St. Johnsbury is the largest town by population in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and has long served as a commercial center for the region.

The more densely settled southern one-third of the town is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as the St. Johnsbury census-designated place, where over 81% of the population resides.

An early settler was Jonathan Arnold, a member of the Continental Congress and author of Rhode Island's act of secession from the Kingdom of Great Britain in May 1776.

Arnold left Rhode Island in 1787 and, with six other families, built homes at what is now the town center.

[7] By 1790, the village had grown to 143 inhabitants, and the first town meeting took place in Arnold's home that year, where the name St. Johnsbury was adopted.

According to local lore, Vermont founder Ethan Allen himself proposed naming the town St. John in honor of his friend Jean de Crèvecœur, a French-born author and agriculturist and a friend of Benjamin Franklin.

According to this account, de Crèvecœur suggested instead the unusual St. Johnsbury to differentiate it from Saint John, New Brunswick.

With the arrival of the railroad line from Boston to Montreal in the 1850s, St. Johnsbury grew quickly and was named the shire town (county seat) in 1856, replacing Danville.

The oldest occupied residence in St. Johnsbury was built in 1798 and located on the corner of Summer and Central streets, attached to the J. J. Palmer house.

The Third Vermont Regiment drilled there prior to joining the Union Army during the Civil War.

[11] In the 1940s the town contained three major industrial companies, each then the largest of its type in the world.

One was Fairbanks Scales, another was a maple sugar candy company, while a third made candlepins for bowling.

[15] St. Johnsbury is on the site of the northernmost boundary of Lake Hitchcock, the post-glacial predecessor to the Connecticut River.

[17] The highest point in St. Johnsbury is an unnamed hill in the northwestern part of town east of Libby Road.

The U.S. Census Bureau refers to the most developed portion of the town as a census-designated place (CDP).

His donated collections remain northern New England’s most extensive natural history display, and the National Register-listed building is a splendid example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style.

[32] The town contains the only National Historic Landmark in the county, as well as the only one in the Northeast Kingdom - the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum.