Ask someone who lives here what makes a Peru or Landgrove summer, and you get the same short list every time. The general store on Main Street. The pond at the end of Hapgood Pond Road. The mountain off Route 11. The old inn tucked into the valley below Magic. Four doors. That is the whole map.
What is worth noticing this August is that three of those four doors are being repainted at the same time. The store is on the market. The inn has new owners and a tavern that is open to the public again. The mountain has a brand new headline attraction where the retired zip line used to be. Only the pond is running on the clock it has kept since the 1930s. That is the argument for treating this season a little differently than last one.
The pond is the constant
Hapgood Pond has a claim most locals know and most visitors do not: it was the first parcel of land acquired for what is now the Green Mountain National Forest. It is also, per the Forest Service, the Forest's only designated and managed swim beach, with a fishing pier on the south shore. The pond itself is about twelve acres and roughly twelve feet deep at its deepest, ringed by a one mile trail that starts in the day use area and runs to the dam.
The rhythms have not changed. The campground opens roughly mid May and closes mid October. Non motorized boats launch from the south end. There is no lifeguard. The bathhouse near the beach has flush toilets and showers. If you want the pond quiet, you already know the answer: weekday mornings, or the last hour before the day use gate crowd thins on a Sunday. For a summer in which almost every other anchor institution here is in some form of transition, the pond is the one that behaves exactly like it did in 2015 or 2005.
The general store just went on the market
On July 28, 2026, the historic JJ Hapgood General Store, established in 1827 and immortalized on screen in Baby Boom, was officially listed for sale following a revitalization that turned the nearly 200 year old landmark into one of Southern Vermont's most celebrated dining, retail, and community destinations. That is not a small piece of local news. Hapgoods is the closest thing Peru has to a town square with a roof over it.
Some context on why the current version exists at all. In 2023, Leslie and Michael French, together with their daughters Gramercy and Bowie, acquired the business with a vision of creating a gathering place for locals and visitors, then temporarily closed to renovate, rebrand, and refine operations before reopening with expanded breakfast, lunch, and dinner service. Since then the store has picked up a Diners' Choice Award, put a wood fired oven at the center of the menu, and built out a vintage vinyl and concert poster wall that has become its own draw.
For someone who already lives in Peru, the practical read is this. The listing does not close the doors. Operating hours through summer stay as posted: closed Monday and Tuesday, open Wednesday through Sunday, with the cocktail bar running Thursday through Saturday nights and full dinner service Thursday through Sunday from 5 to 9. What the listing does mean is that if there is a specific thing you associate with this era of Hapgoods, whether that is Utley Brook Farm beef burgers, pan roasted duck breast, or Moroccan spiced lamb shanks, or the Thursday cocktail hour on the patio, this is the summer to actually go get it rather than assume it will be there next July in the same form.
The Landgrove Inn opened a door that had been closed to the public
Under the previous ownership, the tavern at The Landgrove was largely a house amenity for staying guests and workshop attendees. That changed last fall. Under new ownership in November 2025, updates to the property include new beds, WiFi, expanded breakfast options with public service on Sundays 8 to 11am, new trails on the property, reopening of the tavern to the public, and a new menu in the restaurant. Bruce and Emily are the new owners, and reviews from spring 2026 point to a new chef, Angela, running the kitchen.
For a household that lives in Landgrove or the Peru side of the valley, that is a meaningful change to what a Thursday or Friday night can look like without driving. The Landgrove has a separate entrance for the restaurant and a separate one for the inn, and the 1840s Tavern adjacent to the restaurant is open to the public Thursday to Saturday nights for a drink before or after dinner. Restaurant seatings run 5:00 to 7:30pm, reservations by phone at 802-824-6673 or on Resy, with a menu that changes weekly. Sunday breakfast open to the public is the other quiet addition worth marking on a calendar.
A note for anyone who has walked or skied out from the inn before. The Landgrove sits on roughly twenty five acres with direct access to about 15 kilometers of nordic trail, which in July and August doubles as walking terrain that no one is on.
Bromley swapped a headline attraction
The summer operation at Bromley has been rebuilt around what is there now, not what used to be. The Sun Mountain Flyer, a half mile zip line that ran up to 50 miles per hour, was retired in 2024. In its place, the 2026 park is running Mountain Towers as a new climbing challenge, alongside the classic Alpine Slide, Giant Swing, Big Splash Waterslide, and mini golf on the base side, plus the Treetop Adventure Course with sixty five natural elements across five courses of increasing difficulty.
The schedule is worth memorizing if you have kids or visiting nieces in town. Bromley's Mountain Adventure Park runs weekends only May 23 to June 12, seven days a week June 13 to September 7, and weekends only September 8 to October 12, all 10:30am to 5:00pm. One useful line for locals: there is a Sunset Pass valid 3:00 to 5:00pm, which is the right ticket for the four thirty walk up after work when the day trip families are already packing coolers into the car. If someone in the family is staying over, Bromley Village Condos is running a 15 percent nightly discount with code BVSUMMER26 valid through 10/31.
One caveat that every parent here already knows and every out of town guest learns the hard way. Any moisture will force the Alpine Slide to close, including dew, drizzle, rain, and thunderstorms. Morning fog on the mountain in August is not unusual. Call ahead on a marginal day.
What a week actually looks like right now
Put those four doors together and the shape of a resident's week almost writes itself. This is not a tourist itinerary. It is what the week looks like if you already live here and want to use the season the anchors are running this year, before any of the three that are in transition change form again.
| Day | Anchor | What is actually open |
|---|---|---|
| Mon or Tue | Hapgood Pond | Quietest days of the week at the beach; Hapgoods and the Bromley park are both closed or weekends only in shoulder weeks |
| Wed | J.J. Hapgood | Breakfast and lunch only, kitchen closes at 3pm; good day for a store run without dinner crowd overlap |
| Thu | Landgrove tavern | First public tavern night of the week; Hapgoods cocktail bar also open |
| Fri | Bromley Sunset Pass | 3 to 5pm window at the Adventure Park, then dinner at Landgrove or Hapgoods |
| Sat | Bromley all day + Hapgoods dinner | Full park hours, cocktail bar, full dinner menu 5 to 9pm |
| Sun | Landgrove breakfast + Hapgood Pond | Public breakfast 8 to 11am at The Landgrove, then the pond before the afternoon builds |
The through line is that the season is unusually front loaded onto the middle of the week this year. Hapgoods being closed Monday and Tuesday, the Landgrove tavern only opening Thursday through Saturday, and Bromley running seven days through September 7 all point in the same direction. Wednesday and Thursday are the days that are least like a typical Vermont resort town week.
The quiet argument
None of this is a reason to move here. If you already live here, though, it is a reason to notice this specific summer. A store that has been the social hub of Peru since 1827 is in a transition window. An inn that had been effectively closed to walk in trade is now open three nights and one morning a week. A mountain that lost a headline ride two summers ago has replaced it. And the pond that predates all three of them is still doing exactly what it has done since the Green Mountain National Forest was assembled around it.
That combination is not going to hold for long. It never does.
If you own a home in Peru or Landgrove and are starting to think through what the next chapter looks like, whether that is refinancing, adding a rental unit, or eventually selling, Southern Vermont Realty Group tracks this corner of the valley closely. Get a Home Valuation whenever you are ready to see what your place looks like against the current market.
