Mile 1.5 — White Rock Section — Elev. 1800 ft.

A once thriving turn-of-the-century mill village in the town of Wallingford, this now abandoned ghost town lies near the present Long Trail crossing of Homer Stone Brook. Careful hikers might notice stone walls, and the odd brick. This site was the subject of archeological dig in 2007.

Local businessman and logger Barney Aldrich established Aldrichville and operated it as a mill village in the late nineteenth century. For more than twenty years (roughly 1880s-1910s), the mill operated successfully, before being abandoned in favor of a new location in the valley, nearer town and railroad.

At its peak, the village consisted of a steam-powered mill (switched over from water power, probably in the 1890s), a store, school, blacksmith shop, boarding house, and roughly a dozen households. 

These households, clustered in two neighborhoods on either side of the stream, were divided into French and English speaking enclaves. Unlike simple logging camps, this was a community of families; town records, photographs, and diaries (as well as the archaeological record) testify to the presence of children, a local baseball team, and other non-lumberjack aspects of daily life. Today the archaeological remains of this community lie within the Green Mountain National Forest.

In the early day of the Long Trail, some buildings still stood. Early Guide Books mention that one remaining abandoned building west of trail and north of the road affords some shelter.

This camp is no longer mentioned as a place for shelter after 1930.

Long Trail News, Winter 2007

Long Trail News, Spring 1999

The Long Trail Guide Book, 2nd Edition, 1920