Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1902-09-03
DESoLATE EASTERN TOWNS.
Many Villages in New York state
That Have Been Abandoned for
Lack of Enterprise.

There is romance about deserted
titles and villages that always charms
is. There is something in the feel
ing that here a people lived and
struggled and died, or. in defeat,
went away, that awakens at once a
keen human interest, says the New
York Commercial Advertiser. So we
are reused to high pitch at the
story of lost city discovered in the
wilds of Thibet or Yucatan, and pio-
ture to ourselves life that is go1re
and try to imagine the romance and
mystery of it all. 1t is not hard to
understand therefore the interest that
one who loves mild form of eXplora-
ton feels when he stumbles all un-
awares upon ruined village of our
own country and our own civilization.
The mountain regions of the EN-
plre state are fertile in such ruins.
Ii one will take a train on some one
of the roads running into the noun
ta1ns OF Sullivan county he may step
from the cars within four hours into
the midst of as pretty a valley as
one would care to see, the valley that
separates the two ridges of the
Shawangunk mountains. It matters
not what his station NAV be: Ellen
Vile, Wurstboro, or any one of half
a dozen others. He climbs into
lonely looking stage, and drives
down toward the village. Deserted
houses stand on every corner-cot-
tages, most of them, suggesting that
workingmen might have been their oc-
cupants. Now there is a deserted frame
building. It's paint has worn away,
the shingles are loose, window panes
are gone, and one can see that it
has been deserted for years. Yon-
der are the remains of a fire; over
there is deserted hotel
The Adirondacks are full of rem
nants of old-tine life that lack even
small villages to perpetuate their
memory. One who travels north
ward toward Mount Marcy hears of
the upper iron works, and on his
arrival there sees the remains of a
great stone furnace and the frame
work where once giant trip ham,
mer played. A roadway, now grown
to underbrush, runs to the deserted
mine in a mountain of iron ore. The
Hudson dashes past as a narrow
trout stream, and one feels that the
river could tell good stories of these
old ruins if it would. And so it
could. Here, in the century's early
days, was great iron mine. Five
hundred men were employed. There
were homes, hotel, stores, a bank
A well-kept road ran eastward and
south, and over this went never
ending line of wagons, hauling iron
to Lake Champlain and bringing in
supplies. Then came a shooting, the
death of the superint endent,a change
Of hands and an awakening, when
The new management found other
mines with better methods of trans
portation underselling them in the
markets. So the mine closed, the
village disappeared, and, save for the
members of a sportsman's club who
come here in summer, not one soul
remains on the spot.
Similar evidences of bright past
one finds in many part of the great
North woods. Half dozen kinds of
mines have closed and left their de-
laying buildings to tell the story.
Almost every stream of any size has
It's deserted villages built up in the
lays when tanneries thrived and
eft without an occupant when i'm
proved methods of transportation
elsewhere rendered it impossible for
The mountain region, with no rail
road, to compete.
IL