Sugar Loaf Historical Society wins fourth ‘Legends & Lore’ roadside marker

The Sugar Loaf Historical Society this week announced a new grant from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation for a new Legends & Lore roadside marker.

The marker will highlight Sugar Loaf Mountain’s “Mountain Witch” legend surrounding “Lizzie” Dobbin, widow of Sugar Loaf’s earliest European settler. According to the lore, she lived alone at the base of the hamlet’s eponymous mountain, lit fires on the mountain, and only rarely came into town. But when she did, she could be seen smoking a pipe and wearing a strange, floppy hat.

The new grant is the fourth from the Pomeroy Foundation’s Legends & Lore marker program awarded in the past year to the Sugar Loaf Historical Society. The first three were awarded for “Hoop Snake Hill,” “Nathaniel Knapp,” and the “Cat Rocks Treasure,” respectively. Orange County currently hosts seven Pomeroy Foundation Legends & Lore markers in all.

Sugar Loaf Historical Society president Jay Westerveld said, “We are honored by the William G. Pomeroy foundation’s most recent grant to our historical society for another endemic Orange County legend.

Sugar Loaf’s Mountain Witch, while a colorful legend handed down by our ancestors to we few remaining ‘Loaf natives, should also serve as a teachable [moment] about acceptance of others’ beliefs and lifestyles, a reminder against marginalization. ‘Lizzie’ Dobbin should be celebrated as a symbol of individuality and independence, both qualities that have defined ‘Loafers since colonial times right to the end of the 20th century. Lizzie Dobbin’s legend may serve to define the unique and rugged individuality of the hamlet, itself.

“Our hamlet’s historic sense of self-sufficiency played a large part in drawing a generation of young craftspeople and artisans here in the late 1960s, and Hugh and Elizabeth Dobbins personified this spirit 200 years before that time. Our historical society is very proud of our work in securing four William F. Pomeroy ‘Legends and Lore’ marker grants over the course of one year.”

This new marker will be installed on Sugar Loaf’s Main Street, right across from the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center, in view of the hamlet’s namesake mountain. According to Westerveld, the Sugar Loaf Historical Society hopes to have an annual Halloween celebration of the “Sugar Loaf Mountain Witch” legend.

To learn more about the legend of the Sugar Loaf Mountain Witch, read the 2007 Chronicle column “Spooky Sugar Loaf” at bit.ly/4b82SSY.