There’s something about autumn that makes the past feel closer. As the leaves fall away, revealing the land beneath, you start to notice the quiet markers of lives that were once here—places we’ve forgotten, stories that have faded into the forest. Without the cover of foliage, the land reveals its secrets: abandoned roads, logging paths, forgotten foundations, and driveways that once led to homes. Stick season allows us to really see the contour of the land.
For the past two years, mostly after the leaves start to fall from the trees and before the snow covers the ground, I’ve been discovering and mapping the ruins of the community that called the land in and around Grafton Lakes State Park home long before the creation of the park. Grafton Lakes State Park, tucked away in Rensselaer County, is one of those places where the present and past quietly coexist.
Most people know Grafton Lakes as a park established in the 1960s, a space for hiking, swimming, and connecting with nature. But if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s more than just a park—it’s a patchwork of history. Long before this land became a public space, it was home to indigenous peoples, European settlers, and later, families whose lives left traces that still remain beneath the trees.
Stone Walls: Hidden Stories in the ForestWalking through the park, you might not notice them at first. But once you spot a stone wall, half-buried under moss and leaves, you start to see them everywhere. These walls are relics of an earlier time when this land was farmland, painstakingly cleared and worked by European settlers. Each stone was placed by hand, marking boundaries, enclosing pastures, or simply keeping the farm animals in. They are quiet reminders of the lives spent shaping this land.
Once you start seeing these walls, you can’t unsee them. They’re like veins running through the park, hidden in plain sight, carrying with them the weight of years of labor and the passage of time. It’s hard not to wonder about the people who placed each stone—what their days looked like, what their dreams were, and how they would feel knowing their hard work is now part of a place we come to for peace and solitude.
And here is where photography steps in. To photograph these ruins is not just to record what remains, but to bring the past into focus once more. In the frame of a camera lens, the stone walls emerge from time, becoming more than just forgotten structures—they become the keepers of memory, offering a glimpse into a world that once was, and the enormous amounts of hard, physical labor that it required.
Forgotten Foundations and Lost Homes
Wander a little off the main trails, and you might stumble across something that feels more personal—a stone foundation, barely standing, with trees growing through it. These ruins are what’s left of homes and camps that were once filled with life: children’s laughter, the smells of dinners cooking, the sound of crackling fires. You can still find bits and pieces of that life here—rusted cars, broken apothecary bottles, the wheels of a child’s wagon.
I spoke with a former resident who grew up on Long Pond Road in the 1960s. Her family had to leave when the state claimed the land for the park, but her childhood memories of their house are still vivid. She told me about the white ranch with teal shutters and the oak tree in the driveway, about summers spent swimming in the lake, and winters bundled up against the cold. She even recalled the words etched into the foundation: “Enchanted Island.” I went looking for that etching, wanting to see for myself this small, personal piece of history. It was still there—a quiet testament to the lives that had been lived here, now slowly being swallowed by the forest.
Photographing these ruins feels less like documentation and more like a resurrection of sorts. To capture the image of a crumbling foundation, a tree twisting through the stone, is to pause time—if only for a moment—and offer a bridge between the present and the past. These homes, now overtaken by nature, once held life, love, and loss. And through the lens, their story is told again, if only briefly, before time inevitably erases the last traces.
Tracing the Past, One Discovery at a TimeAs I explore the park, I’ve begun mapping these forgotten homesteads. To date, I’ve found seven different sites, each with its own unique story to tell. Some are more intact than others—stone fireplaces still standing, foundations covered in moss, old bottles and tools scattered around like the last remnants of a forgotten world.
One of my most memorable discoveries was a windmill, its blades half-buried in the forest floor. It’s hard to imagine the landscape being open enough to need wind power, but there it was—a glimpse into a time before the trees took over. The windmill, along with the foundations and stone walls, feels like a breadcrumb trail left behind by the people who used to live here.
Photography becomes an act of listening, as each image captured asks the past: Who were you? What was your world like? These places, long untended, are not empty. They are full of echoes, of stories left behind in the stone and rusting steel. And in capturing them, I feel a connection not only to the land but to the people who once called it home.
The Ruins Are DisappearingEvery time I return to the park, I notice how these ruins are slowly disappearing. The forest is taking them back, piece by piece. Stone by stone. Each season, the foundations sink a little deeper, the moss grows a little thicker, and what was once clear becomes harder to find. Time has a way of erasing things, but for now, these ruins still remain—if you know where to look.
There’s something poignant about seeing these places—these homes, now empty, where lives once flourished. It makes you think about the passage of time, about how everything we build eventually returns to the earth. And yet, for a moment, these ruins offer a connection to the past. They remind us that people lived here, loved here, and left a mark—however small—on the land.
To photograph these places is to resist that erasure, if only for a moment. The image freezes time, preserving what remains before the forest reclaims it all. But even in that pause, we know that what we capture today will someday be gone. Photography is a small defiance against the impermanence of life, but it also reminds us that everything—every structure, every story—eventually returns to the earth.
Finding Connection in Forgotten Places
Exploring the ruins of Grafton Lakes State Park has changed the way I see the landscape. It’s not just a park; it’s a living history, with stories buried in the ground, waiting to be discovered. Each stone wall, each crumbling fireplace, is a reminder that we’re just one chapter in the long story of this land. The past is still here, hidden beneath the leaves, slowly fading, but never completely gone.
Next time you visit Grafton Lakes, take a moment to look beyond the trails and the trees. You might just find yourself standing in the middle of someone’s old kitchen, or next to a fireplace where families once gathered. And if you do, you’ll feel the quiet weight of history all around you—reminding you that the past is never as far away as it seems. To stand in these forgotten places is to remember that while the forest may reclaim what we build, memory endures. And with a photograph, we give that memory a little more time.
All Content © 2024, John Bulmer Photography. All Rights Reserved.
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