MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The Vermont Board of Libraries has approved a Hubbardton man’s suggestions for two new place names in Rutland County.

Don Sondergeld had petitioned the state panel responsible for assigning place names in Vermont to attach an official moniker to a ridge behind the Revolutionary War site of the Battle of Hubbardton, suggesting that it be called Pittsford Ridge.

He said that would be in keeping with unofficial local custom and with a children’s book about the only Revolutionary War battle fought entirely within Vermont, “The Captive of Pittsford Ridge.”

He also noted that a history of the battle by John Williams, called “The Battle of Hubbardton, The American Rebels Stem the Tide,” made reference to Pittsford Ridge.

The board also approved a second place name suggested by Sondergeld: He had asked that the highest peak in Hubbardton, a 2,006-foot hill near the town’s southeast corner, be called Griswold Peak, after a family that owned the peak and surrounding land for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

“It seemed to me that the highest point in Hubbardton ought to have a name,” Sondergeld said this week.

Someone seeking to get something officially named must collect 25 signatures on a petition and submit the request in writing to the Board of Libraries. Natural features, roads and bridges can be named using this process. The board prefers historical names and will not name things for living people.

While the request is pending, the Department of Libraries usually does its own research, including talking with local officials, and the board holds a public hearing.

Sondergeld, a former actuary and editor of the Hubbardton Historical Society’s newsletter, said Griswold Peak and Pittsford Ridge were his second and third suggestions for place names that were adopted by the Board of Libraries. “I’m three for three,” he said with a laugh.

The Connecticut native said he began coming to Vermont as a young man in the mid-1950s to ski at Mad River Glen in Warren. He and his friends had a tradition that when they reached Granville Gulf on Route 100, near the end of their journey north, they would get out of the car and “hoot and holler as young people will.”

He later bought property on Lake Beebe in Hubbardton. Traveling north to reach that destination, he would travel through Proctorsville Gulf near Ludlow. That prompted him to think that what he called a particularly beautiful stretch of Route 30 in Hubbardton south of Lake Beebe should be named Hubbardton Gulf.

A friend suggested he petition for official approval of that name, and Sondergeld did so successfully. When it came time to ask for official designations for Griswold Peak and Pittsford Ridge, “I knew the drill,” he said.

AP-ES-09-16-04 1728EDT