THE town of Goshen, situated on the southern boundary of Addison county, is bounded on the north by Ripton, on the east by Hancock and Rochester, south by Chittenden, and on the west by Brandon, Leicester and Salisbury. The town was granted by New Hampshire on the 23d of February, 1782, though the charter was not obtained until February 2, 1792. It entitled John Powell, William Douglass and sixty-three others to 13,000 acres. A new charter was granted on the 1st of November, 1798, by which two gores lying in Caledonia county, seventy miles away, containing respectively 2,828 and 7,339 acres, were added to the original territory, thus forming a disunited township containing 23,167 acres. The inhabitants soon began to realize, however, that either of the gores might properly be organized into a separate town and enact proceedings which could not be invalidated. Accordingly, the Legislature soon passed an act legalizing the organization of the 13,000 acres into a township. The gores in Caledonia county nominally belonged to Goshen until 1854, when they were severed from it by the Legislature. On the 9th of November, 1814, eleven thousand acres from the north part of Philadelphia were annexed to Goshen, and on the 1st of November, 1820, the north part of this town was annexed to Ripton. The next and last change was effected on the 10th of November, 1847 by the annexation of a part of this town to Rochester.
The surface of the town is high and rocky, being contained wholly within the bosom of the Green Mountains. The geological formation is principally gneiss and quartz rock, while iron ore and the oxide of manganese exist to some extent. There are, nevertheless, many valleys in Goshen, with alluvial soil easily susceptible of cultivation, on which are raised considerable quantities of wheat, oats, rye, buckwheat, Indian corn, potatoes and hay. The industry of the town is almost wholly agricultural, and is devoted chiefly to the dairy and wool-growing interests. Large quantities of maple sugar are also made annually, the maple having an extensive growth here. The other varieties of timber are pine, hemlock, spruce, oak, beech and birch, the deciduous trees prevailing.
Sucker Brook and Mill Brook constitute the chief drainage, the former rising in the northeastern part of the town and following a westerly course into Salisbury, while the latter rises near the central part and flows northwesterly into the town of Brandon. These streams, with their tributaries, also afford a number of good mill privileges.