The Mountain Campus

98 Bread Loaf On Route 125 fifteen miles east of the campus, in Ripton, are additional college facilities developed on part of the land left to the institution in 1915 by Joseph Battell. The Bread Loaf campus is set in a beautiful mountain meadow and includes Battell’s 1882 Victorian inn and its adjacent barn, “cottages,” library, and “Little Theatre,” many of which were designed for Battell by Clinton Smith. A portion of the Bread Loaf Inn known as the Ell burned in the 1930s and was replaced with the Little Theatre and Library buildings.

Formerly a summer hotel, since 1920 Bread Loaf has been the home of the summer school of English and, since 1926, of the summer Writers’ Conference (first of its kind in the country). Just to the west is the college-owned Homer Noble Farm, former summer home of Robert Frost, who was for years an important participant in the Writers’ Conference. Here in the winter can be enjoyed the Rikert Ski Touring Center, with fifty kilometers of groomed trails connecting the Bread Loaf campus to the Snow Bowl.

Bread Loaf Inn showing the Ell in 1900. Source

99 The Snow Bowl Further east on Route 125 (and open only during the skiing season) is the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, with its three chair lifts, and fourteen trails and slopes. The area is served by the Neil Starr Shelter, which — with its food services, huge fireplace, glazed balcony, and sunny terrace — is an ideal location from which to observe the Snow Bowl’s activities.