Mike's West Castleton Journal

Photos - Page 2     #51-99

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51.  West Castleton ruins; old mill complex walls.

52.  Old mill complex walls.

53.  West Castleton ruins; steel anchor bolt & nut arising from forest floor.

54.  Steel anchor bolt & nut, scrap metal in foreground, on forest floor.

55.  West Castleton ruins, more steel bars arising from forest floor, attached to giant piece of slate, accompanied by deteriorated red bricks, used to anchor machinery.

56.  Another view of the same scene.

57.  West Castleton ruins, old mill complex walls.

58.  Same, closer up.

59.  Different angle.

60.  See why I had such fun here??

61.  West Castleton:  ruins ruins everywhere.

62.  Lord but these ruins are cool.

63.  Took me a while to stumble on to the front of the ruins, which ironically are just a few yards from the road; I came at them through the woods from behind.

64.  Iconic image of West Castleton ruins.  According to the literature, this building was completed in 1868 and burned to the ground five years later, then rebuilt nearby.

65.  Locals say these blocks of slate have been precariously perched like this for as long as they can remember; though the signature lintel block is bound to fall soon, which seems a real shame.  It should be shored up or removed, and not just allowed to fall.  Or should it?

66.  Scraps of iron and ruins of walls litter the forest floor throughout this small area, probably a couple of acres in extent.

67.  Some of the scrap iron treasures plucked off the forest floor.

68.  Closer up of the same.

69.  Enough ruins -- to Rutland City!  Public history display on Julia C. R. Dorr (1825-1913), one of the Rutland City's eminences of the late 19th century.

70.  Close-up of 1869 map of Rutland City, intersection of Green & Main.  Bridget Waters lived on Green Street just a couple of doors down from Main.  Map courtesy the Rutland Free Library.

71.  Broader view of the same 1869 map.

72.  Broader view still.

73.  Main St., near Killington Ave. (formerly Green Street), Rutland City.  Public history display on Martin Henry Freeman, a descendent of Mr. Pearson Freeman and relative of Mrs. Charity Taylor Freeman, Bridget Waters' next-door neighbor in 1870, all members of one of the few black families in Rutland County in the 1870s.

74.  Main St. Rutland City; another view of the public history display on Martin Henry Freeman.

75.  Rutland City, first house down from Main St. what used to be Green Street, and probably next-door to where Bridget Waters lived in 1870.

76.  Rutland City, little alley off Killington Ave. (formerly Green St.), probably not too much different from what it looked like a century ago, and Bridget Waters' old stomping grounds.

77.  Rutland City, corner of Main & Killington (Green).

78.  Main & Killington.

79.  Street signs at intersection of Main & Killington.

80.  Girls catching frogs & turtles, Bomoseen Campgrounds on the east side of Lake Bomoseen -- on the opposite side of the lake as the state park, and further north, where the lake becomes filled with vegetation -- where I had to camp on Memorial Day weekend since all the campsites at the state park were already taken.

81.  Same girls (Taylor & Marissa) pestering the aquatic wildlife and having a blast doing it.

82.  My friend Taylor kissing a frog she just caught.

83.  Cedar Mountain and West Castleton, from the east shore of Lake Bomoseen (morning Sat May 26)

84.  Closer view of the mountain of waste slate that comprises much of the easternmost face of Cedar Mountain.

85.  Trailhead, Cedar Mtn, at the end of Cedar Mtn Road; every time I pulled up, this little bunny rabbit would be there, loping slowly up the trail, as if to lead me forward.  Got kinda spooky after a while -- the spirit of John Delehanty in the form of a bunny rabbit??

86.  Back to the Cedar Mountain ruins, in the woods just behind the piles of waste slate.

87.  Cedar Mountain ruins; this is probably what remains of an anchor for hoisting machinery.

88.  Cedar Mountain ruins; the lid of some kind of long-forgotten structure.

89.  Different view of the same lid and structure.

90.  Cedar Mountain ruins, after clearing away the top layers of leaves & debris.

91.  Memorial Day Parade, Fair Haven (Sat May 26, around 2:30 in the afternoon)

92.  Memorial Day Parade, Fair Haven.

93.  Memorial Day Parade, Fair Haven.

94.  Enough parade -- back to the ruins!  The park staff told me about these, hidden by the copse of trees at the beginning of Cedar Mtn Road (copse in Photo 96, below; the ruins themselves were enveloped by trees and hard to photograph); the park staff thought these might be the old schoolhouse ruins.  They were incorrect; it's too small for a school (25' x 10') and was probably a small outbuilding; in fact it appears to be two separate structures, as my field sketch indicates [see Journal Notes]).

95.  Different angle of the same ruins; locals say they fill up with water in the spring and the dogs go there to drink and bathe.

96.  The copse of trees just behind the Park's slate house on Cedar Mtn Road, enclosing the ruins shown above. 

97.  View of Lake Bomoseen from what I what I had thought might be the ruins of the old schoolhouse (not).  Still, it's a lovely view.

98.  Same area; curious that wild asparagus would grow by this old vent pipe.  What was here?  Who knows?

99.  The lovely and vivacious Vy Manovill on the front porch of James Delehanty's old house on Creek Road, Hydeville.  We gotta get a closer look at this one:

99a.  Hi Vy!

100.  Newspaper clippings from Joe Doran's collection, including our-g-g Mathias Delehanty's obituary (Mon May 28, Memorial Day; didn't take any pix on Sun May 27 -- not of the 5' and 7' steel bars used to hoist up the John D Memorial; not the quarries and ruins in Eagle Patch on the great hike with Peter Patten; not the drunk I picked up hitchhiking at Castleton Corners and drove to C. J.'s Saloon in Rutland City for $50 -- I should've taken a movie of him -- though it's all in my notes . . . )