By Gail McCarthy
As a recent resident to Gloucester in 2003, Mark Carlotto decided to walk through Dogtown from his mechanic's shop in Rockport to his home on the other side of the Cape.
Using a map, he followed a path that eventually trailed off with no clear indication of its ending point. He got lost, although he eventually found his way safely home.
"The trail disappeared and it took me a few hours to find a dot on a tree that led me to Whale's Jaw and toward the area where I live, near Goose Cove Reservoir," he said.
That was the catalyst for Carlotto, who works in the aerospace industry, to create a more complete guide to Dogtown. The 77-page illustrated pocked-sized book is filled with maps as well as historical tidbits. The book is titled "The Dogtown Guide" with an inside subtitle that reads: "Exploring an Abandoned Colonial Settlement on Cape Ann, Massachusetts."
A vast tract that extends into inland Gloucester and Rockport, Dogtown got its name from the packs of wild dogs that roamed through the brush. The hamlet was a rural neighborhood where residents grazed their sheep in a common. They lived in small wooden dwellings, many which had cellar holes.
The area today is uninhabited — most of Gloucester and Rockport's residents live on the coast — but Carlotto finds and identifies the locations of the homes in that long-ago settlement.
Carlotto will bring his laptop to a reading at Border's on Saturday to give people "a virtual tour" of Dogtown and share the scenery and history of 3,000 acres of wilderness in the center of Cape Ann. The site has inspired writers and artists past and present — including Henry David Thoreau, who walked among its glacial boulders, blueberry bushes and endless paths in the early 1800s.
Carlotto also created a color map that shows the old roads, locations of cellar holes, Gloucester's first mill built in 1642 and other sites. The wilderness area was home to a forgotten 18th century hamlet, inhabited by early settlers of the Colonial period and later by society's pariahs and even a freed slave.
The area became a continued point of interest.
"When I moved here I noticed all these trails around Goose Cove and I was curious about them. I didn't have much time to do hiking with winter approach that first year, but it made we want to understand the landscape and I started doing some research," said Carlotto, whose background is in remote sensing and satellite imaging. That means he uses satellite data to understanding terrain and topography.
He began to download imagery to understand the area — from above and on the ground level.
"Even though I haven't lived here as long as many other people, I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours hiking in Dogtown and some friends noticed this untapped passion. I started exploring and I got a GPS and started mapping, and the book was trying to put it all together," said Carlotto who read all the local books about the area and its history.
"I realized I lived in this remarkable place. After reading the many books, I tried to connect landscape with history without being too wordy. For example, I was trying to make a connection that if you go down this trail there is a colorful place or the first mill. I wanted to connect this past stuff to what you can see and experience today," he said. "I think it's important for people to know about Dogtown. It's a really special place."
Peter Anastas, a local author and former chairman of Gloucester's Dogtown Advisory Committee, said Carlotto's book is long overdue.
"He uses all the latest global positioning technology and you practically can't get lost in Dogtown," he said.
In the books introduction, Anastas wrote: "As we lead ever more hectic lives, finding less time for contemplation or solitude, we are going to need wild places like Dogtown, places where we can escape our over-mediated lives to walk among the silent junipers and speechless boulders, listening again to our own thoughts while marveling once again at nature's handiwork."
Gail McCarthy can be reached a gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com
Reader Box:
What: Mark Carlotto presents "The Dogtown Guide" and a virtual tour of the center of Cape Ann.
When: Saturday, 4 p.m.
Where: Borders in Peabody. For more information, call 978-538-3003. The book is available in local bookstores.
Also: Gloucester's Ron Gilson, author of "An Island No More" will read at 2 p.m. from his book, a memoir of sorts, which presents Gloucester in its colorful heyday with a view to the future of the city.
