10/28/2026
Just ‘up the road’ and it has an unbeatable deck overlooking Lake Elmore!
For almost two hundred years, the only store in Elmore, Vermont has sat right where Route 12 meets the shore of Lake Elmore. Warren and Kathy Miller ran it for nearly four decades, the kind of place where the mail comes in the same door as the creemees go out. When Warren passed in 2020, neighbors could have let the lights go dark for good.
Instead they formed the Elmore Community Trust and set out to buy the building themselves. It took three different operators over three years and roughly half a million dollars in renovations, much of it built on in kind labor from people who just wanted their store back. 🏪
This July, Becca and Tim Lindenmeyr, who grew up right there in Elmore, reopened the doors for good. The Elmore Fire Department threw a cookout on the back deck. Four hundred chicken dinners, three hundred burgers and a couple hundred hot dogs, gone within hours. The floors are original. The view of the lake from the front counter is not new, it is just finally fixed up enough to stay.
What's the one small business in your town that everybody would show up to save?
