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Company History 

Over the years, Lane Press has grown from a small letterpress operation with a handful of employees to a prominent magazine printer with 350 employees. It all began in 1904 when Frank Lane started the company as a small letterpress operation on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. In 1924, his son Ben Lane took over the company and its 12 employees. Known as a "job shop," Lane Press printed invoices, pamphlets, posters and other items for area businesses. In 1935, the company moved to the Kilburn and Gates building on St. Paul Street in Burlington. In the late 1950s, Oscar Drumheller bought the business from Ben Lane and continued to operate from the St. Paul Street location until 1987 when the company moved to its modern printing facility in South Burlington. Today the business runs successfully under the leadership of Mr. Drumheller's son, Philip, who serves as the company president. 

Lane Press Publishes Commemorative Book

A Celebration of Vermont Printers, 1904-2004, is available in both hard and soft cover. It may be ordered by sending an email to:  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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Celebrating a 100-year anniversary is a major milestone and Lane Press has published a book to commemorate the event. The book, A Celebration of Vermont Printers 1904 – 2004, recognizes Vermont printers and features interviews of 20 prominent contributors to the state’s printing industry, a history of printing techniques, and the changing role of technology during this time. “Putting ink on paper is one of the central acts of a civilized society,” the book begins. “For private messages, a pen will do. But for spreading public information—anything from advertising to sacred texts—printing has long been the medium that has joined the individuals in a culture.”

How important is printing to the Vermont economy?  Today there are 119 commercial printing businesses that employ more than 3,600 people with sales of more than half a billion dollars.

Authored by Chris Granstrom with oral histories by The Vermont Folklife Center and photography by Michael Sipe, the book is a compilation of stories and images that bring to life the important role printers play in the dissemination of information, our ideals, and the freedoms we enjoy as a result of the printing industry.

In the preface of the book, Philip Drumheller, president of Lane Press, says that more than anything else, this is a people story. “This is a story about families, fathers and sons, and a lot of great individuals, lively characters who make the story of printing in Vermont both appealing and engaging. The oral history interviews with noted printing professionals bring the printing history alive through the stories they tell.”

Rocky Stinehour, founder of Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, Vermont, spoke at length during his oral history interview about the role of technology in printing. “Printing has always been a technologically driven business, right from the get-go. I mean, putting those scribes out of business that were making those beautiful handmade books. There were books long before printing came along, and beautiful books, and great books, but printing did something. Printing was a tool and it took pens out of the hands of the scribes and they had to start setting type. The technology may change, but the book remains.”