BURLINGTON — Ethan Allen Tower

There’s a stone tower on the crest of Ethan Allen Park in Burlington, Vermont that most people drive past without knowing it exists. Built in 1905 and standing 30 feet tall on one of the highest points in the city, the Ethan Allen Tower was constructed to honor the man who arguably did more than anyone else to make Vermont possible.

Ethan Allen was born in Connecticut in 1738 and arrived in the Vermont territory in the early 1770s, when the region was a battleground between competing land grants issued by New Hampshire and New York. New York’s claim was backed by royal authority and enforced by courts and sheriffs. Allen’s response was to organize the Green Mountain Boys — a militia that operated less like a military unit and more like a force of nature, running New York’s surveyors and law enforcement out of the territory by whatever means necessary.

When the Revolution began, Allen didn’t wait for orders. On May 10, 1775 — less than a month after Lexington and Concord — he led the Green Mountain Boys in a pre-dawn raid on Fort Ticonderoga, demanding its surrender “in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress.” The fort fell without a shot. Its cannons were hauled overland to Boston, where they helped force the British evacuation of the city. It was one of the first American offensive victories of the war.

Allen’s later life was complicated. Captured by the British in a reckless attempt to take Montreal, he spent nearly three years as a prisoner of war — much of it on a British prison ship under brutal conditions. His account of that captivity, published in 1779, became one of the most widely read books in early America and turned him into a national figure.

After the war, Allen returned to Vermont and threw himself into the political fight for statehood — writing, arguing, and lobbying for recognition of the Vermont Republic until his death in 1789, two years before Vermont finally joined the Union.

He never saw it happen. But the tower on the hill in Burlington bearing his name looks out over the state he spent his life fighting for.

The park surrounding the tower — 67 acres of woodland trails on Burlington’s north end — was purchased by the city in 1904 specifically to honor Allen’s legacy. The tower itself was added the following year. On a clear day the view from the top takes in Lake Champlain, the Adirondacks, and the Green Mountains.

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