The Ironville Mystery

(The following was written in the summer of 2007, during my stay in Schroon Lake, NY.)

The Ironville Mystery. Doesn't that sound like a good title for a novel? If I ever write one (fat chance!) I've got a good beginning, real life scenario.
On my excursions around the area I discovered a short cut a few years ago that shaves a few miles off the route from Schroon Lake to the Champlain Bridge at Crown Point into Vermont. Just before the descent into the Champlain Valley and Ticonderoga there is a turn off with a marker for 'Historic Ironville'. It's a lovely rural road that passes through the hamlet of Ironville, a village consisting of ten or so well-preserved early nineteenth century buildings. I've been through there a number of times and, although the properties are well-tended and gardens are blooming everywhere, I have never ever seen a single living person there. It is like something out of the Twilight Zone---a weird but picturesque ghost town. The other day I had the afternoon off and drove to Crown Point via the long route, then returned via the Ironville road. I drove through the town, but on an impulse decided to stop. It was a blazing hot. Again, there was not a living soul in sight. The door of the church, a modest white clapboard structure built in 1830, was wide open. Not a thing has been changed in it since it was built---even the glass in the windows is original. Across the street there is a fine Victorian house which contains the Ironville Museum. It's front door was also invitingly wide open, but there was nobody there, not a soul. It was really eerie. I almost expected to walk into a time warp and find the inhabitants of the house dressed in their 1830's finery, going about their business, glancing up at me quizzically as I entered their domain. Out of thin air, it seemed, an older gentleman appeared, trotting across the road. He declared himself the caretaker of the place and informed me that he lived in one of the historic houses across the street. He assured me that there were other sentient beings about. As I signed the register I noticed that the place has about one or two visitors a day. Ironville is really off the beaten track. It was even more surprising to see that the visitors on the previous day were from London, UK. (Does Ironville have four stars in the Michelin Guide or something?)
The caretaker gave me a lengthy personal tour of the place (he had nothing else to do, anyway). The fine house was built by one Eliasar Penfield who owned the iron ore mine in the hills above the town. Original settlers came over after the War of 1812. By then Vermont was settled and the Adirondack region was still uninhabited wilderness (the Indians didn't count, of course). The original attraction was timber, of which there was an ample supply. But in these hills above the Champlain Valley seams of iron ore were discovered. Around 1830 somebody came up with a method for extracting the ore using an electrical magnetic brush (a very simple process, apparently). Hammondville, the mining town in the hills above, became a boom town. It once had a population of about 3,000. Many of the workers were immigrants who were recruited as they stepped off the boat in New York City. There were photographs of the place, completely de-nuded of trees. The nearby stream had three dams to provide power and there was even a small guage railway to haul the ore to Lake Champlain. It must have been a hard life up there. With time the lumber was depleted and the mines became too deep to mine effectively. When the Hammondville mines were closed down in 1920 every single building was dismantled. Since then the forest has regenerated itself and the mine entrances have been covered over. Ironville remains as the last remnant of a bygone age of life in the Adirondacks. The last Penfield passed away some fifty years ago. The house remained closed up and vacant for thirty years until someone had the idea of preserving what was left of the town. The Penfield Manse is crammed with period artifacts. It still has in some rooms the original wall paper (hanging there for 170 years!). The family was quite pious and one of the spinster daughters went off to Japan to do missionary work. She returned with a stack of small sized wood block prints which she tacked around the top border of her bedroom. (They are still hanging there and would probably fetch a small fortune on eBay.) Two of the Penfield sons served in the Civil War. In one of the upstairs bedrooms artifacts from the war were displayed. The adjoining barn was filled with farm implements, including a large, still workable loom. There is an ice-house where blocks of ice were cut from the nearby pond and buried in sawdust for summer use.
I love small, out of the way museums like this and the treasures they contain---glimpses of ordinary lives which have faded with time. It reminds me of the vanity of our own self importance. The passing of time rolls over us as well. Will anyone appreciate my wallpaper 170 years from now? I rather doubt it.