Calico has held a fascination for me ever since I first learned of it a couple of years ago. Perhaps it was the hints at its whereabouts on old maps, or the fact that Beck gave an absurd location for it, which I am told he sometimes did with things that were worth finding. Maybe it was just that the two tries I had made at coming to the place from Martha had reached their inglorious end at this:
Not the best picture because it is shot from the east and into the sun, but what you have there is a hole, and that hole is greater than me. For that hole I would need Scott, his Ford, and several rolls of quarters for later. It's hard to see there, but it continues on for, oh, 50-75 yards. I'm not even sure there's a road down there anymore.
So today I decided to try it a little differently, and to come at it from the north via Shamong Road. I knew it would not be easy going, about which more later, but first I had to get there by heading north out of Martha. I stopped where Martha Road crosses Buck Run and took a couple of shots of the very pretty bogs on either side of the road:
I made my way up to where Shamong intersects and hopped out to survey my prospects. It may not look that narrow in this picture, but trust me, it's donate your clearcoat narrow. And rough. And under water in several places.
Here's a shot looking south on Shamong from the intersection with Nash's Cabin Road. Every time I crossed a stream the next section of the road would get worse, narrower and more overgrown.
Not far south of there I knocked the left mirror flat and had to find a slightly wide spot to hop out and knock it back again. Thirty seconds later I knocked it flat again. The road is not passable to cars, and will only admit trucks whose owners have an iron stomach for paint damage. If you don't it's a long walk, which is probably why the area is largely pristine.
A little ways down the road opens up as it passes through the Oswego Gun Club property, which is obsessively posted every ten feet with large, bright yellow signs, one of which you see in the distance here:
At Calico Road the way north is barred, with the usual warnings about laser range finders, and a strangely-scrawled prohibition against hunting that doesn't look like regulation military signage:
I parked the truck near the gate. It turns out that you could probably drive the last bit down to the Calico area, with a teeny bit of saw work, but it is only 3/4 mile, and I knew I would be less likely to miss anything walking.
The site I had picked out as likely, based on a number of old maps, is a sandy height above a small bog or spung or pond or whatever. I think it was or is part of the Cutts water system, but more on that in a bit. Here's the approach to the site from the north, looking out over the spung-bog-pond:
Was the location given on the maps the location of the "old Calico" that was associated with Martha Furnace? I have no idea, but I tend to doubt it. I'm uncertain as to what was at Calico, and when, but I have an idea that it was just a place with a few houses in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, and that later, long after Martha had slumped into rubble, it was probably "Calico" again as the site of some agricultural activity. As I walked through the open area I spotted this old fellow:
He's still alive, as you can see in this next shot, and I think there's a good chance he's an old domesticated specimen. So I thought perhaps I was close.
I walked south along the road a bit, scanning the woods, and toward the west end of the open area I hit paydirt. Just off the road to the south was a prominent cellar hole. Cellar holes are sometimes damned hard to convey in images. I have three in the gallery, but I will just post the one that gives the best impression of size and depth:
There are some sizeable trees growing out of this depression, including one 18 inches or so in diameter, so I think it's been filling in for awhile. On the ground nearby are various specimens of sandstone and some brick fragments as well:
This one almost looked like it had the remnants of an imprint, but I am probably fooling myself:
While we're on fragments, I also spotted this chunk of terra cotta near the canal at the west end of the site:
Not far west of the cellar hole is a well-defined pit. At the bottom are some remnants of corrugated sheet steel, and another large piece lies nearby with a hoop assembly of some kind:
Here's a closeup of that part:
There were several large sheets of rusted corrugated steel lying here and there, some intact and some just a few rusty fragments. There are lots of broken pallets around as well, including some that were used to create a makeshift bridge across the canal:
Speaking of the canal, it borders the site to the south and west, and runs off up across the Calico road and into what appears to be some old bogs that Cutts no longer work. Here's a section near where it enters the spung-bog-pond I mentioned above:
You can clearly see that it is an excavation, with the spoils thrown up into a bank along the west side. On satellite views it shows up pretty clearly, running straight up to Cutts. To me it looks like it once drained the bogs into the Beaver Branch, but that's a guess. Here's a shot looking out over the bog near where the canal enters:
And lastly, to round out a very long post, pictures of a strangely intact can of paint thinner (I didn't check it for contents), and a sawn stump that caught my eye because there is no other anywhere near there:
I'm not sure if I finally found Calico today. I feel that, if there is anything left of Calico, it's probably right around there. And I do believe that hole is fairly old, and that it was a cellar given the fragments in the vicinity. But my inclination is to think these might be the remains of a sort of second generation Calico, and some of the history of what I saw might be tied up in the history of the bogs to the northwest of the site. I guess not knowing everything is part of the fun.
