08/26/2026
She Walked Onto a Vermont Trail in 1946. Then She Vanished.
On December 1, 1946, 18-year-old Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden left campus for what was supposed to be a simple afternoon hike.
She had told her roommate she was going for a walk and left Bennington College around 2:30 p.m. She eventually hitchhiked toward the Long Trail near Glastenbury Mountain.
Around 4 p.m., other hikers encountered Paula near the trail. She asked them about the route and continued walking. It was already getting late, and darkness was approaching.
No one knew that this would be the last confirmed sighting of her.
Paula never returned to her dorm that night.
The following morning, her roommate reported her missing, and an enormous search began. Students, faculty, volunteers, firefighters, National Guard personnel and others searched the surrounding wilderness. Despite the effort, investigators found no trace of Paula.
Then the theories began.
Some wondered whether Paula had become lost in the mountains. Others questioned whether she had intentionally left Vermont. Investigators followed reports of possible sightings in other states, but those leads failed to produce answers.
The case also exposed serious problems with Vermont's law-enforcement system at the time. The investigation was heavily criticized, and Paula's disappearance became one of the events that helped drive the creation of the Vermont State Police in 1947.
But Paula herself was never found.
No confirmed explanation has ever established what happened after she entered the Long Trail.
She was 18 years old.
She walked into the Vermont wilderness on a December afternoon.
And somewhere along that trail, she simply disappeared.
More than 79 years later, her fate remains unknown.
Did Paula become lost in the wilderness, encounter someone along the trail, or leave voluntarily?
The evidence has never provided a definitive answer.
