Coming in April and now available to preorder

The Vermont Historical Society is pleased to announce When the Trees Came Back: The Great Battle to Save Vermont’s Forests by Robert Mello. This book explores the long campaign to reverse the deforestation that decimated Vermont’s ancient forests after the arrival of settlers in the mid-1700s.

Robert Mello is a retired Vermont Superior Court judge and is also the author of Moses Robinson and the Founding of Vermont (published by the Vermont Historical Society in 2014) and Last Stand of the Red Spruce (Island Press, 1988).

Here’s the description:

Although long recognized as the “Green Mountain State,” Vermont’s hillsides were once nearly completely bare. By the 1880s, unsustainable logging and farming practices had decimated its once-dense forests, with enormous environmental consequences.

When the Trees Came Back: The Great Battle to Save Vermont’s Forests tells the story of how a group of dedicated advocates, citizens, and lawmakers turned the tide at the dawn of the 20th century. It explains how their efforts contributed to the remarkable recovery of Vermont’s forests and provides lessons for protecting our forests in an uncertain future.  

When the Trees Came Back will be released on April 21st, in conjunction with Arbor Day 2026 and will retail for $24.95. It’s now available to preorder from our bookstore, and it will also be available from local bookstores around the state and on Amazon.com. It will also be available as an eBook ($9.99) from select online retailers.

VHS Board of Trustees president Jan Albers says: “Mello has written an engaging book telling the important story of the return of the trees, examining the economic, environmental, and aesthetic forces that favored reforestation. This is the kind of book the Vermont Historical Society does such a good job of sharing with Vermonters—insightful, well-researched, and well-written history that enriches our understanding of the landscapes we share in this special place.”

Publications editor Alan Berolzheimer says: “Many Vermonters know the statistic that the state was 75% deforested around the turn of the 20th century and is 75% forested today, but very few know the details of how that happened. Once again, Bob Mello has brought his prodigious research and narrative skills to an understudied but very significant topic. In Moses Robinson and the Founding of Vermont, he highlighted a major player in Vermont’s founding story. In When the Trees Came Back, he focuses on the remarkable story of the long struggle to reclaim Vermont’s forests after generations of deforestation. Mello’s new book illuminates this history in scintillating detail.”

When the Trees Came Back has received praise from author and activist Bill McKibben, who says that “it is so good to have an account of the resurrection of the forests of Vermont—one of the fairly few hopeful stories on a planet that’s mostly turned brown in the last century!”

Ethan Tapper, author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World called it a “must read for historians and forest lovers alike,” and describes the book as “the most comprehensive account of the history of Vermont’s forests ever published.”

Michael Snyder, the former commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation, and author of Wood Whys: An Exploration of Forests and Forestry called the book: “an impressive achievement.” And that it is “a deeply researched and compelling account of one of Vermont’s most consequential—and least appreciated—environmental stories…. This book offers not only a clearer understanding of Vermont’s forest history since European settlement, but also a thoughtful perspective on stewardship, resilience, and the long-term consequences of how we treat the land.”

This book joins a diverse body of publications from the Vermont Historical Society, which including the recently-released Green Mountain Quartet: Essays on Antiquarian Vermontiana by J. Kevin Graffagnino, Winters’ Time: A Secret Pledge, a Severed Head, and the Murder That Brought America’s Most Famous Lawyer to Vermont by Jeffrey Amestoy, Life Became Very Blurry: An Oral History of COVID-19 in Vermont, edited by Garrett M. Graff, Ira Allen: A Biography by J. Kevin Graffagnino, and many others. You can find more details about these titles here.

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