By Greg Carpenter
Oddities are a part of human life, and the town of Charleston is not immune to them. Take the only lake found in town – Echo. (The other four waters – Charleston, Mud, Pensioner, and Toad are all categorized as ponds and not as lakes.) Just 138 miles from here lies a body of water with an identical lake name to the one here in East Charleston. Odd, isn’t it? Why would Vermont have two lakes with the same name? How did this come about? I was curious, so I looked to the history books and a few experts to get some answers.
The other lake I was referring to is Echo Lake in Plymouth, Vermont, which is located in Windsor County. The answers to my questions would be simple if the names of both lakes had always been that way – but as it turns out, this was not the case. For a considerable length of time, Echo-Plymouth was referred to as Plymouth Pond. Why? According to April Shaw from the Vermont Department of Libraries, “This change may have coincided with the renaming of the town of Plymouth in 1797.” Before that time, Echo was referred to as Black River Pond, which had two other bodies of water –that name originated back in 1796. Sometime in the late 20s to early 30s, Plymouth Pond was divided into two sections by campers using the lakes. According to author Esther Swift in her book Vermont Place Names, the northern section became known as Lake Amherst due to the large number of educators summering there from Amherst College in
Massachusetts. The southern section became Echo Lake, and for the same reason, Echo-Charleston was named by James Whitelaw due to the exceptional way sound travels across the lake. As to who named Echo-Plymouth, I asked Midge Tucker from the Plymouth Historical Society for the answer – unfortunately, she came up empty. Echo Lake in Charleston also did not always have the same name. Echo Pond stood as the official name for almost 200 years. Echo Pond wasn’t officially changed to Echo Lake until sometime between 1982 and 1983, even though locals had been calling it Echo Lake prior to that time.
Sources: Swift, Esther M, Vermont place names. The National Survey. 1977
Duffy, John, Hand, Samuel, Orth, Ralph, Ed’s, The Vermont Encyclopedia
Tucker, Midge Plymouth Historical Society
Shaw, April Librarian, Vermont Department of Libraries