Well, we're a long way from our usual haunts today.

We're on the seashore.

The Fisherman's Memorial in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

From here, we're going to travel a few miles back into the woods.

There's a big patch of mostly abandoned forest called Dogtown, and it's full of mysterious surprises.

Naturally, you're invited.

Welcome to windows to the wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

During colonial times and just after the revolution, the ports of Rockport and Gloucester were important fishing and shipbuilding towns.

Unfortunately, they were also vulnerable to attacks from the sea.

So some of the residents moved inland to a patch of woods that became known as Dog Town.

Nobody knows for sure why, but they think probably it was because of the Watch Dogs kept by the widows and wives of men who were off at sea or at war when the women died.

Those dogs pretty much ran wild.

Well, Dog Town is pretty much abandoned today, but it's it's still known for its aura of mystery, for a quirky millionaire and for a notorious murder.

We're going to hike today with a woman named Elyssa East, who wrote the book about the place entitled, appropriately, Dog Town and a little farther up the trail, a local historian named Ted Tarr.

Now we're just we're here right now, and I think we'll probably meet Alyssa just about here.

So why don't we go find out?

Let's go.

Dog town covers about 3000 acres in the interior of the island of Cape Town.

We'll start our adventure today on Dog Town Road and make our way to the Babson Boulder Trail.

Howdy.

You must be Alyssa.

I’m Will.

So nice to meet you.

Now, you're going to be our guide today.

I think so.

We are getting two guides for the price of one.

What's going on?

Oh, wow.

You know.

Well, yes, I know.

I remember.

Yeah, I remember.

All right.

So you're going to show us around the place today?

Yeah.

we'll start off, right here at the gate at the entrance to Dog Town.

What I like about this gate is, to me, dog town is really like a state of mind, you know?

And, and I think it's a good moment to to, to pause before going back in the past, which is exactly what we're going to do.

There's no, this is not like the Bermuda Triangle or anything.

What do you think?

I don't know.

Well, we'll find out.

How's that?

Okay.

I read your book, and it was definitely a mystery about it.

Well, yeah, the holes and things.

You know what One of the things that I, find most interesting about Dog Town is it does have this feeling that you just sort of stumbled upon a forgotten civilization.

Perhaps you will see some archeological ruins that we'll talk about.

It has this feeling of being lost unto itself.

And, and we can talk a little bit about that mystery.

There's a lot of folklore, full of great stories.

Some of those stories are not quite accurate, but they're not fully inaccurate either.

No such thing as a completely accurate story.

Well, it's true, but they're good stories, right?

That's what's important.

Well, let's go take a look at.

All right.

Let's go.

We're hiking up Dog Town Road, the former thoroughfare of the settlement, passing dozens of overgrown cellar holes of a vanished community, still parking the landscape and giving Dog Town the aura of an archeological site.

So what we're walking on is the remains of a Precambrian mountain and a terminal moraine, you know, of, of a Pleistocene epic glacier.

Yep.

And we will see some of the large eradicates, which are very big boulders.

Yeah.

That when it came through in the book.

Yeah.

Huge boulders.

Yeah.

When the settlers first arrived on Cape Ann in 1623.

That makes Gloucester America's oldest seaport.

This place was covered with a really thick forest, very large trees, and one of the first industries here was a cordwood industry and, shipbuilding, you know.

So not far from where we are was the first sawmill that was established.

But no one lived here yet.

You know, that sawmill was set up in, 1642.

These woods were entirely cleared by 1704.

There was not a tree in sight during the early part of the 18th century Gloucester's fishing industry was thriving and in need of a place to house its growing labor force.

Some Gloucester residents moved inland into these uplands, now known as Dog Town, when the town opened plots here for settlement in what became known as the Commons Settlement.

Each landholding person was eligible to use the common lands.

So that's when people started moving into these woods.

As we move through the woods, I see rocks sprinkled alongside the trails.

Each is numbered and has a story attached to it.

Roger Babson, who we'll talk about in just a little bit, had hired some stonemasons to carve these rocks to identify the cellar holes of of the settlers who moved up here in the 17 and the 1700s and lived here through about the early 1800s.

