Urbex NH - Kimball Castle

Perched in the hills of Gilford New Hampshire, overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee as it waits for some ambitious person to restore it to its former glory, stand the crumbling remains of one of our state's most neglected treasures - Kimball Castle.

When you're one of the super rich in society but also have an imaginative side, you do things in life like building a castle to use as a summer residence. Benjamin Ames Kimball was one of those people, and that's just what he did in 1899, bringing in material from as far away as Germany and hiring 100 Italian stone masons to construct this residence. As president of the Concord & Montreal Railroad, Kimball lived a life of first class, not only affording the $50,000 it cost to build this castle (remember, that was in 1899 money), but also building a railroad station at the bottom of the hill so he could commute to work in his own private rail car.

Following Kimball's death in 1919, the castle remained in the family until 1960 when Charlotte Kimball, his daughter-in-law and the last family heir, passed away. Charlotte was determined to do good with the family fortune, so she donated the castle as well as several hundred thousand dollars to a charitable trust, with the specific instructions that the property never be used for commercial purposes. No good deed goes unpunished, however, and due to this limitation the property has sat abandoned ever since.

Although the outside is fashioned after a castle that Kimball is said to have seen along the Rhine River in Germany, if you were standing on the inside and didn't know any better, you just might think you were standing inside a very nice, but very ordinary, mansion. There is very little medieval about the interior of Kimball Castle - no great halls, no suits of armor, and other than the day I was exploring, no court jesters.

And though it's still standing, Kimball Castle today is in just the type of condition you'd expect from a building that's been neglected for so many decades - rotted insides being held up by crumbling outsides. Great care had to be taken when climbing this particular set of stairs so that we didn't drop back down to where we'd started from. It's because I explore places like this that I have both disability and accident insurance through our Aflac plan at work.

We made it to the top floor, but the rooms up there were in no better shape then the stairs that led to them.

It wouldn't be urban exploring if we didn't come across beer cans and graffiti at some point, and Kimball Castle was no exception. But I've seen worse, though. And besides, at least one person took a break from the anatomy drawings long enough to actually paint something descent. And local.

These pictures were taken in 2016, so what has been happening to the castle since then? Judging by the lack of updates on their website, I'm pretty sure you're looking at it. But although the place continues to rot, there are still some people trying to do something great with it.

In an effort to tempt a buyer, Charlotte's restriction on commercializing the property has been lifted, and approval has been given to turn the place into a hotel and restaurant. Also, much of the surrounding land has been sold to create a very nice hiking preserve.

But the castle itself will need a whole lot more than a facelift to bring it back to habitable, which in turn is going to take a pretty unique person. You know, one of those super rich and imaginative types. They're out there though, and they did it with the Wentworth By The Sea, so here's hoping one of them comes along someday, restoring its magnificence and allowing Kimball Castle to open its doors to visitors once again.

Links:
Kimball Castle Official Website

Macabre Memorials - Killed By A Tree

Some days we set out for a single adventure. On this day, we happened to have a few things we were seeking, one of which turned into a bit of a “treasure” hunt, or to be more direct, a “grave memorial” hunt.

There is next to no information on the web about the death of Isaac Nelson. In fact, it seems that the very spot he died is a bit of a mystery as to why they marked it. Why, in the middle of a forest, where a tree struck him dead, would they want to mark this as a memorial? People die everyday in odd circumstances and we don’t always mark the location. We simply follow their wishes and bury them. By now, you know we can’t just read about a story like this, we must see the marker for ourselves.

The path we started on was on the side of a parking lot shared by several businesses. It definitely seemed like a strange place to begin our search. However, the path seemed to be pretty well traveled, and we pushed on until we came to the general area to begin our search for the grave marker. We had very little to go on, just a few general clues. This is where it gets interesting for us. Most people would probably search together but not us. We are very competitive, in a fun way, and went our separate ways to see who could find it first. We did know it was small so keep in mind, living in the “granite state” made many rocks look like they could be the marker. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I found it, only to hear Dave eventually yell, “I found it!” 

Now, I don’t want to make us sound insensitive by using this poor mans demise into our treasure hunt. We always take a moment to think about the tragedy and the person who lost their life. We cleared the leaves covering around the stone and read “This stone is erected in memory of Mr. Isaac Nelson who received a mortal wound on this spot by the fall of a tree on the 28th of Dec. 1812 in the 58th year of his age.”

After finding this memorial marker, I found myself thinking about how interesting it would be if I were to be memorialized in the middle of nowhere. How cool would that be to have a hiker just stumble across my marker? Something to make them stop, look, and hopefully give some thought to who I might have been. Then maybe they would have a cool story to tell someone as I just did for Mr. Isaac Nelson.

* Credit to the OTIS website for covering the existence of this stone, and giving clues to its location:
http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2017/01/i-died-here-isaac-nelson-death-marker.html