Meet the 83-year-old marina keeper preserving hundreds of years of Vermont history
ORWELL, Vt. (Aging Untold) — At one of the narrowest points on Lake Champlain, a piece of Vermont’s maritime past is still standing — and still in use. For more than 30 years, 83-year-old Pat Ullom and her son have run Chipman Point Marina. Chipman Point was once where “all the goods landed,” Ullom said. In the 1800s, the area was a busy maritime community close to New York state. The marina’s main stone building was built in 1810 and quarried from the property itself. Boats once unloaded cargo directly into the building through its doorways, and the second floor functioned “more like a grocery store.” Ullom said the beams inside are original to the building. “Yeah, yeah, I do that a lot,” Ullom said, when asked if she ever looks out at the water and imagines what the property looked like in 1810. Next to the 1810 stone building stands a structure built in 1824 that has operated as a…
