As we are wont to do, me and Andy Harrison got together and opted to journey towards one of the increasingly rare instances of Weird Garbage in Rhode Island which neither of us had previously visited; this turned out to be Hanton City in Smithfield. Directions from the Internet were awful and seemingly authored by drunken half-wits and cut-rate Englishmen, but we managed a sense of our intended destination.

The above map shows our point of entry: Lydia Ann Road off Douglas Pike, Route 7, in Smithfield. The thick red transparent line denotes the main route traveling through the woods; it quickly turns dirt. According to Topographical Maps and Internet Gossip, at some point it becomes Hanton City Trail. This is not to be mistaken with the other Hanton City Trail, an actual paved road that leads to nothing except Historical Cemetery 62 and ugly houses; there has been some confusion between Cemetery 62 and Cemetery 8, which I’ve put on the map. They’re different places. Same family name, though.

As of this writing, the satellite image on Google Maps is older than that of Live Maps. Thus, it lacks any trace of the dominant feature of my helpful illustration: the enormous new road and construction that has been driven straight through the woods. It is quite possible that this has eliminated much of Hanton City. The construction is visible here, sort of, but what we found was far more advanced and complete.

Our first mistake was in ever being born. Our second was in visiting the area on the hottest day of Summer. We’re talking about 99 to 101 degrees and me and Harrison wandering around in the woods, looking for a Spook City that may not even exist; it’s unclear if we found anything. There were a few walls and apparent foundations, but they were so covered in debris and tree branches that it’s difficult to ascertain if they represented the real Hanton City, or were just old stone fences left over from Halcyon Dayes of Yore. The low point of this sweating exhaustathon was, as may be inferred from my illustration, when I got the car stuck; we’re talking full on stuck, with me revving the engine and Harrison pushing the stupid thing and the wheels not getting traction on the gravel. There was a snow shovel in the trunk, so we managed to dig our way out of the predicament; again, this was in 100 degree heat. Madness set in and we wandered around for another two or so hours, finding little but trash.

The function of this post is twofold: to provide a better reference for people seeking out Spook City, and to reflect on how incredibly strange Rhode Island remains, even after decades of being in its thrall. It’s hard to imagine a place outside of early 80s computer RPGs where a person can hunt for a ruined city hidden in the woods while being three minutes away from relatively populated civilization and about ten from the state capital. Though some unsatisfactory attempts have been made, the remains an amazing book to be written (by someone other than me) that is a Weird New Jersey-esque tour up and down the Ocean State’s weird places and marvels. So. Get popping, someone.

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