NE Maple Museum is one sticky tourist trap

Author: Tamara Hilmes

If you are in search of Vermont's sweetest tourist destination, look no further than the New England Maple Museum just outside Rutland, Vt. on Route 7. This tiny waystation in the Vermont countryside offers a delectable mix of history, creepy mannequins, slideshows and - oh, yeah - maple syrup.

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Owner Tom Olson, a mechanical engineer by trade, was already working around 60 hours a week for the Vermont Marble Company when he decided to open a museum in tribute to the sugary industry, around which he had grown up. In 1977, Olson built the New England Maple Museum to house the various maple sugaring equipment and memorabilia.

"It started as just a hobby," said Olson. "My father did it as a hobbyist, and I just found the process of putting a hole in a tree and getting something so good out of it to be fascinating."

Olson began collecting maple-sugaring artifacts long before he built the museum in 1977. Over the past 30 years, he has continued to add to his collection of skimmers, kettles, paddles, scoops and molds.

"We try to make it more of a travel attraction than a museum," said Olson. "It's not like your museum up at the College - we don't have traveling exhibits that change all the time. For the most part, ours stay along the same theme, but we are always adding more to it."

This constant flow of new items into the museum adds to the eclectic ambiance that visitors witness as they walk through the turnstile and into the self-guided museum. Stuffed bears and moose wait to greet the new arrivals, along with a life-size photograph of deer in the woods that engulfs an entire wall in the first room. Old photographs depicting children playing with sap buckets and men in flannel leading teams of horses through the woods line the walls, along with plaques inscribed with maple-related rhymes.

Upon entering, the visitor is informed that "Maple syrup does not continuously flow from the tree into the can and onto the shelf." This sign hanging over a large stuffed grizzly wearing a flannel hat continues, "Upon completing the tour, you will better understand Vermont's oldest and most misunderstood agricultural commodity."

The museum certainly follows through on its promise of a history lesson. Any visitor to the various rooms inside the New England Maple Museum will find themselves amid a wealth of sweet knowledge. The museum is home to over 125 paintings created by Vermonters which illustrate the history of the industry. The building also houses the "largest collection of antique sugaring equipment that dates back over 200 years," according to a sign in one of the exhibit rooms. For instance, did you know that the process of collecting sap and boiling it down for sugar was actually used by the Abenaki Indians long before 1664, when British colonists first reported on the process?

The rooms of the museum proceed chronologically, with each threshold offering newer and more advanced tools of the trade. The Danforth Maple Collection - which consists of shelves upon shelves of antique metal maple sugar molds, sap spouts and tanks of all sorts - is followed by the "Sap to Syrup Machine" in the next room. Here the visitor can push the button and witness the process that sap undergoes before it is transformed into sticky sweet goodness.

"Here you see about 160 gallons per hour of two percent sweet sap entering the flue pan making only half a pint of syrup per minute," reads a sign sitting atop the dripping, bubbling and steaming contraption.

Finally, once visitor have read up on the health benefits of maple syrup and viewed a narrated slide show on the actual sugaring process, they make their way into the tasting room. Here, now-informed visitors are treated to samples of various maple products sold in the museum including Maple Leaf Cream Cookies, blended maple spread and crackers and, of course, an assortment of syrups.

"We are like a small grocery store," said Olson. "We have maple apple butter, maple mustard, maple drizzle and anything that could possibly have maple in it. It's a bold statement, but I would say that in the center part of the state, we are probably the largest seller of maple products."

Next to the tasting table sits a display of common maple syrups sold in most groceries stores along with the percentage of pure maple syrup in each. Syrups like Log Cabin and Mrs. Butterworth's have only two percent, whereas other brands contained none at all.

"Most people have grown up on this stuff," said museum employee Laura Goodrich, indicating the shelves of imposters. "They come here and get a taste of the real thing." Goodrich went on to explain that there are three grades of maple syrup - fancy, A and B. "I would recommend the medium A to most people. Some prefer the fancy for tea as it has a milder flavor, and B is mostly used in cooking."

Whichever grade you choose, you will not find anything but 100 percent pure Vermont maple syrup on the premises.

"Vermont syrup is the best," said Goodrich. "We purify it even more than say, New Hampshire. If we had a rank, it would be between us and Canada for number one."

The number of people stocking up on the real stuff in the museum's store proved that the difference in quality is obvious.

It's a staple," said Goodrich. "Everyone wants it. People come from Ohio - oddly enough - as well as the South and the Midwest. Just today two buses came through with over 50 people each."

One couple even came all the way from Seattle to taste the museum's sweet stores.

"AAA had it listed, and we were curious," said Doug Cameron who was traveling through Canada and New England with his wife Connie. "It's fascinating. The museum has made a real effort to create the best representation of maple sugar production, its history and materials. Also, it's what Vermont is famous for. When you think of Vermont, you think maple."

Apparently, the fame of Vermont's stickiest industry stretches beyond the North American continent.

"We even have buses coming in from England, Germany and Japan," said Olson. "We even had one group from England that did not get in until five o'clock one evening because they had to stop for tea at the Middlebury Inn. At one time we were keeping track, and we had people from 40 different countries visit the museum. It's wild. I just talked to a guy in the parking lot who said, 'You know, where I come from, steering wheels are on the opposite side.'"

While the influx of visitors to the museum and especially the gift shop keeps the museum afloat, Olson is just happy to be able to share his love of the industry with the world.

"We just want to educate people in the art of sugaring," said Olson.