Dundas Castle has been on my list of places to visit for a while, but I had been holding it off until the warmer months, as I could imagine nothing more magical than a fairy tale-looking castle surrounded by lush green foliage…and I certainly wasn’t wrong.
Case and point.
A lot of people have asked me where I discover these abandoned places that I visit. Sometimes I just stumble upon them. Sometimes it’s from internet research. But back when I was dating, I received a lot of recommendations from online dating. I had a little mention in my profile about how I liked visiting abandoned places, and all of these men came out of the woodwork asking me if I knew about such-and-such place. Their attempts at breaking the ice were almost always ignored (sorry fellas), but I wrote down all of these places, and called up someone else to see if they wanted to visit this new place I just heard about. Letchworth Village was one of those places. Thanks OkCupid – at least you were good for something.
The girls’ campus, 1922
Letchworth Village, officially known as Letchworth Village Home for the Feeble Minded and Epileptics, opened its doors in Thiells, NY in 1911 with a 130 buildings located atop a sprawling 2,362 acre lawn. It was named after William Pryor Letchworth, a noted humanitarian and philanthropist, who was familiar with institutional conditions. The hospitals original intentions were noble, aiming to provide the utmost quality in care for the patients. Read More
After carefully making our precarious 5 mile exit from Nutallburg, the next stop on our West Virginia ghost town tour was Thurmond – aka the place that seemed like the easiest to find out of the multitude of dubiously mapped options.
Thurmond during a more bustling time.
Unlike Nutallburg, Thurmond was bustling epicenter of train travel and commerce, seeing more transportation of coal, rather than the manufacturing of it. Formally incorporated in 1900, the town was named for Confederate Captain William Thurmond, who was offered 73 acres of land along the river as a good will gesture for just $20. The C&O railroad was routed through the area shortly after, but the town was slow to grow with only one house constructed at the time. It was not until Thomas G. McKell of neighboring Glen Jean negotiated with the railroad for a branch up Dunloup Creek, that Thurmond became the boom town it was known to be, with the line becoming one of the railroad’s busiest branches. Despite this growth of business for both parties, McKell and Thurmond became bitter enemies.
Minsky's Abandoned 