Wells River is a village in the town of Newbury in Orange County, Vermont, United States.

Canal boats guided by long poles floated downriver laden with lumber, clapboards and shingles, returning with goods such as iron, salt, rum and molasses.

[7] In the 1830s and 1840s, Jacob Kent Jr. was the proprietor of the Coosuck House, a well-known Wells River hotel.

In 1853–1854, the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad reached Woodsville, New Hampshire across the Connecticut River.

It built division offices and repair facilities, transforming that village into a booming railway town.

The line replaced the 1805 bridge over the narrows to Wells River with a two-level wooden span which combined a toll highway deck at the bottom of the truss, with railroad tracks on the roof.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of 2.0 square miles (5.1 km2), all of it land.