The Island Woods: Abandoned Settlement, Granite Quarries, and

The Island Woods: Abandoned Settlement, Granite Quarries, and Enigmatic Boulders of Cape Ann, Massachusetts

Most people naturally associate Cape Ann â€“ the other cape along the Massachusetts coast â€“ with the sea â€“ with seafood restaurants, scenic vistas, sailing, scuba diving, and surfing. Few are aware of the mysteries that lie hidden in the middle of the Cape. Hiking through the woods one encounters all kinds of interesting things: gigantic boulders, rock walls, stone foundations, collapsed wells, abandoned quarries, old roads and more. Covered by bittersweet and cat briar, much of the interior has been undisturbed for hundreds of years. It is not the coastline of Cape Ann with its quaint shops, sandy beaches, and ocean vistas, but the inland woods â€“ the vast unsettled area stretching from Lanesville south to Blackburn Circle, from Riverdale east to Rockport â€“ that is the subject of this book. For here are the remains of a colonial settlement that became known as Dogtown in its latter days, old quarries now popular (but private) swimming holes, and â€œword rocksâ€ scattered about the rocky terrain telling us how to live our lives. All of this connected by a maze of old roads and trails whose origins can be traced to colonial times but still confuse and confound even the most experienced hiker. This book complements the many books both historical and fictional that have been written about Dogtown and Cape Ann. The narrative and photographs are wrapped around a new map that serves as a â€œtime machineâ€ for exploring the inland woods. This new map combines information from historical maps with highly accurate GPS measurements presented in the form of an â€œimage-mapâ€ that is displayed over high-resolution aerial photography. We follow old roads the early settlers used to travel point-to-point from one hamlet along the coast to another, not all the way around along Route 127 as we do today. These roads take us to the Commons Settlement â€“ one of the first settlements on Cape Ann, where we try to imagine what it was like to live here without running water and other modern conveniences. We can find the homes of Peter Lurvey, Judy Rhines, Liz Tucker, Easter Carter, Granny Day, and other characters from the stories of Charles E. Mann and Anita Diamant, or go to where James Merry, the tragic figure of Charles Olsonâ€™s poem, â€œMaximus of Dogtownâ€ died. We might even discover the places where Marsden Hartley painted his rocky landscapes. From Dogtown we can head north to visit the quarries and compare what we see today with the stark landscapes of past centuries when quarries and quarry railroads dominated the northern hills of the Cape. Or we can fast forward to the 1930s and follow trails south to the Babson Boulders â€“ Roger Babsonâ€™s beliefs and philosophy etched in stone â€“ and beyond to the Babson Reservoir â€“ the Babson familyâ€™s enduring legacy to the people of Gloucester. We leave the reader with descriptions of cellar holes, stone foundations, and other unidentified structures to consider and perhaps investigate on foot, and a mysterious map of Dogtown drawn in the early 1900s by a Methodist minister that shows features that no one has yet been able to identify.
Country USA
Brand CREATESPACE
Manufacturer CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Binding Paperback
EANs 9781466492875
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	CREATESPACE
Manufacturer	CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Binding	Paperback
EANs	9781466492875
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

The Island Woods: Abandoned Settlement, Granite Quarries, and Enigmatic Boulders of Cape Ann, Massachusetts

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