Issues → November/December 2008 → Travel →
Cape Ann, MA: The Mystery of Dogtown
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Ted Tarr, a Rockport resident who leads tours of Dogtown, reports that he sees more people hiking there than ever before. Tarr should know: He's been visiting Dogtown regularly for almost 60 years, having first become acquainted with it as a boy on Sunday botany walks. One tour Tarr led, in September 2006, drew nearly 60 people -- after which he vowed not to do another unless he had help. "I couldn't handle it," he said. "Nobody could hear. Nobody could see."
Despite the increase in visitors, it's still possible to spend an entire morning in Dogtown without seeing another person. I began walking there a few years ago -- a friend had told me about its mysterious atmosphere. The name, she said, originated from the packs of dogs living wild there after the village was deserted almost two centuries ago. That summer was a time of personal difficulty for me, and the thought of exploring a remote and mysterious place was appealing -- not least because it afforded, at least temporarily, the chance to escape inner landscapes that were all too familiar.
That first visit, I expected antiquity -- signs of abandoned domesticity. Instead there were gravel pits and an abundance of blueberries. The air smelled briny; beach roses added a high note. I'd been told to watch for cellar holes, but even with a map they proved difficult to find in the rocky woods. When I finally located one, I stepped inside and waited for a Dogtown mood. Nothing came. Shots from a nearby rifle range punctuated the quiet.
Soon it started to rain -- big, hard drops that arrived without wind or other warning. Lightning flashed; wood cracked. I took shelter beneath a boulder, huge and angled in such a way that I could only hope it wouldn't roll. After half an hour, the shower let up. The spot where my back had touched the rock was dry, the surface oddly flat. As it grew lighter I could see block letters carved into the granite: "If work stops values decay."
I picked up my bag to head back. The woods were rain-slicked now, and heavy. Nothing looked familiar. I made several turns onto ever-smaller trails that crisscrossed and looped, before realizing I was lost. It began to rain again. Eventually I made my way out -- not to where I'd entered, but to a place that let me loop the perimeter and locate my truck. Hours had passed. I was bug-bitten and soaked. I was also determined to come again -- next time with a better map and a clearer sense, at least in physical terms, of what it was I hoped to find.
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Dogtown maps were easy to obtain, it turned out, but reliable information less so. Ascertaining what happened there centuries ago is tricky. Some folks want to embellish it, others to deny it -- the accounts therefore larger or smaller than the truth. Yet certain facts converge: Homesteaders first put down roots in what was then known as the Commons Settlement during the mid-1600s. Although the village lacked tillable land, it drew people because its elevated location made it less vulnerable to attack. The place had plenty of pastureland, too, plus a brook that powered a sawmill. In 1719, a general land distribution for men expanded the population; by the mid-1700s, as many as 100 families lived and w00000orked in the Commons area.
Life there was stable until after the Revolutionary War, when a revival of fishing triggered a shift back toward Gloucester Harbor. The area fell on hard times after the demise of the original settlement: "Dogtown became an aberration, an embarrassment," wrote Thomas Dresser in Dogtown: A Village Lost in Time. He described one inhabitant, Tammy Younger, as "queen of the witches," who so intimidated passersby that they left her tithes of fish and corn. By 1828 the village was all but deserted. The last resident, a freed slave named Cornelius Finson, was found with his feet frozen and taken to the poorhouse in the winter of 1830.
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