LINK and Caledonia Bike Works partnership supports biking in St. Johnsbury
Walking into a Caledonia Bike Works in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, with a groovy sign over the door, it’s not surprising that you would encounter a wall full of bikes. What could be surprising is that they were donated to LINK Vermont, a local nonprofit, to be refurbished and sold at an affordable price.
“What we try to do is make biking more accessible to everyone in the community,” said John Raser, LINK Vermont, a local cycling-focused nonprofit. “We accept bike donations, fix up bikes and sell the bikes at an inexpensive cost so that somebody — rather than going to a big box store, getting a cheap bike to last a season or two — can get a quality bike at a low cost and get out on the trails or the road.”
LINK’s model works in large part because it shares a space with Caledonia Bike Works, owned by Paxton Anderson and Ryan Murphy, who met volunteering with LINK. Raser noted the partnership with the shop allows people to donate or purchase a bike anytime the shop is open, as well as allow LINK to host open DIY sessions for people to come in to repair their own bikes.
“The mission is really just to have our work directly serve the community that we live and work in,” Anderson said. “So many friends of ours are riding bikes that weren’t before — people who the last time they rode bikes, the bikes had streamers.”
Raser noted bikes can be expensive, and the price tag can be daunting for someone who wants to get into the sport, simply get around town, go to school, try gravel, or hit the rail trail with the kids.
It’s a mission the Northern Forest Center helped support through their community recreation grant program, made possible in part thanks to L.L.Bean, in which the Center helped fund the purchase of helmets and locks for a bicycle lending library LINK established in St. Johnsbury that is now being housed at RecFit St. J, a community recreation and fitness center.
Opportunities abound for cycling in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The eastern terminus of the 95-mile Lamoille Valley Rail Trail is downtown, the Caledonia Trail Collaborative maintains several mountain biking trails within walking distance in the St. Johnsbury Town Forest, with even more are just a short drive away in Danville, and world-renowned Kingdom Trails is less than a half-hour away.
Caledonia Bike Works co-owner Paxton Anderson works on a tire at the shop.
“People have a strong desire to commute within the community,” Anderson said. “The rail trail is a huge [draw]. People come to the area to ride the rail trail. I think that the existing mountain bike community [helps], there are fantastic trail networks. Then the massive increase in popularity of people who want to ride gravel. Vermont, anyone you ask, has some of the best gravel in the world, so a lot of people are coming here. More and more this has become a destination.”
But there was also a void within the community for bike services. Those who needed a repair would have to travel 20 miles away. So, Anderson developed the business plan for Caledonia Bike Works a couple of years ago, receiving assistance from Amy Robinson, the Northern Forest Center’s business innovation advisor. But it wasn’t until 2026 that the timing was right to launch and fill that void within St. Johnsbury with a bike shop, which now resides in an old commercial bakery.
Ryan Murphy works on a bike at Caledonia Bike Works.
Murphy noted that the community has welcomed the shop and the partnership with LINK.
“There seems to be a lot of word-of-mouth getting people here,” Murphy said. “Like that’s the best way for someone to find out about you that you can ask for because it means that somebody else was already happy enough with you to provide [a recommendation].”
He said he’s excited about the next biking season for the shop, looking to expanding into rentals and new bike sales. He’s also excited about what is to come for the biking community in St. Johnsbury.
“I was just in Montreal, and it’s an entirely different scale up there. The amount of cycling infrastructure and the amount of people riding truly for transportation was mind-boggling,” Murphy said. “In America, especially rural areas, it’s about making things more bikeable and safer to bike. That can take a lot of shapes, whether it’s bike lanes or advocacy. In that aspect, we can only up to go from here.”
Elevating Outdoor Recreation
The outdoor recreation economy has been a key driver in the Northern Forest for generations and continues to attract visitors and residents eager to explore the region’s mountains, rivers, lakes, trails, and communities. It involves respect for the natural environment, for local people and culture, and a willingness by all users to engage in the places and communities they recreate.
