Agriculture is a key component of Pownal’s history that informs the pastoral legacies and rural character of the town. Although there are only a few functioning farms remaining, Pownal has a history of a successful sheep-raising industry. In the 1830s when a French diplomat in Portugal sent back Merino sheep, which commenced the sheep boom of the 1840s. Suited for the hilly, grassy landscape of Pownal, there were about six sheep to one resident in 1840, on par with Vermont state. Though the sheep boom was short lived, it reshaped the landscape of Pownal, and Vermont more generally, through the cutting down of forests and erection of stone walls that still stand today. After the Civil War, sheep raising declined significantly, and no commercial sheep raising businesses exist in Pownal today, though few sheep still roam around.

Joseph Parks, Pownal: A Vermont Town’s Two Hundred Years And More (Hoosick Falls: A—B Graphic Art Service, 1977).