On August 3, 1973, Bear Pond Books first opened its doors in downtown Montpelier. If you were there, you are thirty-five years older, and like us, have lived in two centuries, which must make us all infinitely wiser (or so we hope). Through those three + decades, we have weathered two floods, a major vandalism during our busy holiday season, and a move in 1992 to a larger space in the stately historic brick building at 77 Main St. We would not still be here without the support of all of you, our wonderful and loyal customers. You served us hot soup and helped us inventory water-logged books after the One Hundred Year Flood in 1992. You set up a phone chain to put a call out for people to come help us put the store back together after the vandalism in 1988. You came in full force to help us pack and carry thousands of books across the street to our new store, and you even helped put them back on their new shelves. You kept us heartened with your appreciative calls, letters and e-mails when we decided to remove the titles purchased by customers from our records-in defiance of the chilling violation of First Amendment rights represented in the Patriot’s Act. And in October 2003, hundreds of you put on your dancing shoes and helped celebrate our 30th birthday at a dance party at City Hall in a joint celebration with our wonderful business compatriots, Buch Spieler and Onion River Arts Council, both of whom also turned 30 in 2003. Thank you, everyone, for everything.

Claire Benedict and Robert Kasow purchased Bear Pond Books from long-time owners Michael Katzenberg and Linda Prescott at the beginning of October 2006.
Claire and Rob have owned Rivendell Books across the street since 2002. Rob continues to work at Rivendell, while Claire is at Bear Pond Books. Claire said at the time of the sale: “you won’t see a lot of changes at Bear Pond, we bought the store because we love it just the way it is!” The physical store remains much the same but one big change is the update of our on-line presence–we want to be here for you even if you don’t live in the area or can’t make it into the store.

BEAR POND STAFF:

Top: Rob. First Row: Mary, Suzanne(in paper), Patty, Chris.  Second Row: Tom, George, Jane, Lynn.  Bottom row: Claire, Amanda, Pat L-S.