Twenty miles north of Boston, in the middle of Cape Ann, lies an abandoned colonial settlement. At the tip of Cape Ann is Gloucester - Americas oldest seaport. Today, much of the population lives less than a mile from the coast. Yet, at one time, there was a small village in the middle of the Cape. Half a century after the town of Gloucester was first settled, people began to live in the Commons Settlement, named for the thousand or so acres of common woodland out of which it grew. At its peak, more than forty families lived in this part of town. Then, around the time of the Revolutionary War, the village began to decline as commercial interests shifted from logging and agriculture to fishing and trading, and people moved to be closer to the harbor. By the early 1800s, the area, which had become known as Dogtown, was a ghost town.
CONTENTS
The Dogtown Guide
Dogtown Trail Map
Geotagged Photographs
360 Aerial View of Dogtown
Walks in the Woods (videos)
The Story of Dogtown by Charles E. Mann