Ceres (Vermont State House dome statue)

The figure crowning Vermont's golden dome has been replaced twice, so the Ceres you see over Montpelier today is the third. The Roman goddess of agriculture has topped the State House since 1858, when Brattleboro sculptor Larkin Mead designed the first statue, according to VTDigger and Vermont Public. The Vermont Historical Society dates Mead's statue to 1859 instead. Vermont Public reports it was carved from pine and rotted out by the late 1930s. In 1938 the State House sergeant-at-arms, Dwight Dwinell, carved a replacement that stood for 80 years, the Historical Society says. Vermont Public reports it was taken down in April 2018.

The third Ceres arrived on Friday 30 November 2018. VTDigger and Vermont Public reported that a crane lowered the nearly 15-foot figure onto the freshly gilded dome while hundreds of people watched. Jerry Williams of Montpelier made a quarter-scale model based on Mead's original, and Chris Miller of Calais spent four months carving the full-size statue from laminated Honduran mahogany at the Vermont Granite Museum in Barre, where the public could watch the work. Miller told Vermont Public he wanted to honor the earlier craftsmanship by working largely by hand, using some of the same tools that had been used in 1858.