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ith a sparsely attended Catholic church at one end and a Taco
Bell at the other, Benmont Avenue in Bennington, Vermont,
is representative of the hard times that have befallen many
American mill towns. This is not the scenic Vermont of postcards
but instead a hardscrabble part of town that features rows of low-
income housing, a couple of tire shops, and the dreary, hulking
mass of the former Holden-Leonard Mill building. Built in
1865 the imposing brick edifice now stands half empty, its last
manufacturing tenant having moved out in 2014.
The TrouT STream
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