It Happened Here -- N.Y.'s Ghost Towns

When one thinks about "ghost towns" the image that comes to mind is usually one of the American West with abandoned, dessicated, wooden Victorian storefront buildings deserted of life, except for an occasional rolling tumbleweed.  Every state, of course, has "ghost towns," small hamlets, that have been abandoned by their inhabitants, usually because of economic forces.

The first eastern "ghost town" I encountered was in Gay City State Park, near Marlborough,   Connecticut.  One of its hiking trails follows an old tree lined road through an open deciduous forest. On either side of the road are perhaps a dozen cellar holes, and nearby the foundation of a mill, and a small cemetery with marble headstones dating from the early 1800's.  Like most of the "ghost towns" in the East there are few if any structures remaining, only field stone foundations and cellar holes.

I learned of another  eastern "ghost town" in my researches on Edwin Drake (NYSHM's : It Happened Here--The Oil Driller  6/9/13)   Pithole, Pennsylvania was a boom-town that burst into existence with the oil boom in1865. By year's end there were some 20,000 residents in Pithole,  fifty four hotels and three churches. The "bust" came equally as quickly as production dropped in the wells, other wells in the region became more productive, and some severe fires swept Pithole. At the same time, the dollar-per-barrel price of oil plummeted as the result of over-production. By 1868 there were only 237 residents in Pithole and the numbers continued to decline.

Most towns that loose their identity as a town, or more accurately, as a "named place" do so not because of abandonment, but because they are absorbed by a larger "named place." I live in a hamlet, Dormansville, that is gradually drifting toward such a fate. Once home to several water-powered mills, a church and several businesses, the mills were abandoned by the 1920's or 30's and the businesses gone. The church manages to hang on but a major blow occurred in the 1960's when it lost its post office, due to postal reorganization/consolidation. Increasingly it is seen as a part of Westerlo, but because of its proximity to Albany and it jobs, its population remains stable.

Rte 143, Dormansville

Another hamlet, the other side of Westerlo has lost both businesses and population and might be considered a "ghost town" as all traces of it disappear from view.

Co. Rte 1, near NY 85, Westerlo

A town's location at a transportation hub can be an important asset to its survival. Several hamlets in the Finger Lakes seem to have disappeared after the ferries that connected them to other towns were discontinued.

NY 89 (both)

Successive disasters can bring a town to the verge of abandonment. As the  commercial viability of turnpikes, developed in the first decade of the 19th Century declined with the development of canals and railroads, the importance of villages that sprung up along these turnpikes declined.

The twin imperatives to provide a growing metropolitan New York City with fresh water and to control the spring floods that often caused  flooding at Albany and the cities along the upper Hudson resulted in several large reservoirs being built in upstate New York. Unfortunately, they involved the flooding of large valleys that were home to numerous small towns.  Buildings were moved or razed wholesale; cemeteries were dug up and the remains relocated.

Co. Rte 98, at Bachellerville Bridge, Edinburg

           GILBOA SETTLEMENT
           COTTON MILL 1840-1869, TANNERY             
            CHURCH & CEMETERY STOOD ON             
      GROUND NOW COVERED BY RESERVOIR
          OF NEW YORK CITY WATER SUPPLY
                STATE EDUCATION
                     DEPT. 1949
        
   --sign is currently obscured by dam
      reconstruction, Rt. 990V

Graphite, west of Hague, in Warren County is perhaps most like western "ghost towns"-- a mining town isolated from other industries or sources of income.  Even after some forty years, when its mine closed, its people left.

N.Y. Rte 8, Hague