So this rock number 15 identifies a cellar hole, that accompanied a house that was only 525 square feet.

So that sort of the average size of, of the dog town home.

Easier to heat in the winter, I suppose.

Yeah.

You know, back in here, we can come and take a look at the root cellar, which was about 15 square feet if we can find it.

So you can see in some ways this jumble of rocks, you can start to see a little bit of, of a rectangle in there.

At its peak, dog town support of about 40 families.

But it didn't last long.

The settlers depended on agriculture, and after a few decades, they abandoned the place.

Well, there was a lot of farming here, and as this is a great spot to see how genuinely rocky it was, the farming didn't go so well as you can imagine, without good soil, the settlers never had the chance to prosper.

Then they lost something else important to them.

In the colonial era, church was the center of life, you know, and the the church that was nearby, was relocated to the harbor.

And so when you relocate your center of your community, your community goes with it.

After that came the revolution, and and and Gloucester lost about one.

Let's see.

I think it's one tenth of its population during the American Revolution, and most everywhere rebounded, but not this spot.

Something.

Yeah.

And and it wasn't long after that that, you know, the people who could afford to move did.

And those who couldn't stayed behind and those who stayed behind included some Revolutionary War widows.

And this is how we have that folklore that this area became known as Dog Town, because of the widows, the widows and the dogs that they kept for protection.

Aging and isolated the women were often labeled witches and a few other disreputable things.

And this cellar hole actually became the home to a witch, known as Easter Carter, living the 500 square.

If they would make me a little witchy to.

Yeah.

Don't you think?

At the time, like, if you were a woman who spoke your mind, you could have just been called a witch.

But it was also said if someone sawed you know, a barrel in half then made two buckets and they could have been called a witch as well.

It was just something of the era.

Easter Carter.

You know, she was apparently very high born.

And one of the things that she was known to say was, I eats no trash.

This a lady who lived here.

Yeah, but this this particular spot was also something of a, you know, a no tell motel, to put it, kindly.

So we go from, you know, these fine churchgoing people to, to Easter Carter and and, something of a red light district up here is, as some have claimed.

By the early 1800s, there were only six houses left standing.

But the last living resident, was, former slave named Neil Finson.

And he was found, in this house, sort of freezing to death and had to be carted away.

He didn't.

And where were people carted away to?

The poorhouse.

And no one really wanted to be in the poorhouse.

Because you had to.

You had to labor.

And and Finson died, a week later.

And that was in 1839.

So, he was the last resident.

Beautiful day.

Not too shabby.

In addition to enjoying dog towns rich history, you'll find it a great place to get away to.

Just a stone's throw from Boston.

The old settlement is quiet and insulated from the outside world.

The trails allow hikers to move through history with relative ease.

There is a very big arts thriving arts community here.

Alyssa was originally attracted to Dogtown by the paintings of Marsden Hartley, one of the first American modernists.

Hartley had found relief from deep depression by painting the fantastic boulders of Dogtown, Alyssa set out to find them and fell in love with the mystery of the place.

So there are some rocks here.

By golly, that first we've seen.

I mean rock rocks, right?

You mean glacial erratic, glacial erratic, right?

God, what do you think of these?

They're beautiful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're stacked up like that.

That was natural.

Exactly.

So this is how when the glacier receded, this is how these rocks were left behind.

Yeah.

You know, you said they're beautiful, and, painter Marsden Hartley would certainly agree with you on that.

In fact, he painted this very stack of rocks.

And the road that we're on.

And Marsden Hartley is sort of how I discovered this place.

He was a painter originally from Maine, and he was born in 1877.

Now, we talked about how Dogtown was abandoned.

Right.

And 1839.

Well, not much was happening up here for a long time.

And, and, and the region got this spooky reputation, because no one was living here.

There were these ruins, and there were these rocks when Hartley came in 19, 1931.

That's, you know, this place was still free of all this greenery.

The fact that he chose to come here and paint these rocks was something of an unusual choice.

He had been living in France and was told.

You have to paint in America.

