Dudleytown

Overview

A hill farm with a borrowed curse

Dudleytown was never a town. The name belongs to a cluster of farms in the hills southeast of Cornwall Bridge, in a valley now called Dark Entry Forest. Thomas Griffis settled there in the early 1740s and Gideon Dudley followed. By 1753 Barzillai and Abiel Dudley had farms there too, and Martin Dudley came a few years later. The name stuck to the Dudleys.

The farms faded in the middle of the 1800s, when better land opened in the Midwest and the local iron industry wound down. Local historians add two plainer reasons: thin soil and a long way to clean water. By the 1920s it was cut-over farmland on Bald Mountain. In 1924 a group of New Yorkers led by Dr. William Cogswell Clarke bought about 800 acres and incorporated Dark Entry Forest, Inc., with 41 shareholders, to replant it. They had 10,000 seedlings in the ground by 1927, most of them red pine, and in the 1930s ran a children's summer camp and hosted a New York ski club.

What survives is what a replanted forest leaves behind: cellar holes and a few stone foundations under century-old pines. The corporation still owns the land, people live along Dark Entry Road, and the forest is closed to the public. The Cornwall Historical Society's own page on the corporation says that, despite rumors, the area is as populated as any other part of Cornwall.

Timeline

Farms, pines and trespassers

1. Early 1740sThomas Griffis settles the hills southeast of Cornwall Bridge. Gideon Dudley follows.
2. 1753Barzillai and Abiel Dudley are farming here. Martin Dudley arrives a few years later, and the cluster of farms takes the family's name.
3. Mid-1800sFamilies leave for better land in the Midwest as the local iron industry winds down. Local historians blame thin soil and the distance to clean water.
4. 1906Dr. William Cogswell Clarke, a New York physician, buys 300 acres in Cornwall.
5. 1916Clarke hires Edward Behre, a Yale forestry graduate, who plants several thousand red pine saplings.
6. 1924A March prospectus proposes a society to "promote forestation" and give families a playground. Dark Entry Forest, Inc. incorporates in December with 41 shareholders and about 800 acres of old farmland on Bald Mountain.
7. 1925–1927Planting starts with 4,000 seedlings. By the summer of 1927, 10,000 are in the ground, mostly red pine.
8. 1930–1933The Appalachian Trail is built through Connecticut. Its Cornwall section runs from the Cornwall Bridge railroad station through Dudleytown to Cathedral Pines.
9. 1930sA summer camp offers riding and sports. The Skidreiverein ski club of New York City spends weekends on the hill.
10. 1980sThe Appalachian Trail is rerouted through Sharon. The old Cornwall section becomes the blue-blazed Mohawk Trail.
11. 1980s–1990sCurse stories spread, vandalism becomes routine, and Cornwall police answer call after call.
12. 1993Dan Aykroyd calls Dudleytown "the most haunted place on earth" in a Playboy interview, and places it in Massachusetts.
13. 1999The Blair Witch Project brings a new wave of visitors and damage. The owners close the land to the public.
14. May 2018Police report a nighttime break-in and a return the next afternoon at a house on Dark Entry Road. Two people face burglary and trespass charges; the Lakeville Journal reports the allegations in July.
15. May 2026Norfolk Now reports that Dudleytown remains privately owned and entry is prohibited.

Legend and record

The curse

The story runs like this. The Dudleys of Cornwall descend from Edmund Dudley, an English nobleman beheaded for treason in the 1500s, and a curse followed the family across the Atlantic. It is blamed for failed crops, madness and violent deaths, and for emptying the valley. Dan Aykroyd repeated it in a 1993 Playboy interview, calling Dudleytown the most haunted place on earth.

The record doesn't bear it out. Local historians found no genealogical link between the Cornwall Dudleys and the English nobleman. The one confirmed suicide of a Dudleytown resident happened in New York state, not Cornwall. The Cornwall Historical Society published Harriet L. Clark's True Facts About Dudleytown in 1989 to answer the legend, and the newest first-hand descriptions, from the owners and the police, are of trespassers, not ghosts. We keep the story on the page because visitors will hear it. We label it as legend.

