Bellows Falls

The only widely known, non-submerged Indigenous petroglyphs in the state of Vermont sit just outside the Windham County village—Ktsipôntekw in the Western Abenaki language—below the now-defunct Vilas Bridge. Only feet away from the Connecticut River are two sets of eerie carvings of faces. Almost like doodles, they are composed of simple circles for heads, dots for eyes, and short lines for mouths, some with what look like antennae sticking up from the heads. The age of the glyphs is unknown—estimates range from several hundred to over one thousand years old—though in the 1930s, the Daughters of the American Revolution commissioned a stonecutter to re-carve the then-fading originals. While this effort may’ve slowed the figures’ erosion, it means that the relationship between what we see now and the original petroglyphs is unclear (the act of cultural vandalism also marks one moment in Vermont’s still-contentious legacy of Abenaki displacement and appropriation). Even so—if you are willing to make the semi-precarious, unmarked trek to the near-riverbank, it’s an intense, obviously sacred place.