years ago today, Senator George Aiken, one of the great statesmen in the history of Vermont and indeed our entire Nation, spoke to a group of rural Vermonters in the remote and sparsely populated northeastern corner of our State. As he spoke about the rugged region of the Green Mountain State he called it ``the Northeast Kingdom,'' a name which has lasted to this day as the way in which we in our State refer to this region. Today I celebrate the anniversary of this pristine area's unique and poetic name and to make a few observations about its land and its inhabitants.

The Northeast Kingdom is Vermont at its most strikingly beautiful. Beckoning tourists are the glacial formations of Willoughby and Crystal Lakes, the farmland and forests along the Upper Connecticut River, and the northernmost reaches of the Green Mountains along the Canadian border. Vermont is one of the most rural States in the Nation, and the Northeast Kingdom is our most rural region. While it makes up more than one-fifth of the State's total geography, it has barely 10 percent of Vermont's total population. In fact, my first home in Vermont was in the Northeast Kingdom, in the town of Stannard, a town with a population of 200.

As we look for new dawn in this time of economic difficulty, I am reminded of this fiercely independent region of which Senator Aiken spoke so eloquently 60 years ago. The Northeast Kingdom is inhabited by working Americans, solid and proud Vermonters: it is from their hardy spirit, and the spirit of people like them, that our country's strength has always come. It is my hope that not only will the rugged beauty of the forests and lakes of the Northeast Kingdom survive, but so will that strong and independent spirit that we can turn to as a catalyst for rebuilding our Nation.

Source