Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the Forgotten Past of Essex County...

I started this blog in the interest of bringing the history of Essex County out, because it is constantly being wiped out by new condo complex's and other nonsense in the name of "progress". I have been a lifelong resident of Essex, and in the time I have been here I have watched a number of beautiful, historic buildings crumble and be demolished at the hands of both careless private owners, as well as the people in charge of running the county. Things as simple as an old house, to massive sprawling complexes of ornate, century old abandoned buildings. 

 Those who pay taxes to live here should be appalled by what our county has left to ruin. In addition to letting these amazing buildings rot and be wiped out, they continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build new, less aesthetically appealing structures. It is for this reason that I feel a need to document these decaying structures before they are gone forever. 

However, this is not an urban exploration blog, and I will not under any circumstances reveal how to get into these buildings. In many instances, I won't even be posting the real names of these structures. This is purely out of the interest of shielding the locations from vandals and scrappers. 

Also, not everything on this blog is going to be abandoned, so I would not recommend using this to serve as a map of places to visit.

That being said, I hope everybody enjoys seeing history brought back to life, through the photographs and stories I present, as we take a look at the forgotten past of this once great county....