American subjects were sort of, you know, the thing this is in the 30s.

He tried to paint the White Mountains, but he found them to touristy, and he was constantly distracted.

He wanted a place left onto itself.

He was a little quirky, but he struggled a lot with depression and the year that he came here, he he was really down, and, and he had been very ill.

He came here to sort of recover his health and to recover his artistic reputation.

And, you know, he, he compared Dog Town to he said it's like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge.

So that's how dramatic it was.

And he mostly painted, these rocks.

After painting here for a while, Hartley was able to fight off his periods of depression.

We're talking about how this place changed.

Hardly saved his life.

Well, pulled him out of a deep depression.

Has it changed you at all?

You know?

Sure.

You know, I think for me, when I really started coming, coming here was right after September 11th, and I just moved to New York from Maine, and I Yeah.

So, you know, when Harley came here, he said he was suffering from a really bad case of New York itis, you know, and I hadn't been living in New York very long, but I was like, I get that.

And I did feel like Hartley that like, you know, I was like, I think Hartley is on to something.

I think there's something about this sort of rare, obscure beauty.

It's not picturesque in some sort of classic sense, and it's undiscovered, which is really hard to find today.

What are we looking at here?

We got a, look, check out this rock.

So, this rock says Jas Merry, short for James, died September 18th, 1892.

James Mary was a former sailor he was from Gloucester.

Apparently, he had been to Spain.

And in Spain he saw bullfights.

And he.

Oh that's it.

Yes.

This is okay.

Yeah.

Good.

So he came back here, you know, and he was like, you know, I want to fight bulls.

And so he got a bull and he pastured this bull right over there.

And so he told everybody in the town, I'm going to have a bull fight.

I want you all to come up and watch this on a on a certain Sunday.

And, and so the townspeople, you know, they were very excited, like, this is a huge event in 1892, you know, small town New England.

So people traveled up here, you know, ready to watch the show.

They found the pasture, the whole area smeared with blood.

The bull had gorged James Merry to death, which was the point at which he said, whoops, this ain't working out the way I thought.

Ouch.

Pretty much.

Alyssa mentioned Roger Babson earlier in the hike.

He was born in Gloucester and became a millionaire by predicting stock market trends.

Some of that money was spent carving boulders.

Look at the.

Yeah.

Never try.

Never win.

This rock, as I mentioned, there are some other goings on in Dogtown.

In 1930, when, Marsden Hartley was painting here and, Roger W Babson, who was a millionaire who actually owned most of Dogtown at the time, he hired these out of work stonemasons to carve, what he called his life's book in 24 of the largest, glacial erotics here in Dogtown.

And and they are sort of place to make a comment on the landscape or a story.

And this certainly seems like a great commentary on the story of the bull.

Marsden Hartley was very upset that these rocks were being carved.

As a painter.

He wanted to see the rocks and the landscape left intact.

You know, it's interesting today.

Now, these aphorisms are in and of themselves a historical artifact and Roger W Babson was really, really a famous guy.

He was born around the same time as Hartley.

And, he became a millionaire.

Have you are you familiar with him?

Not too.

I know Babson institute and that sort of thing.

Yeah, well, he sold these, statistics, statistical reports on, on investments.

He predicted the depression, the the collapse of the market.

That's right.

In 1929, and he was kind of like a Warren Buffett like figure of the day.

In for a penny, in for a pound is love that makes the world go around.

I’m really not up on my show tunes.

I apologize.

Alyssa found many surprises coming to Dogtown, but it was one that stood out.

There was a murder here in 1984, and that was the biggest surprise.

I wasn't expecting that at all.

And, and and.

Yeah, I, you know, in some ways that I think was a big moment for me because I was like, oh, these woods are great.

They're safe.

But people were like, young lady, you shouldn't be going there, certainly not by yourself.

And I was like, you, yeah, I've done some solo backpacking before.

So I was I was like what?

You know, the good thing is that this particular murder was really a rare and a rare occurrence.

But, you know, it it was a very haunting, a haunting incident.

A lot of people, saw that as a turning point, for this, for this setting.

