Partygoers Trash Icon Poet's Abode

Dec. 31, 2007 — -- The Vermont farm called home by iconic American poet Robert Frost during his later years doubled Friday night as the site of a raucous underage party, authorities told ABC News.

And the historic landmark took quite a beating.

Revelers destroyed dozens of items inside the Homer Noble Farm in rural Ripton, Vt., a property purchased by Frost the year after his wife died in 1939. Wicker furniture was smashed and tossed into a fireplace to generate heat, Vermont State Police spokesman Sgt. Lee Hodsden said, and tables, chairs, windows, dish ware and light fixtures all were targeted by partygoers.

"It was an underage drinking party with a lot of alcohol and drug use," Hodsden said, describing a scene that included vomit in the living room, a pair of discharged fire extinguishers and plastic cups left over from a drinking game. "Apparently, they play a game called beer pong. That's what all the cups were for."

Authorities have made no arrests, but say that the investigation is ongoing and that as many as 50 people may have been inside the house Friday night, Hodsden said. An abandoned car found in a snowbank near the farm was traced to a 17-year-old, he said, who may help police determine who was responsible for throwing the party.

Frost's farm, which is owned and maintained by nearby Middlebury College, is located on a dead end off Route 125 — also known as Robert Frost Memorial Drive — in Vermont.

The intruders apparently gained access to the house by breaking one of the windows in the two-story farmhouse, a fully furnished residence that, in the summer, is open to the public. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet lived in the Homer Noble Farm for the majority of the year, each year after his wife's death in the late 1930s, to his own death in 1963. He lived at the house while attending and teaching at the college's Bread Loaf School of English each summer.

The damage was discovered by a hiker, Saturday, who alerted the public safety office at Middlebury College. Authorities say the cabin's caretaker had last been at the house Friday morning.

"Some of this stuff is irreplaceable," Hodsden said, estimating that the house suffered at least $5,000 in damages. "It was bad."

Frost won four Pulitzer Prizes for his poems. In 1961, at age 86, Frost spoke at the inauguration of President Kennedy. He died in 1963 and was buried at the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vt.