The town constructed a broad road for its main street on a stretch of level land.

[3] In 1828 attorney George Kimball helped organize building the town's Congregational church.

He was among the New England abolitionists who founded Noyes Academy in March 1835, one of the first schools in the region to admit students of all races.

On August 10, 1835, five hundred white men from Canaan and nearby towns used "nearly 100 yoke of oxen" to pull the building off its foundation, then burned it.

Fearing for their safety, the black students left town, as did Kimball, who moved to Alton, Illinois.

[4] Canaan Union Academy was built on the site and was limited to white students; it operated for the next 20 years.

[3] After the academy's closing, residents sympathetic to fugitive slaves operated a station of the Underground Railroad to help the people reach Canada or settle in New England.

Four miles west of Canaan Station, the southbound Quebec to Boston express, crowded with passengers returning from the Sherbrooke Fair, collided head-on with a northbound Boston & Maine freight train.

Mount Cardigan, overlooking Canaan village, lies to the east in the neighboring town of Orange.

The highest point in Canaan is the top of an unnamed ridge (approximately 2,270 feet (690 m) above sea level) in the northeastern corner of town, overlooking Derby Pond.