Historic Structures:
Lake Waccabuc, Castle Rock,
Marilyn Monroe, and more

Where the name came from

According to early documents, the Indians called the lakes Wepack or Wepuck.  Students of the Algonquian language believe this to be a corruption of the compound word wequa-paug.  The earliest available translation of the name appears as “Long Pond” on a deed of 1701 granting land from the Indian Chief Catoonah to the citizens of Stamford.  And it appears again on a 1729 deed transferring land from Tapporneck and his Indians to the Ridgefield Proprietors.  It may have been that the Indians used the word Wepack to refer to the three lakes as a whole.  Thus the name Long Pond applied collectively to the three-lakes system.  Individual names began to appear regularly on documents in the 1830s. Long Pond became the name associated specifically to Lake Waccabuc.  The current name of Lake Waccabuc, a reversion to the Indian wequa-paug came into use around 1860 with the opening of the Waccabuc House.

The three lakes occupying the northeast corner of Lewisboro were formed some twenty thousand years ago during the Wisconsinan Ice Age. Their documented history began with the arrival of the first settlers and the establishment of the town of Salem in 1747. Lake Rippowam is fed by springs and small streams from Long Pond Mountain.  From there the water flows southward by way of a short channel into Lake Oscaleta and then further west into Lake Waccabuc.  In each of the three lakes there are places where the bedrock has remained exposed; one can see the tracks of glacier in the form of parallel grooves running east/west with the long axis of the lake.

Waccabuc Island (private)

The Ovens

On Waccabuc Island, a softer region of bedrock has weathered into a series of small, cave-like recesses.  The Indians that inhabited this area a few hundred years ago treated these “ovens” with reverence, believing them to have been provided by the Great Spirit.

Castle Rock (on private property)

60’ high granite outcropping on the north side of the lake

Marilyn Monroe

On July 1, 1956 Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller held a Jewish wedding ceremony in Waccabuc, at the home of Miller’s literary agent, Kay Brown.  Brown resided on the private East Ridge Road.  They were not married, as is popularly and incorrectly and frequently related, at Mead Memorial Chapel.  However, the photograph does show that Marilyn visited it.

The elephant in the lake

No historic account of Waccabuc would be complete without some mention of the Waccabuc elephant.  According to the story, an elephant died on or near Mead Street during the early to mid 1800s, was dragged out onto the frozen lake, weighted with chains and scrap iron, and left to sink into the lake when the ice melted.  This story has been passed by word of mouth for more than 150 years, but its multiple variations cannot be traced to any source and verified.  But in those days, there were several circuses which had their headquarters in North Salem, and local farmers were often called upon to keep circus animals in their barns during the winter months.

Barnum & Bailey Circus did have a farm in Somers and occasionally elephants would be sheltered in the Waccabuc House’s barn on Mead Street, as they traveled back and forth from NYC to Somers.

In 1960, a group of skin divers searched the bottom of Lake Waccabuc for evidence to support the story but found nothing conclusive.