Dogtown Bouldering

Dogtown's 3600 acres reside within the borders of Gloucester and Rockport. It has an interesting and mysterious history since its founding in the late1600's.The original settlement provided an inland location with refuge from pirates and native tribes who frequented the area. At its peak, between the years 1750-1800, about 100 families lived here, eking out an existence by farming and timbering the rugged, rocky landscape. Around 1800, many of the settlers left and moved closer to the coast seeking work in the fishing industry. The original settlements were abandoned, opening the area to an array of social outcasts including vegabonds, squatters, alleged witches and feral dogs who transformed this place into a spooky, haunted, no-mans' land. The last of those colorful characters left Dogtown in the 1830's and all houses were razed by 1845. During the Great Depression, Roger Babson, a millionaire and founder of Babson College, commissioned unemployed stonecutters to carve inspirational inscriptions like "Get A Job" and "If Work Stops, Values Decay." into dozens of boulders scattered across the terrain. Fortunately, the recession of the last ice age randomly deposited hundreds of glacial erratics throughout the tangled woods. Those granite blocks await the adventurous boulderer willing to leave the trails and become a part of the history and legend of Dogtown.