The Shelburne Museum was created by Electra Webb, who did sit on top of the world. The wealthy daughter of Sugar King Henry Havemeyer, she grew up in a house full of the work of the old masters and Europe's new impressionists. Surrounded by such paintings, she wondered about the lack of interest shown the art of her own country. Although she had pleased her mother by buying a Goya with her first allowance, she startled the family a few months later by returning from a local trip with a new purchase, a life-size cigar-store Indian she had bought for $25. The more her family protested her taste, the more determined Electra became. The museum at Shelburne began to take shape in 1947, after she had used her tremendous inherited wealth to amass one of the world's greatest collections of Americana.

One of Electra's earliest amusements had been dolls, an interest sparked when her grandmother made pearl-studded satin dresses for her doll collection. Somehow, the idea took hold in Mrs. Webb's mind that the way to exhibit her many collections was in dollhouses built on a human scale. She searched for authentic old dwellings throughout Vermont and brought them piece by piece to Shelburne. Finally she had homes for the accumulations of her lifetime: carousel figures and carvings, duck decoys and drawings, trade signs and toys, cigar-store Indians and American eagles, Chippendale furniture and French wallpaper, Oriental rugs and homemade quilts, dog sleds, game trophies, carriage collections, sewing machines, music boxes, penny banks, maritime prints, wooden puppets and polo trophies.

The Shelburne Museum, "a historical fairyland," is the most popular tourist attraction in Vermont. It even has been accepted by the local farmers though they were initially skeptical about its value. Mrs. Webb, learning that the last of the double-lane covered bridges in the state was to be torn down by the highway department, bought the bridge and created a need for it by digging out a large lily pond on her estate. She was sitting in her car one day watching workmen assemble the 168-foot structure when a passing Vermont farmer stopped for a moment.

"You know this Mrs. Webb?" he asked.

"Yes, I do," she replied.

"Crazy, ain't she?" the Vermonter said. "Durned sight cheaper to fill in that pond than build this here bridge.

Fortunately for America, this far-sighted woman disagreed.