Buggytown Revisited

Ben Leavitt in his buggy in front Vic Perry’s store Standish, circa 1908. Leavitt was one of the first settlers Buggytown–Betty Barry Deal

Note: This post originally appeared 22 February 2023. At that I time I used the 1889 photograph of the Buggytown Ditch, because I misfiled the above buggy photograph.

No doubt you never heard of it. It was not named for pesky insects or pushy people either. An irrigation ditch was named as such, too. Buggytown, in its unique way was not even a town, but more like a sprawling affluent neighborhood in the late 1800s, located to the west of Leavitt Lake.It was so named as one of the first settlers possessed a buggy when such luxuries were rare on the frontier. It would later become known as Clinton, which consisted of a store, post office and the Riverside School. In 1973, it was transformed when the first phase of the Leavitt Lake Subdivision began.

Buggytown Ditch
Survey crew to enlarge the Buggytown ditch near Johnstonville, 1889. Courtesy of Betty Barry Deal

Tim

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