And the good thing is that, you know, more land was put into conservation after that.

Now, the Dogtown settlement is a conservation area with an extensive trail system.

Well, my dear, I think we've come to the parting of the ways here, and I. I see our next guide ahead of us.

Oh, dear.

It's Ted.

Hi.

So nice to see you.

Don't kiss me whoever you are.

Ted glad to meet you.

I'm very glad to see you.

Very honored after all those wonderful programs.

It's quite all right.

Quite all right.

Don't mention it down here today.

You're going to be our guide now.

I’ll do my best.

We're going to lose you.

I'm handing you off to the expert.

You know, he'll fill in all those gaps that I left.

I certainly learned a lot from Ted.

Ted Tarr is a 78 year old Korean War veteran, a former Rockport selectman, a descendant of one of Cape Ann’s earliest settlers, and a frequent guide for hikers in dog down.

All right.

After you.

This narrows down here.

So we got woodworkers done years ago.

Look at the rocks, Look at that.

Not in Kansas anymore.

It's paved with glacial, erratic.

Wow.

Looks like one of the boulder trains on Mount Katahdin.

Yeah.

This is a trail here.

Babson Boulder trail.

Yeah Yeah.

Okay.

So we're.

I should get ready to be inspired?

Yes.

All right.

Yeah.

After traveling through the swamp and past lots of erratic, we were at our first stop.

What’s this one of the Babson boulders?

Yep.

Look at that.

And then the first one.

Babson was first and foremost a capitalist.

Yes, yes.

And, most of the boulders are very pious sounding.

Yeah.

This is where his heart was.

That's correct.

If work stops values decay.

Was this just to make work project or, well, it was a make work project.

You know, maybe it was to save his soul.

I don't know.

That's a thought.

You know, because he figured that he was making his money off the sweat of other people's brows.

There are 36 of these, you think?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know.

That's amazing.

Well, made a lot of work.

How long it took to do that?

It must have taken quite a while, because that is.

Yeah, that's a hard way to do it.

Well, and chipping away the the excess stone and the stuff they took off.

They did it very evenly.

Yes.

This is Uncle Andrew's rock.

Who's he?

He was a old timer that lived up here.

And this was his special place.

This is special place.

And, And they named the rock after him.

He used to love it up here.

And they, Mr. Babson got to put the inscription on it.

Spiritual power.

You look in this area and look around, and it is spiritual in a way.

It’s why people like to preserve it and keep have it here.

And know it’s here.

You can come up here and and think and meditate a little bit.

Swat flies.

Oh yes, it is lovely.

Okay.

Let's take a hike.

Another one of Mr. Benson's messages.

Yeah.

Kind of goes along with spiritual power and intelligence.

I like to think sometimes.

Industry.

Industry?

Yeah.

Yes.

Kindness is certainly important.

Well, yeah, that's kind of basic really.

That's the softest thing he said so far.

And you know, that's kind of nice.

The old golden rule should come into play once in a while.

Yes, once on weekends mostly.

That's what he thought about it.

Well, I can't think of a better note on which to end this escapade.

I can't thank you enough for showing.

Can’t thank you enough for all the programs you've done and how much I’ve enjoyed them all.

They're fun.

That they're fun to do.

Hey, this is great.

Now, do you honestly think you can find your way back to our vehicles?

What vehicles?

Don't give me that.

We’re here.

I mean, that's true.

Well, at least we'll go out with kindness.

Yes, if we go.

Okay, I'll keep that in mind.

Well, let's go look for them.

What do you say?

Okay.

They must be around here somewhere.

Okay Ted.

After a while Ted and I made it back to our vehicles.

Oh, yeah.

Since my hike through the dog town woods, Alyssa East and her husband have had a baby boy.

I'm delighted to report that all three are doing just fine.

All's well that ends well.

And so must we.

I’m Willem Lange in Dog Town, Massachusetts.

And I hope to see you again on windows to the wild.

Support for the production of windows to the wild has been provided by the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust.

The Fuller Foundation, the Mount Washington Cog Railway, and from viewers like you.

Thank you.