Sunday, March 30, 2014

In search of Anne Arundel County's "Midgetville"

According to Matt Lake's Weird Maryland, somewhere in Anne Arundel County there exists a town made up entirely of midgets, or little people as they prefer to be called now for some reason. Lake wrote that according to the story:
A group of circus folk retired from the Big Tent and used their show business earnings to build a town to suit them. The houses were said to be perfectly proportioned but tiny. The streets were built to a small person's scale. While Midgetville is always located on the outskirts of a regular town, hidden so that the locals couldn't disturb them, someone always seems to know someone who's been there. And on a dull night, groups of people always decide they want to go there to check it out.
But take caution. When you drive to the outskirts of the settlement, they say, a car (often described as a white or black pickup) will chase you and attempt to run you off the road. Or worse, crowds of tiny people armed with rocks and baseball bats and shotguns will come after you, hell-bent on doing you and your car some serious damage.
Lake reported a tale from a woman who claimed that in the 1980s a friend from Glen Burnie drove her out to such a location, but that she doesn't remember exactly where it is now.

I was intrigued by the idea that somewhere hidden in Anne Arundel County there was a village full of angry little people and set out to find this so-called Midgetville.

After asking various people who were from that part of town and more familiar with the local history, I was able to determine that Midgetville was located not in Glen Burnie, but nearby Pasadena. To be more exact, it was located near what is now Tall Oaks restaurant on Colony Road.

Conrad looking for Midgetville
I drove out there with my friend, Conrad Bladey, who is also a subject of Weird Maryland,to check the area out. We ate at Tall Oaks restaurant where the waitress confirmed that Midgetville was once in the area, but the last of the little people left some time ago, perhaps around the late 1980s. She said that the last little house had survived until recently when it was torn down to make for a big gated community nearby.

Do angry midgets live here and chase away outsiders? Sadly, no.
We ate our lunch and had a few beers before leaving. Driving around the neighborhood we still kept an eye out for small houses and people in the hope that she was mistaken about them all leaving. Sadly, she was not. There were no midgets to be found.

Nevertheless, I haven't lost all hope. According to Matt Lake, similar little towns may still exist in Cecil County, somewhere along the Potomac River west of DC, and either on the eastern shore or in Delaware. I will keep searching. If I mysteriously disappear, look in those places first.


Update - October 4, 2015 -
Searching the newspaper archives online, I found this classified ad from The Capital newspaper on April 2, 2003.

This is additional confirmation that "Midgetville" once existed there, but no longer does.


12 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you disappear, I would first check in Conrad Bladey's yard.

Midgets unite!!!

We will again be free. We will no longer have to stand on each other's shoulders wearing raincoats to be part of society!!

It may be time to move the town again -- this one is on to us.

Anonymous said...

I can tell you this place existed. It was off Colony Road in Pasadena. My dad lived off a side road in an old summer cottage that was converted to a home. There were many like that. His ex gf sister lived in a home on the water as well where the old hotel was at the end of the cul de sac there . Those homes were little and tiny. I can assure you this place existed. I am sure if you visit Keuthe Library in GLen Burnie they prob have historic photos of the place

Anonymous said...

I have been here many times when I was in my teen years in the mid 90's, it was off of colony road by the tall oaks restaurant, I had a friend that lived a street or so over.

Anonymous said...

I can confirm this as well I actually went in a few of the houses after they were abandoned very small and kinda creepy

andy beuchat said...

midgets with shotguns would greet trespassers

Anonymous said...

I've had driven there many times as a young teen. It was definitely real. The drive was a dirt road and it looked like it might lead to an illegal dump site. There was a bunch of small mobile style homes with a larger home in the middle. We use to joke that it looked like little ppl lived there. One day we actually did see the sml residents and our theories were confirmed. Atleast 30% of tires had nails in them unless you drove a strange pattern though the sml town. There were a few times we had been chased by the residents waving baseball bats. Now that I'm older and I do hope wiser I regret bothering these ppl. At first we never believed the stories but once we found out the truth should have realized there was a reason the residents had been living of the beaten path. Former resident of Pasadena.

Eric Stoltenberg said...

Not true there were no midgets they were just small summer cottages the midget story was just made up.

Dobergranny said...

True! I lived in Woodland beach & my parents owned waterfront property at the end of the road that led into “Midgetville. They were tiny cottages that surrounded an old abandoned hotel. I went ther often as a child. Never saw a resident or was ever chased by anyone. Sold the property to the developers of the new gated community. I lived there in the 50s and 60s

Dobergranny said...

True! I lived in Woodland beach & my parents owned waterfront property at the end of the road that led into “Midgetville. They were tiny cottages that surrounded an old abandoned hotel. I went ther often as a child. Never saw a resident or was ever chased by anyone. Sold the property to the developers of the new gated community. I lived there in the 50s and 60s

Dobergranny said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I grew up in Pasadena with a view of Water Oak Point marina. On New Year's Eve 1990 one of my friends' boyfriends drove me through Midgetville on the way to a party. It seemed mostly abandoned, but there were lots of little houses in the woods in a group and the area under the trees was all dirt, with a few cars parked. The boyfriend did donuts in the hopes of attracting the mythical shotgun-wielding little people while I cringed wide-eyed in the back seat. But it was definitely there, right in the area indicated in this article, and I saw it!

Anonymous said...

I'm a long-time Pasadena resident and can confirm that there was a "Midgetville" (that's not what the residents called it) off Colony Road where Anneslie is now (gated McMansion community). There was a group of small-scaled houses there where groups of small people could go and enjoy a beach without a lot of gawkers. Pasadena was once home to a lot of private beaches..... It wasn't a year-round residence, but more of a summer home community. I've seen the houses up close, but no one ever chased us with baseball bats or anything like that, although obviously they didn't like being treated as a freak show. The houses were abandoned in the early 1980s and fell to ruined until the old-oak-covered property was raped--uh, "developed."