The man who built much of the old Vermont
He cut the trails at Stratton, Okemo, Bromley, Magic and Round Top.
From the farm to the camps
Donat Dion was born on September 18, 1912, in St. Magloire, Quebec, the son of Maurice and Lidia Dion. He left school young, and everything he knew about the woods he learned on the way.
At thirteen he left the family farm, one less mouth to feed. He worked his way through northern Maine, sleeping by the roadside and dehorning bulls on the farms that took him in.
The road ended at the logging camps around Colebrook, New Hampshire, where he hired on as the cookee, the cook’s helper who fed the crew.
At night he sat with the old Frenchmen and learned to file saws. When the camps opened the next season, he came back with a saw of his own and went to work as a cutter.
From cutter he became a contractor, first with one horse and then a team. The horses would stay with him for years, long after the bulldozers came.
“Think about that for a moment. He trained horses to pull trees right up to the brush fires and stay calm while the embers flew. That takes a horse master.”
Before the dozers, Donat’s horses dragged the felled trees out of the woods. One horse, never a pair, so it could weave through the thick timber.
Unhitched at the pile, the horse would turn and walk right back to Donat.
For years the horses hauled diesel fuel and tires up and down the mountains.
The Colebrook camps
Loretta came south from Wallagrass, Maine, with two small children, looking for work. She found it at the Colebrook Motel, where the camp contractors did their hiring, and that winter she ended up in the same camp as Donat.
Donat took it on himself to look out for the three of them. He rocked the kids, and the two of them stuck by each other through the season. Come spring, everyone went their own way.
The next winter, the same faces came back to camp. That’s when it started.
Years later, with the business going strong, Loretta had the biggest heart around, always helping friends and neighbors with the rent, buying clothes for their kids, whatever anyone needed.
“They had no destination in mind. They just took off and ended up in Vermont.”
Vermont wasn’t new ground. By 1945 Donat was already cutting in the White River valley, where he and Henry “Skippy” Eaton ran one of the first chain saws in the valley.
The summer drive made it home. It ended near Stratton just as the new mountain needed cutters. Donat went on to run his own outfit, Dion Land Clearing, and lived in the Ludlow area for thirty years.
Field method, 1960s
No chippers, no cherry pickers, no road up the mountain. Just a crew of camp men, a few good horses and, before long, some of the first bulldozers in the state of Vermont.
Before a tree came down, Donat walked the acres and figured the job in his head. He’d left school young, but his math was exceptional. Good enough to win the bids.
Tools: boots · a pencil · a head for numbers
Hardwood on a steep slope was nothing like the pulpwood of the camps. Axes and crosscut saws came first. Later, Donat ran one of the first two-man chainsaws.
Tools: axe · crosscut saw · two-man chainsaw
Horses dragged the felled trees out, one at a time, through standing timber where no machine could go yet.
Tools: one horse · chain · singletree
Whole-tree chippers didn’t arrive until the 1970s, so nearly every land-clearing job of the day burned its brush. The crew tended the piles after dark, when the dew helped keep them in check.
Paid only once the slope was clear
Then came some of the earliest bulldozers in the state: gasoline John Deeres, and later a diesel Donat bought as soon as one came out. They were harder to start than the horses.
Tools: John Deere dozers · Murphy & Wilson
Then the lifts, the lodges and the skiers, most of whom never knew whose crew had been there first.
On to the next mountain
Filed by the family, from memory
Dion Land Clearing Ludlow · Vermont
Figures from family recollection · approximate
Trail survey · Vermont & N.H. · 1960 – 1970
If you’ve skied Vermont, you’ve skied his work.
No. 01 · Stratton, Vermont
Where it beganA summer drive with no destination brought Donat and Loretta here just as the new Stratton Corporation was looking for cutters. He went back to Colebrook for his horses and his camp men, and the mountain had ten trails cleared before its first winter.
No. 02 · Ludlow, Vermont
Started by a group of Ludlow businessmen in 1955, Okemo grew nearly every season through the 1960s with new expert runs, novice slopes and lifts. It was home ground for Donat, who lived in the Ludlow area for thirty years, and his obituary credits him as largely responsible for clearing the land for its ski trails.
No. 03 · Peru, Vermont
Fred Pabst Jr.’s mountain was already a classic by the time Donat came to Vermont, and it kept growing through the 1960s with new trails, glades and, later, the Snow Bowl. [A line on Donat’s work here.]
No. 04 · Plymouth, Vermont
Laid out by Sel Hannah and cleared in 1963–64, Round Top opened in March 1965. It later ran as Bear Creek and then Plymouth Notch. Donat’s obituary credits him as largely responsible for clearing the land for its ski trails.
No. 05 · Londonderry, Vermont
Swiss ski instructor Hans Thorner broke ground in the summer of 1960 with two slopes, a T-bar and a base lodge, and opened Magic that December. [A line on Donat’s work here.]
No. 06 · Newbury, New Hampshire
Across the river in New Hampshire, the state-run ski area opened in 1948 and kept expanding through the 1950s and ’60s. Donat began early work here. [A line on what his crew did.]
I-89 · I-91
And the highways that carried the skiers north. Donat’s crews worked the interstates alongside many contractors, all the way to the Canadian border. [More on the interstate years.]
Knapp · Colby
And the ponds. In the 1960s Donat cleared land for new ponds throughout Vermont for the Vermont Fish and Game Department, among them Knapp and Colby Ponds near Ludlow. Flowage clearing, as the door of his truck put it.
Ski-area dates and vertical drops: NewEnglandSkiHistory.com. Vertical drops are listed as of today.
Tyson, Vermont
Most homes still had no phone, so work came to Donat by word of mouth and through the Tyson General Store. Its keeper, Reggie Snow [confirm name], was the mailman, the plow man, the grocer, the firewood delivery and the place to buy a hunting license. Another piece of the real Vermont that history never wrote down.
Photos & film
Still being gathered The crew’s school-bus bunkhouse; Uncle Aulear, Charlie, Buckey and the crew; a John Deere from Murphy & Wilson; a job bid in Donat’s own hand; and Loretta with that year’s station wagon.
The 1970s · Alaska & after
Then came the gas crisis of the 1970s. Fuel ran short, prices climbed, and the clearing work that had kept his crews busy for years stalled almost overnight. It wasn’t only Donat: nearly every logging operation in Vermont went quiet at once.
So he did what he’d always wanted to do. He bought a new Jeep and headed for Alaska, planning on a year up north. By the time he came home, he figured, the fuel would be flowing again and the work would be waiting.
[What he found when he came back, and the years after.]