Settlers left for the usual reasons: poor soil, far-off water and cheaper land out west.

Site map

Where the farms stood

The 1956 USGS sheet, in the historic maps below, is the one to read. It labels Dudleytown Hill, an old road past Dudleytown Hill, Bald Mountain to the west, Coltsfoot to the north and Woodbury Mountain to the east, with the Appalachian National Scenic Trail following Bonney Brook along the valley's northern side. The 1892 and 1903 sheets show the same valley south of Cornwall Bridge with a road and a few buildings along it, before the pines went in. The 1985 and 1993 sheets, at a coarser scale, show the state forests that now surround the private land. On today's map the valley is unbroken forest, and the aerial view shows the same.

• Cellar holes
• Stone foundations
• Old road traces
• Replanted red pine from the 1920s

Historic maps

Dudleytown on USGS maps, 1892–1993

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

18921:62,50019031:62,50019561:24,00019851:100,00019931:100,000

Map & directions

Getting there

Torrington is the nearest city, about 35 minutes away. From Hartford, US 44 and US 202 lead there, and CT 4 carries both routes west through Goshen to Cornwall Bridge. The router then turns up Bald Mountain Road, the posted approach into Dark Entry Forest, which you must not use as a route into the site. The displayed distances and drive times include that private final approach. They are location references, not directions for a public visit.

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

Photos

Have photos of Dudleytown?

We haven’t added more photographs of Dudleytown yet. If you’ve visited, share your photos and a field report below.

Visitor reports

Been to Dudleytown?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

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Nearby

Other sites near Dudleytown

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Connecticut index.

• Bloomfield32.0 mi E · Hartford
• Easton38.5 mi S · Fairfield
• Gay City State Park47.4 mi E · Tolland
• Johnsonville Village50.7 mi SE · Middlesex
• Bara-Hack69.2 mi E · Windham

Sources

Sources and credits

1. ghosttowns.com, "Dudley Town": fact sheet fields (county, roads, best time, remains).
2. Wikipedia, "Dudleytown, Connecticut", retrieved October 2026: settlers and dates, the decline, ownership since 1924, the 1930s ski trails, vandalism, the Blair Witch effect, the closure, the curse legend and the record against it, the Aykroyd interview, coordinates (GNIS), and its reference list (Clark 1989).
3. Cornwall Historical Society, "Dark Entry Forest, Inc.", read October 2026: Clarke's 1906 purchase, the 1916 planting, the March 1924 prospectus, incorporation with 41 shareholders, the 800 acres, planting figures, the summer camp and the Skidreiverein club, and the note that the area is as populated as the rest of Cornwall.
4. Cornwall Historical Society, "Appalachian and Mohawk Trails": the Appalachian Trail's 1930–33 construction and its route through Dudleytown, the 1980s reroute and the Mohawk Trail.
5. Lakeville Journal, "'Ghost hunters' trespass on Dark Entry", July 18, 2018: the May 2018 arrests and charges, the Dark Entry Forest Association's ownership and replanting, and the historical society's notice that trespassers will be arrested.
6. UNILAD, October 11, 2025: a dated report describing the site as privately owned, closed to the public, with only cellar holes and a few stone foundations left.
7. Patch, "Spooky Connecticut", October 20, 2020: the land is private and residents are fed up with ghost hunters, citing the historical society.
8. Norfolk Now, "Tracing the Dudley Legacy", May 3, 2026: a local family-history interview and a dated statement that access remains prohibited on private land. It gives a 1747 founding date, compared with Wikipedia's early 1740s.
9. Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026. Not field-checked, and the last 1.1 miles are not to be driven.

Photo and map credits

• The 1956 USGS Cornwall sheet: Dudleytown Hill, the old Dudleytown road, Bald Mountain and the Appalachian Trail along Bonney Brook: U.S. Geological Survey, USGS catalog, Public domain
• Area base map, topo and aerial imagery: USGS The National Map (public domain).
• Historic maps: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection (public domain): Cornwall 1892, 1:62,500; Cornwall 1903, 1:62,500; Cornwall 1956, 1:24,000; Waterbury 1985, 1:100,000; Waterbury 1993, 1:100,000.