It is not clear why it is spelled differently from the many other towns in the United States named after Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. Some say the "u" in "Mount" was accidentally dropped by a town clerk filling out official papers; some say the change was made deliberately to draw attention to the town; some say it uses the French spelling of "mont" as a nod to what was then the region's large French-Canadian population. According to town history, there was some dispute about how to spell the name as late as the 1920s, with the post office and one of its most prominent hotels using a "u" for many decades.