The town of Rutland (town), VermontRutland was originally granted in 1761 as one of the New Hampshire Grants and named after Rutland, Massachusetts, the home of the first grantee, John Murrey. It was one of the most successful of those grants because of the excellent farmland and gentle topography. In the early 1800s, small high-quality marble deposits were discovered in Rutland, and in the 1830s a large deposit of nearly solid marble of high quality was found in what is now West Rutland. By the 1840s small firms had begun operations, but marble quarryquarries only became profitable when the railroad came to Rutland in 1851. As fate would have it, the famous quarries of Carrara, ItalyCarrara in Tuscany, Italy, became largely unworkable because of their extreme depth at the same time, and Rutland quickly became one of the leading producers of marble in the world. This fueled enough growth and investment that in 1886 the marble companies saw to it that the present Rutland City was incorporated as a village, most of the town was split off as West Rutland and Proctor, Although the closing of the marble quarries in the area in the 1980s and 1990s cost the town many jobs, West Rutland has attracted artists and families looking for a semi-rural lifestyle. West Rutland is a very rural town. Most of its economy is supported by the city of Rutland, Vermont. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Rutland%2C_Vermont