West Pawlet, originally known as Mark's Corners and possibly named after Ira Marks, who ran a starch factory on the Indian River in 1843, became the center of activity in the town of Pawlet during the second half of the 19th century after the railroad arrived in 1851. The sheep craze in Vermont had begun in 1809 when William Jarvis sent a flock of Merino sheep to the state, and by 1812, British tariffs on wool during the War of 1812 had prompted West Pawlet to develop a woolen mill to manufacture cloth and a fulling mill to clean and tighten the weave. After the war, those tariffs were lifted, Vermont's wool economy collapsed, and West Pawlet's woolen mills closed. In 1864, Consider Bardwell built the first cheese factory in Vermont south of West Pawlet, using the nearby depot to ship cheese, and he also helped establish a quarry worked by two Welshmen from Granville beginning that same year. The Rising and Nelson operation became the major slate company and dominated the landscape of West Pawlet. In 1896, a disastrous fire, thought to have started in the Layden and Burdick drugstore building where a family lived on the second floor, destroyed most of the commercial buildings at the intersection; at least eight buildings burned in the small business area, all but one on the east side of the rail trail. The railroad continued to boost West Pawlet's economy by shipping slate and serving other businesses, including an automobile dealer operating from a concrete garage built in 1920 opposite the tracks from the business blocks, but although an elaborate railroad station was built about 1905, competition from the automobile in the early 20th century brought a decline from which railroads never recovered.