Where is midgetville nj

Warning sign at the entrance to 'Midgetville' in Totowa, shown here in Homes in the area, long as roadside attraction to countless carloads of teens, will be torn down after they were damaged during Hurricane Irene. TOTOWA - Demolition crews are expected to begin tearing down homes ravaged by Hurricane Irene in a borough neighborhood known locally as "Midgetville," which has long been a roadside attraction to area teens. The neighborhood was dubbed Midgetville because of its scaled-down homes that, according to urban legend, were built as quarters for Alfred Ringling and his diminutive circus performers, according to the publishers of Weird NJ.

The small, isolated neighborhood consists of tiny cottages that were once vacation homes. The area is flood-prone, sitting along the banks of the Passaic River, and the homes were damaged severely during Hurricane Irene in The lure of Midgetville has drawn countless carloads of teens to the neighborhood over the decades, often leading to encounters with residents who grew tired of being known as a sideshow attraction. In the truck was a midget driver and a midget kid in the passenger seat.

She would not give us directions. We then turned around and another car came up to us. This car was loaded with six midgets. We asked them for directions and the driver gave them to us but he looked really mad that we were there. Midgetville is fun, we did see the little houses and doors and everything that goes with it, but when they saw us they looked really pissed.

I was driving by and I heard bangs as I saw a few dwarves and thought they were throwing cans at my car. When I got out to check the damage, it was much more than I had expected. I went to the police and asked them about this. The little people apparently have the right to shoot at you from the waist down. I think that one day we took a class trip to Midgetville. It was somewhere in Northern NJ. The houses were very very tiny, yet the stop signs were normal. We were going to see a play, Romeo and Juliet, and it was in an old Victorian castle — a very tiny castle.

The people who put the play on were normal-sized however. Everyone on the bus was cracking jokes and saying how they wanted to ring the doorbells of the houses.

The houses were set back like almost in the woods. There was not one normal-sized house among them. A few of the houses looked abandoned, but the rest were in good shape. There were no people in the streets or driving. It looked kind of spooky. The buses had a hard time getting through the tiny streets. Located down a narrow dirt road leading through a pine forest, the Jefferson site seems like just the right setting for the enchanted land of Midgetville.

The group of houses that we found there, about eight in all, were indeed quite small, much smaller in fact than the dwellings we had seen in any of the other so-called Midgetvilles we had visited. A few of the dwellings were no larger than the prefabricated back yard sheds that you find at Home Depot.

But these were actual houses and cozy little cottages at that, some decorated with flower boxes and Pennsylvania Dutch style ornamentation. For an average sized adult these homes would undoubtedly seem pretty claustrophobic. They would only be able to stand upright at the very center of the house, where the pitched roof was highest, and they would definitely have to stoop down to look out a window or get through a doorway. We knocked on the little doors, and peeked through the tiny windows, but unfortunately there were no residents, midget or otherwise, to be found anywhere.

So off we went to look for clues elsewhere about this curious community in the forest. In circus mogul Alfred T. Ringling purchased nearly acres of land in this section of Jefferson Township then known as Petersburg on which to build an estate and winter home for his performers many of whom were little people and his animals.

Nestled between the Green Pond and Bowling Green Mountains, the estate proper consisted of acres, with a stately room stone mansion overlooking the grounds, barns and cobblestone elephant houses. The circus would arrive at the nearby Oak Ridge train station each autumn and trek four miles down the dirt path of Berkshire Valley Road on foot or by horse drawn wagon to the Ringling estate to spend the winter months. Today Ringling Manor is the St. Stanislaus Friary, a monastery for the Capuchin Fathers.

When Weird NJ went in search of the Jefferson Midgetville we stopped in to ask the fathers if they could give us any information which might shed some light on the fabled land we sought. Though the friars were gracious enough to give us a tour or the old mansion, they said they knew nothing of any midget colonies located nearby.

Is it merely a coincidence that a cluster of extremely small cottages is located so close to the estate where a circus that employed many little people performers once wintered? Or is it possible that Alfred T. Ringling had these homes custom built to make his tinier attractions more comfortable? Compared to the massive stone buildings constructed to house his ponderous pachyderms, the houses of Midgetville would seem a small price to pay.

I grew up in Jefferson Township, in the northern corner of Morris County. Midgetville is actually on a dirt road near the old Ringling Brothers estate, which is now a retreat for nuns.

There are actually eight or nine small houses along the short stretch of dirt road that backs up to nothing but woods. I have explored the area numerous times both during the day and at night. TOTOWA - Demolitions are complete in a neighborhood along the Passaic River that has long drawn attention, largely unwanted, for its diminutive, cottage-like homes. The term is considered offensive by many locals. The tear-downs started Dec. Construction trucks and emergency no-parking signs remained on the street in the days afterward, as workers removed what was left of the homes and their foundations, then leveled the dirt.

The homes at 23, 31, 43 and 61 Norwood Terrace were removed with money from a grant the borough received from the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program. A home at Riverview Drive, a few blocks away from Norwood Terrace, was also part of this program. Construction workers were at the site of Riverview Drive completing the demolition on Friday.