Dudleytown, CT

Dudleytown in decline.

For a hundred years "Dudleytown" expanded and prospered, from the hard work and versatile skills of the 30 to 40 families who lived there over several generations. During the latter part of the C18th, many prospered from the booming iron industry centered around the "great furnace" on nearby Mt. Riga.

During the American civil war, almost every Dudleytown family augmented its farming pursuits by cutting and burning wood for charcoal to stoke the numerous furnaces thereabouts, some families even operating their own backyard smelters, fed by locally mined ore, heated with local "wood-coal".

By 1800, Dudleytown had developed sufficiently to possess its own town hall and meeting house. Improved access by way of Dudleytown and Dark Entry Roads, to accommodate the heavy traffic of horses and riders and a growing number of substantial dwellings followed.

Aside from the curse it is clear other factors effectively undermined the stability of the community, once the trees were gone, the spring and summer rains and run off from winter snow soon washed most of Dudleytown’s soil down the mountain.

As for the general decline of the Dudleytown residents, a combination in the general reduction of the local industry, mostly timber and iron based, by the advent of modern techniques like the Bessemer process for making steel in the late 1800's, and the opening of great expanses of farmland in the West, combined with improved means of transport to distant markets the people from Owlsbury begun to find other locations with better prospects.

By the time the "Chestnut blight" hit Connecticut in the early 1900’s, there wasn’t a soul left to claim permanent residency in Dudleytown.

"A sawmill moved in temporarily to clear the diseased Chestnut wood and charcoal manufacturers continued to operate on a limited scale, but no one really cared to live in the area, for it was impossible to scratch a living from the shallow, rocky soil."

With no new families moving in to occupy the abandoned homesteads, the houses that had stood for a hundred years crumbled, their massive, hand cut beams collapsing, to decay beneath a protective blankets of wild tiger lilies. Wild brush and vine now reduce Dark Entry and Dudleytown Road into no more than tangled trails, cast, along with the remains of Dudleytown into a perpetual gloom, the resident owls pronouncing a melancholy judgment.

Due to its "haunted" reputation, the area has attracted many ghost hunters, as well as adolescents willing to cause trouble. They have become such an annoyance to local residents that the Connecticut State Police currently forbids entry to the area and patrols there.

The Dudleytown area is legally accessible by way of the Mohawk Trail which is part of Dark Entry Road. Simply walk up the road to the Trail head and follow it parallel of the brook.