FARMLAND MATTERS: Vermont residents fight to protect working land threatened by sprawl.

Vermont's 1-89 boasts many beautiful views along its 191 miles, but one of its most scenic vistas lies at Exit A in Randolph. As you leave the highway, the road opens to reveal nearly 200 acres of lush farm fields sloping down to a valley of dense trees, with mountains cascading to the horizon.

It's an iconic Vermont image, one that inspired Milo Cutler to make her home here more than 20 years ago. "I saw this gorgeous view and the whales' tails," she recalls, referring to a granite sculpture of two 13-foot-tall whale tails rising out of the grass in the valley, "and I've been here ever since."

Having grown up in a small town in Ohio, Cutler appreciated the way of life in a rural community. But she had seen her hometown change drastically during her childhood. "It grew and grew, with strip mall after strip mall," she says. "There's no community anymore. It's really Anywhere, U.S.A."

So when word got around in 2015 that a developer planned to pave over that iconic vista to build a hotel, a conference center, housing, and an industrial park, she and other residents were concerned. "To pave over 170 acres with industry--I saw it happen in Ohio, and it destroyed the town."

There was no question that Randolph, with its historic downtown, could use an economic boost. But the 1.15-million-square-foot development was out of scale for the small village of barely 4,800 people. "Having a hotel at an interstate exit with minimum wage jobs is not what's going to make a town prosper," she says. And the 250 homes proposed? "There were well over 100 houses on the market in Randolph, so that was not anything that the town needed, either."

What's more, Randolph is located in one of Vermont's most rural counties, and its agricultural soils are rated as some of the highest quality in the state. With farmland under increasing pressure from development, farmers in the community were understandably worried about losing prime acreage.

One night soon after learning about the proposal, about 20 residents, Cutler among them, gathered in a local living room to talk about what they could do to fight it. "We didn't know if we could stop this development or not," says David Hurwitz, who, with Cutler, became a spokesperson for the group. "But we did know that as citizens of this community, we wanted to have our voices heard."

At first, the group wasn't taken seriously, as the development proposal already had the zoning permits and other town-level approvals it needed. "A...