WELCOME TO
GRANVILLE
Rolling green hills and lush forests surround a charming village with much to discover, making it an ideal place either to visit for a day or weekend, or stay for a lifetime. Granville boasts many opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, with parks, a recreation trail and the Mettawee River all within village borders.
ABOUT GRANVILLE
The town has long been considered the Colored Slate Capital of the World for its many stone quarries that produce a rare variety of colors, including green, gray, gray black, purple, mottled green and red. In addition to thriving industry, the Village of Granville has a bustling retail scene with both chain and specialty shops, a variety of eateries and professional services, as well as a rich cultural life with institutions like the Pember Library and Museum of Natural History and the Slate Valley Museum.
Granville is best known for:
Granville is best known for:
EXPLORE GRANVILLE
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
Pre-Settler
The St. Francis Native Americans, or Western Abenaki, appear to have frequented what is now the
town of Granville, having fished and hunted in the area for ages, finding here their best beavers.
1700s
While the town was founded in New York in 1780, by the next year, residents petitioned to place themselves under the jurisdiction of Vermont to ensure protection during the American Revolution. As a result, the border area between Vermont and New York was for a long time not clearly under control of either state.
1800s
Slate was discovered near Middle Granville around 1850, and the slate business really began to thrive a few decades later. At the time, slate was used for roofing of houses and barns, which you can still see today atop historical buildings like Harvard University’s Memorial Hall, which uses red slate from Granville.
Today
Today, the “Slate Valley” extends approximately 24 miles along the New York/Vermont border from Granville, NY north to Fair Haven, VT. Telescope Casual Furniture moved to Granville in 1921, where it still operates today.