Well We’re Living Here in Oniontown

Tucked off a narrow, unpaved dead-end road just south of the hamlet of Dover Plains in Dutchess County, New York, lies a place that seems suspended in time, and drenched in myth. That place is Oniontown. Despite being only roughly 1½ hours by car from the bright lights of New York City, it sits in what feels like a remote no-man’s-land of folklore, suspicion, and social neglect. 

Richard Wilcox Home, 1947. Getty Images

Having recently driven through the Hudson Valley between New York and Boston, the area that I'd first heard about from Atlas Obscura came to mind again, especially with how rich of an area I drove through in comparison to the zeitgeist surrounding Oniontown.

If you imagine a more neglected corner of the Hudson Valley where the trees close in, the pavement ends, and a single strip of gravel leads you toward the woods, well your imagination is going to be pretty close to Oniontown. The paved road ends, and beyond it you’ll find trailers, modest ranch-style houses, perhaps a pig pen or two, and a community that has long been both overlooked and overjudged. 

Located off of a Dead End Street named Oniontown Road west of the 

Despite being in Dutchess County, a region increasingly touched by suburban sprawl and second-home buyers escaping the city, Oniontown remains stubbornly separate: physically near to New York City in distance, but socially and infrastructurally far removed. 

So why the fascination with this place? It's not a ghost town; in fact its not really even a town, planned or otherwise, but rather an area of Dover Plains located to the west of NY 22 and separated by it via the ex-New York Central Railroad's Harlem Line, now used today by Amtrak and the MTA's Metro-North Railroad.

It’s this closeness that perhaps most defines the place: you could commute from New York City to within a few miles of Oniontown and still step into what feels like another world entirely. The train tracks, the unpaved road, the “No Trespassing” signs at the threshold together create a symbolic barrier between the “city” folks and the “town” insiders. But yet, this dichotomy is not unusual in the United States.

Amtrak 9923 in Oniontown - 3/30/2019. Photo: The Train Hunters Productions.

According to VICE, "in the 1800s, poor white tenant farmers settled in the area." In the 1908 book Historic Dover, Oniontown is first mentioned. “One mile south of Dover Plains is a little settlement, composed of two classes—males that don’t do anything and females that bring up the children and take the business off the old man’s hands.” It first appeared on maps in 1947, which is also the same time that a series of articles describing the place as “a century behind times” were published by International News Service reporter James L. Kilgallen.

Oniontown in 1947. USGS 1947 Dover Plains Topo Map.

In the more recent past, YouTube videos of outsiders driving in, mocking the community, and in turn, being rebuffed or even attacked have continued to paint the area in a less positive light; but a large portion of Oniontown’s story is built on rumor and legend. Tales of in-breeding, lawlessness, and wild trespassing expeditions have circulated for decades. One local put it simply: “The kids pick on you. You grow up watching your back.” Like many places where people fear for their safety, the reality is quite overblown, and Oniontown is no more or less safe than any small, low-income community, and I will not denigrate the area any further by linking to any of these YouTube videos.

The Tipton Daily Tribune, 1947.

The infrastructure of the area probably doesn't help the situation, however. Given its proximity to the railroad and hills to the west, there is only one road in and out of Oniontown, and it's hardly wide enough to allow cross traffic.

Google Street View Image, July 2025.

This has given the area an unfortunate, and alarming irony: a place that many regard as dangerous is also a place many outside of it rush to explore—often uninvited. As a result of the legend factor, Oniontown has become a target for thrill-seekers and pranksters. Stigma extends into the next generation, as children from Oniontown have reported being bullied in nearby schools simply for their address. 

Upon returning to Oniontown, Kilgallen and his photographer remarked about the area in comparison to the nearby rich homes, "I doubt if a lot of rich people who live in those estates are happier than the people we saw in Oniontown. You don’t find Oniontown worrying about income taxes or the atomic bomb.” 

I think Oniontown was most succinctly summed up in a Reddit post by a now-deleted author: "There are tens of thousands of roads just like it spread throughout the country. There are hundreds just like it right here in the Hudson Valley. It is a short (as in a couple hundred yards long) dead end road paralleling Rt. 22 with some poor people living on it. Somehow this particular one became an urban legend among teenagers. There is literally nothing unique or scary about it. Just a small cluster of poor people's houses like thousands of others you can find anywhere."

Walk or drive up that gravel stretch and you’ll likely see little. No tourist attractions, no gift shop, no “Explore Oniontown” sign. Just the hushed presence of people choosing to remain out of the spotlight, a parallel that is highlighted in many places in the US, where some people are urbanizing, and others are persistent in their own rhythm, and perfectly fine with that arrangement. 

And in the woods beyond the pavement, Oniontown carries on. Thanks as always for reading!