Cambridge was granted by Thomas Chittenden in 1780 and chartered on August 13, 1781, then first settled by John Stafford in 1783, when his nearest neighbor was 20 miles away in Jericho and the nearest road was Hazen Rd in Craftsbury. The town was officially organized on March 29, 1785, and its many rivers and streams supported early mills, including the first saw mill in 1785 and the first grist mills in 1791. As the town developed, it drew millers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, tailors, wheelwrights, harness makers, and other skilled trades, while its landscape also favored farming and maple sugaring, and local farmers became known for their butter. In 1827 the first post office was built in the center village and named Jeffersonville after President Jefferson, and later post offices in North Cambridge, East Cambridge, Pleasant Valley, and Cambridge Junction reflected place names still used today, with the Cambridge Junction post office established in the train station in 1892. Transportation routes expanded with the first arched bridge built by Enoch Carleton and Joseph P. Hawley in 1832 and the road through Smugglers' Notch begun in 1867 and completed in 1883, while the population reached 1,790 by 1840. Rail service transformed Cambridge in the late 1800s: a charter for a railroad from St. Johnsbury to New Hampshire was obtained in 1864, the project was advanced in 1867 with investment from the Fairbanks family, and Governor Fairbanks drove the last spike in July 1877 on the completed 96 mile line. In 1874 Cambridge agreed to aid construction of a rail line from Lake Champlain in Burlington to a point in Cambridge to connect with the Lamoille Valley Railroad, and both the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad and the Burlington and Lamoille Railroad passed through the town. Work on Union Station at Cambridge Junction began on September 4, 1886, by the Burlington and Lamoille and the Vermont division of the Boston and Lowell Railroads, and the original station included a waiting room, ticket room, and post office on the first floor while William Thomas and his family lived on the second floor. In the 1800s Cambridge Junction was also an important railroad junction where the Vermont division of the Portland and Ogdensburg met the Burlington and Lamoille Railroad, and residents of Waterville and Belvedere sought a shorter route to the trains by way of a bridge. Cambridge opposed the project, but Luke P. Poland of Waterville, a lawyer and former Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, Representative, and Senator, pursued it in retirement and won a judgment ordering the town to build a bridge and connecting road. On June 8, 1887, the town voted to have Selectmen Charles Holmes, Jason French, and Roscoe Fuller construct the bridge at a cost of $6,000-10,000, George W. Holmes began construction in September 1887, and the structure was named the Poland Bridge, though some taxpayers derisively called it the Bridge of Sighs; Poland died in his hayfield the following July before he could use it.