New England Ghost Towns
Information on my book, Solomon Northup: His Life Before and After Slavery
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Adventures in Hiking
by David Fiske (
)
I developed an interest in abandoned places in New England after seeing a television segment in the 1970s which described a book called Abandoned New England. This book, by William F. Robinson, describes many abandoned places in the New England states. In addition to providing historical background on some of the places, locations and listings of structural remains are proviced for most of the sites.
An earlier book, Fessenden S. Blanchard's Ghost Towns of New England: Their Ups and Downs (1960), is an excursionary guide to abandoned places, and is partly a local history of the places covered, and partly a travel journal.
Both books are long out of print, though copies may be available at libraries or through the used book market.
Some of these abandoned places were settlements, some were military installations, and others were industrial sites. The reasons for the demise of such places are varied: sometimes a farming settlement died out due to low agricultural yields; mills, mines, or quarries suffered from exhaustion of natural resources or economic changes; military forts outlived the purposes for which they were constructed.
An example of a failed industrial site is Furnace Grove, on the eastern outskirts of Bennington, Vermont, where crumbling remains of old iron furnaces adjoin classic buildings which housed homes and offices for the iron workers. The remaining buildings are now quaint residences.
Remains of iron furnaces at Furnace Grove in Vermont.
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