What’s summer without a road trip? Every year, Brave Little State travels around Vermont to find the stories behind the road signs. But even with several years of investigations under our seatbelts, we’re still finding plenty of surprises.

This year, we looked into the stories behind Lake Willoughby, Hells Peak Road and Pumpkin Harbor Road.

You can find the web version of this story here. And psst — check out our new Brave Little State landing page, which, for the first time, has a searchable archive of all our past episodes.

Check out our previous brief histories of Vermont road names:

This episode was reported, produced, edited and mixed by Adiah Gholston, Burgess Brown, Samantha Watson and Sabine Poux. Our managing editor and senior producer is Josh Crane and our executive producer is Angela Evancie. Ty Gibbons composed our theme music. Other music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Thanks to this year’s question askers: Beverly Decker, Sarah Hazleton and John Finlay.

As always, our journalism is better when you’re a part of it:

Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.