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Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day all March long at these Vermont events

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Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day all March long at these Vermont events


When is St. Patrick’s Day? Here’s why we celebrate the holiday

Who was Saint Patrick and why do we celebrate him? Here’s what to know about St. Patrick’s Day.

March is almost here, meaning warmer weather and St. Patrick’s Day are just around the corner, and Vermont is getting ready to celebrate.

The state’s large Irish population leads to celebrations all month long, from parades to festivals to skiing challenges. With festive Celtic music, traditional Irish dancing, decorated floats and of course, lots and lots of green, Vermont is sure to have a St. Patrick’s Day event for everyone.

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Here’s a roundup of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in the greater Burlington area that will keep you celebrating the Irish holiday all March long.

Burlington Irish Heritage Festival

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day throughout March with the Burlington Irish Heritage Festival, a cultural month-long festival that gathers local musicians, dancers and artists for events that celebrate Irish-American culture in Burlington.

This year’s 30th annual festival kicks off on Sunday, March 2 with ceili dancing from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Richmond Free Library Community Room. Music concerts, language learning sessions, poetry readings, dance performances and more will take place up until the headline event, a concert from The Murphy Beds at Contois Auditorium on Sunday, March 16.

A full schedule of events for the festival can be found on the Burlington Irish Heritage website.

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PaddyFest

Rí Rá, an authentic Irish pub, offers another multi-day celebration in Burlington.

From March 10-17, the pub will be jam-packed with events for PaddyFest, including live music, Irish dance performances, Guinness glass engraving and rugby game watches, all while a special St. Patrick’s menu is available to snack on.

Rí Rá is located on 123 Church St. A full schedule of events for St. Patrick’s week can be found here.

The Lucky Leprechaun Challenge

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Want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day on the slopes? Head to Smugglers’ Notch Resort in Jeffersonville on Sunday, March 16 for the Lucky Leprechaun Challenge.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., skiers who head down Morse Mountain can collect raffle tickets from a leprechaun, with extra tickets offered for wearing green. All tickets should be submitted at FunZone 2.0 by 3:30 p.m., with prize drawings beginning at 3:45 p.m.

Food and drink specials will also be available from ReFuel Café for all participants. Smugglers’ Notch Resort can be found at 4323 Vermont Rte. 108 in Jeffersonville.

Saint Albans St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Festival

Back for its 11th year, the Saint Albans St. Patrick’s Day Parade will take place on St. Patrick’s Day itself, Monday, March 17. The parade will start at the top of Taylor Park and make its way to City Hall.

There, a parade afterparty will keep the festivities going all day long, with music, dance, shamrock tattoos, Irish food and even green punch.

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S.D. Ireland Truck Parade

Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace will also host a parade on St. Patrick’s Day, where the S.D. Ireland construction company parades over 15 cement trucks down the Marketplace in an annual celebration that raises money for cancer research.

The marketplace’s parade will start at 3 p.m. on Monday, March 17.



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Vermont murder suspect arrested in New York

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Vermont murder suspect arrested in New York


PORTLAND, N.Y. (WCAX) – Police say the suspect in a Vermont murder was arrested in New York on Wednesday.

Terrence Biggs Jr., 25, of Michigan, was wanted in the deadly shooting of Austin Rodriguez, 26, of Rutland. It happened at a home on Summer Street on April 22.

Investigators say state police in New York arrested Biggs during a traffic stop in Portland, New York, that is in western New York, early Wednesday morning.

Biggs is charged with second-degree murder.

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We still don’t know what authorities think led to the shooting or what the connection was between the two men.



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Vermont shelter celebrates 68 adoptions in one month

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Vermont shelter celebrates 68 adoptions in one month


Where did the time go? Where did summer go?! It was not too long ago that we were telling you all about the Rutland County Humane Society’s participation in the the “Clear The Shelter Event”. Most adoption fees were waived for eligible adopters who were looking to add a furry friend to their family. In […]



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A covered bridge quest in Vermont – VTDigger

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A covered bridge quest in Vermont – VTDigger


A covered bridge quest in Vermont – VTDigger
Since arriving in Vermont last year, Phill Gatenby has become smitten with the state’s covered bridges. He’s started a video visiting each of the state’s historic or authentic covered bridges. Photo by Tim Calabro/Herald

This story by Tim Calabro was first published in The Herald on Sept. 11, 2025.

Phill Gatenby rolled over the Moxley Bridge in Chelsea with a plastic skeleton riding shotgun in his Jeep, having made the long drive from Brattleboro for an early morning visit. Just a year ago, the Manchester, England native — by way of Florida — had never laid eyes on a covered bridge. Now he’s smitten.

Gatenby recalled seeing a covered bridge while driving around and thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting. I’d never seen a covered bridge in my life before. Never really heard of them,” he said. “A couple days later, I was going to Townshend, and all of a sudden it’s the Dummerston Bridge, and I’m just like, different size, different shape, different color.”

He stopped for directions and as he got lost on the back roads, he saw more and more covered bridges.

What started as casual curiosity has evolved into a quest: visit and film all 100 of Vermont’s authentic, historic covered bridges and share the journey on YouTube in a series titled “Vermont’s 100 Covered Bridges.”

