Midterm

It is new news to most that the local area in which we live in was once in contribution to America's mining industry. There are several sites around Essex County where anyone willing to go for an off trail hike through the woods can get to and witness this part of our local history. From personal experience, these areas are tricky to find as the local mining trend occurred around the later end of the 1800s. Because of this, the areas that were mined are now very overgrown.

I visited a few mining sites around the area to get a look at these places myself as an action piece for this project. The first site i visited was the Chipman Silver mine in Newbury, Ma. The old mine ruins are located about a half mile into the woods behind the Scotland Hights subdivision. I could tell i was getting closer to the main site when i began to see random pipes sticking out of the ground in places and rock shavings strewn about. I kept going in the right direction and ended up in a 20by20 yard pit of shail shavings and in the middle a hole with water filled in until about 5 feet below the main elevation. I found out that this hole was extremely deep when i took a very long stick that i found and threw in it there vertically. The stick was roughly 10 feet long, and it went all the way under, stayed down for a little and bobbed back up to the surface. Around the rock pit there were a few weathered structures made out of rocks and concrete that I couldn't really fit a purpose into. In some spots I could identify possible foundations that have since been filled with decaying leaves and sticks. The area surrounding the site used to be completely cleared for miles according to the old pictures. It is now in a reasonably dense forest and the youthful trees tell its past of being once a field.

The next mining site i visited was Devils Den in Newbury, Ma. Devils den is now a cave under a rock, it really is not that interesting but still a cool site to visit. It used to be in the middle of a field located in the southern end of the town, but is now immersed in an overgrown area of shrubbery. Devils den was excavated also in the later 1800s and was for purpose of lime stone. There is still some remains of the once precious mineral around but it is tough to find due to an abundance of graffiti. One interesting piece to this place are all of the haunted rumors that were set in place about the area.

Another thing i read about in the book was the plotting of the outlines or boundaries of all of the towns. Each town has several granite posts marking the corners of the towns. To get a first hand look at these myself, I visited one of the corners in West Newbury that i found from a map on Google earth. Surprisingly when I got there, I noticed that the entire area around it was flooded badly. With further searching I found that this was a result of a beaver dam. Not only did this flood the area around the stone, but it also flooded an old road that I found going through what is now a thriving swamp.

The next site i visited was an old dam that once captivated the water coming from Mill Pond flowing into the Indian River. I read in my book that this flooded area was a fish breeding ground for freshwater perch. There were 4 of these fisheries in West Newbury and none currebntly exist. I could not find any pictures of these, but evidence from the dams past was present when i visited the site.

Toward the end of my first book, I read about a thriving hotel on the southern tip of Plum Island. Called the Ipswitch Bluffs Resort, this massive structure stood atop a bluff (shown in the below pictures) facing the bluffs of Ipswitch over the harbor. The building had some sort of relation to Castle Hill and had many famous visitors come for a stay at this luxury resort. The building was destroyed by high winds and caught fire when collapsed, starting a wildfire destroying a solid chunk of the southern part of the island. This was one of the many wildfires on Plum Island. There are no remains of the site.

My last first hand look at the local history was another mining operation. This one however was in Groveland. Although Groveland was no topic to the books that I read, it was still recognized as a large factor in the mining industry to the local area. This was because of a massive quarry. I could not identify what stone was searched for here, but it is evident they were looking for something. About a mile off a main road, this site has a series of 2 rock walls standing about 30 feet high each. This place was mined in the very early 1900s.