Ruins of Ainsworth: The House in the Woods

The northern part of Deep River County Park has a long trail winding through its woods, with Big Maple Lake on one side and Deep River on the other.

If it's April and you enter the trail northwest of the lake, you will see daffodils blooming amid the rougher vegetation on the edge of the woods.

You follow the trail into the woods. Soon you pass between posts that once held a gate.


(Click on images to enlarge)

You keep walking north. Fifty feet into the woods to your right — you won't notice it unless you know exactly where to look — is a rusted piece of old farming equipment, one wheel crushed by a fallen tree.



The trail comes to a fork where it has looped back on itself. You keep to the northwest fork. You see something through the trees that's tall and broad, brick-red and stone-gray, and completely leafless. You say to yourself, "What the heck — is that a chimney?"

It is.



At first you think, delightedly, that you've stumbled upon some remnant of a pioneer homestead. Closer inspection proves you wrong: it's all quite modern, from the well ...



... to the plumbing ...



... to the wiring ...



... and even to the downspout.




The years and the nocturnal revelers have not been kind to the chimney. The photo above is several years old. Here it is a few days ago.



If you walk east from the house, you come across a shallow depression running north-south through the woods. It's not deep enough to be called a ditch, but it's too straight to be natural. Follow the faint line of that depression, and you come to a gas connection.





I know nothing about the history of the house. I can't find it on any of the aerial photos. Still, it's an interesting thing to encounter deep in the woods. I love the park, its trees and wildflowers, the river, the birds and deer and other wildlife, but nothing there intrigues me quite as much as these human artifacts.