Ripton is a town in Addison County, of the Middlebury-Vergennes region. Originally named "Riptown" in its original charter during the last year of the Revolutionary War, the area was not settled for almost 20 years. Soon after the town was settled, the w was dropped.

A notable person from the area was the poet Robert Frost, who spent almost every summer and fall teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College, at its mountain campus in Ripton, Vermont. The college now owns and maintains his former Ripton farmstead as a national historic site near the Bread Loaf campus.

Bread Loaf is one of the best-known post offices in Vermont. It was first established in 1872 to serve the Bread Loaf Inn, built by Colonel Joseph Battell, a breeder of Morgan Horses and founder of The American Morgan Register. He later gave his farm to the U.S. government to continue breeding Morgans, which is now operated by the University of Vermont.