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| South Main Street Looking South to St. Francis Xavier Church |
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| South Main Street Looking North to St. Anne's Church |
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| View Over Davies Hollow |
In the middle ground, just beyond the farm, at the base of the dark hill the Bantam River flows from right to left for a half mile through Davies Hollow before merging into the Shepaug. The Davies family were the first to settle the Hollow and helped establish St. John's Episcopal Church there before Davies land was confiscated during the Revolution.
In 1871 Shepaug Railroad would begin running along a roadbed that still follows the river. There was a stop just beyond the farm at a platform they named "Romford" for the gentleman who lived there, Romulus Ford. He was an investor on the board of the Shepaug Railroad and merited a stop made from his name.
Sunrise over Greening Island from Clark Point in Southwest Harbor, ME.
Taken Aug 28, 2021 from Clark Point in Southwest Harbor, ME, across the entrance to Somes Sound to the lights of Northwest Harbor; the end of two great weeks with family in Maine.
In the old shed beside the catwalks and bag-houes, oil-coated rainwater puddled on the floor of the gutted casting shop gives the space clarity that it lacked a decade ago, when furnaces smoked and steamed. In 2011 it was a place of blinding darkness. The president of the company was leading us on a tour of the brass works. It was the first of what would become regular visits. I kept trying to see what I was seeing, expecting my eyes to adjust to the dark, until I realized the dark adhered to every surface, hung in the air, soaked up light like paper towels suck spills. Where daggers of light managed to crack the darkness, they illuminated blue haze and turned high mercury-vapor lamps into small glowing orbs in space. I hadn’t yet discovered how they would scatter lens flare.
Behind us an operation’s foreman, safely muzzled in a breathing mask, puttered along on a yellow HysterCart. A hose connected his breathing mask to a large oxygen tank that accompanied him in the utility vehicle. He was not at all happy when the president invited us to return and shoot “anytime.” However, Mike, Willy, Damir, and Lucio became our familiar guides as we returned often until operations ended in December of 2012. Since then the space has been scrapped, salvaged and detoxed to its shell which has now been polished by rainwater, while every surface remains well-greased to the touch.
Perhaps it is foolish to think they could or should be saved. To some this baghouse is an eyesore, nothing but a rusty muffler, but I would guess future generations would see it quite differently, a 20th century solution to pollution control. On this patch of ground Almon Farrel and Anson Phelps built the canal and factories that made Ansonia. Could a bag house become, not an eyesore, but an icon of industries and struggles that built Connecticut that will lie along the riverwalk that is creeping closer both from north and south?
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