Mike's West Castleton Journal

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1.  Granville NY Post Office (first time I pulled out the camera, about 9:00 a.m., Wed May 23, a beautiful spring morning, running on adrenaline after a few hours' sleep, and beyond buoyant to finally be in Granville).

2.  Another view.

3.  Old building in Granville.

4.  Granville, walking around.

5.  Granville, walking around, mid-morning; mountains in the background give a sense of how small and self-contained the town.

6.  Granville, public art.

7.  Granville; old machinery outside the Slate History Museum (closed till the afternoon, by which time I'll be in West Castleton, so walking around outside the museum mid-morning).

8.  Pawlet River looking downstream from the old iron bridge.

9.  Turning around on the bridge, looking upstream.

10.  Looking downstream through the iron supports.

11.  Shuttered old building along Pawlet River near downtown; note slate foundation.

12.  Near downtown Granville near the river, emblematic of the generalized economic hardship and dilapidation common throughout the slate districts and beyond (and the USA calls itself a superpower . . . ).  An interesting combination of slate, block, and brick construction. 

13.  Residential street, Granville; all slate roofs, very elaborate gingerbread, parapets, etc.  Really interesting architecture.

14.  Granville Assembly of God Catholic Church.

15.  Granville, sign for the local Lion's Club I think, with a very cool old slate house in the background.

16.  After driving to West Castleton -- 711 miles according to the odometer! -- and asking if I can camp in the state park before the official opening, being told I have to ask Jeremy, who'll come back later.  So this is Lake Bomoseen from east shore, looking on the west shore, with Cedar Mountain on the right, with its vast piles of waste slate; West Castleton and the state park are tucked into the bay at the mountain's left.

17.  Same view with Little Blue a.k.a. The World's Champion Automobile in the foreground.

18.  Dusk, from Bomoseen Campground on the west shore, looking back to the spot on the east shore where the last two photos were taken earlier in the day.  All alone except for the rising chorus of peepers and bullfrogs 20 yards to the north, in the marsh formed by the delta of Little Hazard Brook -- two days before the park's official opening; a perfect evening (hence the abundance of photos, which of course still fail to capture its magic).

19.  Dusk, Lake Bomoseen.

20.  Dusk, Lake Bomoseen.

21.

22.  Sublime.

23.

24.  My sweet little camp spot (early a.m. Thurs May 24, before painting my first lean-to).

25.  Atop Cedar Mtn, looking NNE.

26.  Atop Cedar Mtn looking east.

27.  Atop Cedar Mtn, looking SE.

28.  Atop Cedar Mtn, looking SSE.

29.  Atop Cedar Mtn, close-up of the town of Bomoseen.

30.  In the woods behind Cedar Mtn, which hold a treasure-trove of artifacts for the industrial archaeologist.  Here is a typical sight -- a couple of giant steel cables coupled together buried in the forest floor.

31.  All of these photos of the Cedar Mtn woods show evidence of the industrial processes and human toil that once dominated this mountain; these Cedar Mtn slate quarries were worked from about 1883 to 1936 by the Cedar Mtn Slate Co, the Lake Bomoseen Slate Co, and others (historic photos come later).

32.  Tree entwined with steel cables.

33.  Tree swallowing steel cable.

34.  Vertical iron bars in giant piece of slate lying flat on the ground; very probably used for anchors for hoisting cables & machinery; see technical literature for drawing of something very similar (citation forthcoming).

35.  Steel cables taut between trees.

36.  Trees, steel, and sunshine.

37.  Rock face behind the white house at West Castleton (morning Fri May 25).  Hard to capture on film.  Stunning to see.  Lovely.  John D. had to have known this rock, and known it well.

38.  Rock face, West Castleton (the locals said it didn't have a name).

38a.  Same rockface, photo taken later in August.

38b.  Same rockface as it appears in Thomas Nelson Dale, Slate in the United States (1914), Plate III.  This photo probably taken around 1912-13.

39.  Beginning of my own Slate History Trail; the ruins of the workers' houses in West Castleton, just behind some brush from the main dirt road running N-S (see map pages when they're up).

40.  Slate History Trail sign:  "worker's homes".

41.  West Castleton ruins, foundations of worker's homes.  Just for fun here I'm going to insert a historic photograph of the buildings that once sat atop these slate foundations, taken in 1905, from the Martha B. Warren Collection, and a map of what the area looked like in 1869, a few years after these foundations were laid.

41a.  The houses that sat atop these ruins 102 years before these photos were taken.  From the Martha B. Warren Collection, photo no. 421e, p. 13.

41b.  West Castleton Railroad and Slate Company Map of West Castleton, 1869.  Copy from "Monitoring the Reconstruction of Glen Lake Dam of Bomoseen State Park, Castleton, Vermont," State Dept of Natural Forests, Parks & Recreation, Feb 1992, p. 8.  These photos are of the structures labeled 11-15.

42.  Foundations of workers' homes.

43.  Foundation of workers' homes.

44.  West Castleton, Glen Lake spillway into Little Hazard Brook, which flows into Lake Bomoseen.  This stream between Glen Lake and Lake Bomoseen, and the power it generated, made having a slate mill here possible, beginning in the 1840s.

45.  West Castleton, spillway after it comes under the road, into the maze of slate ruins and woods that now forms the first couple of hundred yards of Little Hazard Brook.

46.  West Castleton ruins, toward the beginning of Little Hazard Brook.

47.  West Castleton ruins; slate walls of old mill complex.

48.  Really imposing structures; large and complex.

49.  Tremendous amounts of labor went into building these foundations and walls.

50.  Little Hazard Brook spillway, with iron and slate ruins in foreground.