Not the best picture because it is shot from the east and into the sun, but what you have there is a hole, and that hole is greater than me. For that hole I would need Scott, his Ford, and several rolls of quarters for later. It's hard to see there, but it continues on for, oh, 50-75 yards. I'm not even sure there's a road down there anymore.
So today I decided to try it a little differently, and to come at it from the north via Shamong Road. I knew it would not be easy going, about which more later, but first I had to get there by heading north out of Martha. I stopped where Martha Road crosses Buck Run and took a couple of shots of the very pretty bogs on either side of the road:
I made my way up to where Shamong intersects and hopped out to survey my prospects. It may not look that narrow in this picture, but trust me, it's donate your clearcoat narrow. And rough. And under water in several places.
Here's a shot looking south on Shamong from the intersection with Nash's Cabin Road. Every time I crossed a stream the next section of the road would get worse, narrower and more overgrown.
Not far south of there I knocked the left mirror flat and had to find a slightly wide spot to hop out and knock it back again. Thirty seconds later I knocked it flat again. The road is not passable to cars, and will only admit trucks whose owners have an iron stomach for paint damage. If you don't it's a long walk, which is probably why the area is largely pristine.
A little ways down the road opens up as it passes through the Oswego Gun Club property, which is obsessively posted every ten feet with large, bright yellow signs, one of which you see in the distance here:
At Calico Road the way north is barred, with the usual warnings about laser range finders, and a strangely-scrawled prohibition against hunting that doesn't look like regulation military signage:
I parked the truck near the gate. It turns out that you could probably drive the last bit down to the Calico area, with a teeny bit of saw work, but it is only 3/4 mile, and I knew I would be less likely to miss anything walking.
The site I had picked out as likely, based on a number of old maps, is a sandy height above a small bog or spung or pond or whatever. I think it was or is part of the Cutts water system, but more on that in a bit. Here's the approach to the site from the north, looking out over the spung-bog-pond:
Was the location given on the maps the location of the "old Calico" that was associated with Martha Furnace? I have no idea, but I tend to doubt it. I'm uncertain as to what was at Calico, and when, but I have an idea that it was just a place with a few houses in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, and that later, long after Martha had slumped into rubble, it was probably "Calico" again as the site of some agricultural activity. As I walked through the open area I spotted this old fellow:
He's still alive, as you can see in this next shot, and I think there's a good chance he's an old domesticated specimen. So I thought perhaps I was close.
I walked south along the road a bit, scanning the woods, and toward the west end of the open area I hit paydirt. Just off the road to the south was a prominent cellar hole. Cellar holes are sometimes damned hard to convey in images. I have three in the gallery, but I will just post the one that gives the best impression of size and depth:
There are some sizeable trees growing out of this depression, including one 18 inches or so in diameter, so I think it's been filling in for awhile. On the ground nearby are various specimens of sandstone and some brick fragments as well:
This one almost looked like it had the remnants of an imprint, but I am probably fooling myself:
While we're on fragments, I also spotted this chunk of terra cotta near the canal at the west end of the site:
Not far west of the cellar hole is a well-defined pit. At the bottom are some remnants of corrugated sheet steel, and another large piece lies nearby with a hoop assembly of some kind:
Here's a closeup of that part:
There were several large sheets of rusted corrugated steel lying here and there, some intact and some just a few rusty fragments. There are lots of broken pallets around as well, including some that were used to create a makeshift bridge across the canal:
Speaking of the canal, it borders the site to the south and west, and runs off up across the Calico road and into what appears to be some old bogs that Cutts no longer work. Here's a section near where it enters the spung-bog-pond I mentioned above:
You can clearly see that it is an excavation, with the spoils thrown up into a bank along the west side. On satellite views it shows up pretty clearly, running straight up to Cutts. To me it looks like it once drained the bogs into the Beaver Branch, but that's a guess. Here's a shot looking out over the bog near where the canal enters:
And lastly, to round out a very long post, pictures of a strangely intact can of paint thinner (I didn't check it for contents), and a sawn stump that caught my eye because there is no other anywhere near there:
I'm not sure if I finally found Calico today. I feel that, if there is anything left of Calico, it's probably right around there. And I do believe that hole is fairly old, and that it was a cellar given the fragments in the vicinity. But my inclination is to think these might be the remains of a sort of second generation Calico, and some of the history of what I saw might be tied up in the history of the bogs to the northwest of the site. I guess not knowing everything is part of the fun.
