It began on Otter Creek in the early 19th
century as a small hamlet called Mill Village in Rutland, the surrounding town
named by Governor Benning Wentworth in 1761 after John Manners, 3rd Duke of
Rutland. In the early 19th century, small high-quality marble deposits were
discovered in Rutland, and in the 1830s a large deposit of nearly solid marble
was found in what is now West Rutland. By the 1840s, small firms had begun
excavations, but marble quarries proved profitable only after the railroad
arrived in 1851. At the same time, the famous quarries of Carrara in Tuscany,
Italy, grew largely
