View Full Version : Long Trail: Strange wall just north of Little Rock Pond Shelter
JoeHiker
10-22-2007, 15:34
So I was section hiking the Long Trail/AT this past weekend. About 20 minutes north of Little Rock Pond Shelter there was a big stone wall right in the middle of the woods. The trail (when you are heading north) veers left to go around it. There was a post sticking out of the ground right in front of it that clearly used to hold what must have been a plaque/historical marker describing what it was. Only now the marker is gone.
Anyone who is familiar with this area know what this was and what the marker used to say? Sorry I would have taken a picture but I only had one camera and had used too many shots already. It was maybe 5 minutes south of a bridge over a stream.
Just south of the wall it appeared that someone had made a makeshift metal sculpture from many old pieces of metal so I'm guessing it was some sort of mill or something.
_terrapin_
10-22-2007, 16:34
IIRC, it's an abandoned town. There's a brief mention and description of it in the ALDHA guide for that section.
Appalachian Tater
10-22-2007, 16:45
Hey, nice map link. If I am not mistaken, the trail currently passes East of the pond, yes?
I dug up this 1893 topo of the area. You can see the village of Aldrichville and its access road, just northeast of Little [Rock] Pond? Now it's just a ghost town of cellar holes and stone walls on the LT/AT.
Little Rock Pond, circa 1893. (http://docs.unh.edu/VT/wall93nw.jpg)
From another thread.
It was an old logging camp and townsite known as Aldrichville. The entire region from Lye Brook Wilderness up to White Rocks had numerous logging towns and even small guage railways which operated from the mid 19th to early 20th century. Evidence of one railway still exists by taking the Branch Pond Trail which up until about 1984 was the route of the AT/LT. Getting back to Aldrichville, if you scout around you can find quite a few artifacts to look at. The Old Job Trail (also the former route of the LT/AT) from Big Branch to Griffith Lake has a very large saw dust pile dating back over 80 and more years. Due to the density of the compressed saw dust it apparently will not decay. Lots of old apple orchards exist in these areas as well with very unique types of apples which are not commercially available anymore. The USFS for the Green Mountain NF has information on the history of the area.
That's the site of Aldrichville also known as the Aldrich Job clearing. Details are in the following link. Looked it up after seeing it on my end-to-end this year.
http://www.eastwallingfordbaptist.com/aldrichville.htm
JoeHiker
10-22-2007, 16:54
Wow. Very cool. Wish I had realized what I was walking through, I would have explored it more. Thanks!
Landshark
10-22-2007, 19:42
Pretty neat, isn't it. That is one of my favorite sections (l.r. pond to white rocks) because there is so much to see in a relatively short section of trail. If you look around more there are some cellar holes and some "implements" (axles, tools, etc). I haven't checked out the links that a previous post-er provided but I think some local schools/day camps go there to do projects.