Vermont's Orleans County isn't where most people go hunting for Amish country, but that's exactly what they'll find in Brownington. Until 2015, New England sat empty between New York's 26,000 Amish and Maine's 1,300. That year, the first families settled in this rural corner of Vermont, and a decade later the town of roughly 1,000 residents has quietly become the state's Amish heartland.

The appeal is obvious once you arrive. Brownington sits about half an hour south of the Canadian border, surrounded by farmland and forest along the Willoughby River, far from any city. It's the kind of place that suits a live-off-the-land lifestyle, and equally suits travellers after a slow, scenic escape.

There's more history here than the town's size suggests. Brownington once sat on the stagecoach route between Boston and Canada, and Orleans County's first road, the Hinman Settler Road, ran straight through it. The railroad's arrival in the mid-1800s pulled the region's energy elsewhere, which is partly why so much of the early village survives intact. In the Brownington Historic District you can see the Rice & Going Hotel from 1815, plus the preserved grammar school and Congregational Church tied to Alexander Twilight, the town's principal and pastor from 1829 to 1857. Twilight also won election to the Vermont General Assembly in 1836, making him the first Black member of any state legislature in the United States.

The centrepiece is the Old Stone House, built in 1836 as a school dormitory and turned into a museum in 1925. Guided tours run Wednesday through Sunday from roughly mid-May to mid-October; the rest of the village is free and open year-round, with a walking-tour brochure and the Twilight Education Trail's interpretive signs to guide you. The museum's calendar also throws in events like a September Fiber Faire, with quilting, knitting and basketry demonstrations.

Getting there takes commitment. Burlington is about two hours southwest by car, Montreal roughly 2.5 hours northwest, and there are no hotels in Brownington itself. But the drive, especially along Route 100, billed as Vermont's Main Street, is half the fun. Lake Willoughby, a glacial lake six miles southeast, has year-round lodgings like the WilloughVale Inn and Cottages, where Robert Frost's family once stayed, plus seasonal tent and RV camping at Will-O-Wood. Stowe's fall foliage and the Smugglers' Notch and Jay Peak ski areas are all within easy range if you want to build a longer trip.

For anyone who likes their New England with fewer tour buses, Brownington delivers: living Amish culture, an intact early-1800s village, and a lake-and-mountains setting that rewards travellers willing to drive a little further.