So far he’s been to 50 and cranked out 37 videos of his visits — one every Sunday.

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The most recent set of episodes has focused on the covered bridges of Tunbridge, Chelsea, and Randolph.

No two are quite alike. From king and queen trusses to parallelogram-shaped spans built on bends, like some on the First Branch, Gatenby has come to appreciate their variety and character.

And, stepping back from the bridges, the entire scene fascinates Gatenby.

“I mentioned this in the Kingsbury Bridge [episode]. I was at the bridge and I looked, and you’ve got the green mountains in the background and rolling hills. Then you’ve got the farm with the — is it the corn towers? —  the river and a covered bridge. And it just says, like, you can’t get more Vermont!”

Gatenby’s process is rigorous. Each episode takes hours to shoot and edit. He gets different angles — sometimes driving through a bridge three or four times for the right shot. He’s waded into rivers, climbed steep banks, and once filmed inside a long-retired bridge that had been turned into a town shed.

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“I try and do something that’s consistent,” he says. “So it’s, you know, the same start, the same middle. I go in the river. I’ve been in every single river so far.”

Gatenby credits community access TV stations — first Okemo Valley TV in Ludlow and now Brattleboro Community TV — for helping him build his skills and loaning him equipment.

“They literally brilliantly sat down and five, six, seven weeks went through how you do it,” he recalled.

Gatenby’s episodes go out via Okemo Valley TV’s YouTube channel and have regular times on the Okemo Valley and Brattleboro TV stations.

Form, Function, History

Vermont once had more than 600 covered bridges, Gatenby noted, but flooding and age have winnowed down the number greatly. Now, 100 remain and many towns hold clusters of them.

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Tunbridge, for example, boasts five (Flint, Larkin, Mill, Cilley and Howe), with the Moxley bridge just over the Chelsea line. Randolph has three (Kingsbury, Gifford, and Braley or Johnson), all of them along the Second Branch.

Gatenby pointed out that three of the First Branch bridges were built by the same person, Arthur Adams. That’s a phenomenon common to covered bridges, Gatenby noted. Oftentimes the same person who had the skills to build a bridge would become the area’s go-to expert.

As Gatenby visits each of the 100 covered bridges spread throughout the state, he points out the history and construction techniques used in each, particularly the suspension methods unique to covered bridges. Most covered bridges in the White River Valley make use of modified king trusses, posts fitted into a triangle, which provide strength to the structure. Some, like the Moxley bridge, use both king trusses and square queen trusses around them.

Vermont’s covered bridges aren’t just structural relics, though — they’re cultural icons.

Some have graced the silver screen, including the Kingsbury Bridge in Randolph, used by Alfred Hitchcock as scenery in his 1955 film “The Trouble with Harry.”

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“North by Northwest” has its dramatic crop duster strafing Cary Grant, Gatenby jokes in one of his episodes before cutting to a humble, scenic shot featuring the South Randolph bridge. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as glamorous as that!”

The Chiselville bridge in Sunderland — Gatenby’s favorite so far — featured in “Baby Boom,” Diane Keaton’s 1987 film, and a year later, in the 1988 Chevy Chase and Madolyun Smith Osborne comedy, the Upper Falls bridge in Weathersfield made for a memorable gag (“I wouldn’t go that way if I were you”).

Another memorable stop is East Corinth, where the prop bridge used in “Beetlejuice” was fabricated out of whole cloth for the two weeks of filming. “Thousands of people go there every year,” he said, noting that the set-piece, used now as a shed at a ski area, doesn’t count among the authentic and historic bridges he films.

Nor, he said, does the Quechee Bridge. Though it is often mistaken for a traditional covered bridge, it’s just a facade.

“It’s concrete and steel. There’s very little wood,” Gatenby said. “You see the wood on the outside and the roof.”

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Traditional bridges are completely made from wood and use a variety of truss systems to strengthen the span.

Place and Purpose

Gatenby moved to Vermont from Florida in July of last year. He now lives in Brattleboro with his wife and works as a shift supervisor at a home for adults with mental health issues.

“I’m a trained youth worker in England,” he said, having spent years working for the Prince’s Trust, a charity founded by King Charles. His day job might be demanding, but the early hours leave room for exploration.

“Three o’clock to 11:30 at night, so the daytime allows me to spend time in the TV studio,” he says. That flexibility has enabled him to squeeze in long road trips, sometimes filming six or seven bridges in a single day. “I’ve got to do minimum six, seven bridges each trip now,” he added. “To make it worth it.”

This Sunday, the show’s 38th episode will be released.

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“I’m doing a little special 50th episode,” he said, noting the halfway point in the 100-bridge journey. “That’s where I’m bringing in stuff like the Quechee bridge. Because people said, ‘Oh, you didn’t go to the Quechee.’”

As the series nears its midpoint, Gatenby’s audience is slowly growing, both online and in the communities he visits.

“It’s just amazing … you know, and I’m just visiting them all,” he said, “places that I wouldn’t have got to see otherwise.”

With 50 more bridges to go, Vermont’s covered bridge guy still has miles to travel and stories to uncover.Gatenby’s series of covered bridge videos can be watched on Okemo Valley and Brattleboro public television stations or found on YouTube.





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