Paddock Mines - Exploring Shaft #2

If anything can stir my imagination more than a hole in the earth, high up on a desolate mountain and disappearing into darkness and the unknown, I don't know of it. Whether it's a forgotten cave, a hundred year old mineshaft, or even a mile long abandoned tunnel if you ever find yourself in southern Pennsylvania, to walk underground in one of these places it to step out of one world and into another. And in the case of the Paddock Mineshafts, you're stepping into a world of men who dug through rock for twelve hours a day with nothing more than a pickax and grit, men who were oblivious to such modern luxuries as OSHA safety and mid-morning coffee breaks, and men who would have laughed me right off the mountain with my daily multi-vitamins and two puffs of a inhaler every morning.

Our follow-up expedition to the Paddock Mineshafts has been my most anticipated adventure in the short history of this blog. After learning there was a second and equally long tunnel in those treasured woods, we planned a group excursion with the WeRmudfun gang to go back and explore everything in one shot - both the tunnel our group found during our initial search, and this existing one they knew of that we'd been looking for but never came across.

The morning actually started on a down note, as we left the house with only two of the four people who were committed to going from our group, me and Barry. Feeling bad for the two that couldn't make it, but not bad enough to consider rescheduling, we drove the two and a half hours to our designated meeting spot, roughly a mile's distance further along an old dirt road from the first time we made this trip.

Because we were now running off GPS there would be no bushwhacking through thickets and thorns like our previous search, and it couldn't have been more than half an hour of enjoyable hiking and chatting until we reached the mine. This was the first hike on this trail for our group, and the first hike in over two years for our new friends, who were navigating the way. My only flub-up was when I struggled to make small talk and asked them if the random section of trail they we were leading us through looked familiar. You know, from their last trip here over two years ago.

We arrived at the mine and one of the first things we noticed was that unlike the previous shaft, which had quicksand disguised as a puddle and would swallow you whole at the entrance, this one's method of attack was a slow and more tortuous one. Soon after entering the mine, a foot-deep river of cold water stood throughout much of the tunnel, and there was no way to avoid walking through it. A problem for some people perhaps, but no match against the Walmart waders I'd picked up just that morning.

But similar to the previous shaft, this one's entrance is guarded by some nasty spiders that seem to be breeding an army of their own.

Once about halfway into the mine the water eases up and the shaft becomes pretty smooth sailing. It runs mostly in a straight line, but has just enough waviness to close you off from any last glimpse of daylight and give you a real sense of twisting through the mountain.

Unlike shaft #1, this one doesn't abruptly end at a wall that makes it obvious you're not going any further, and instead splits into two directions that are almost immediately caved in on both sides. Purposely or not we don't know. And although I gave it my best shot to crawl over one of the piles of rubble, there just wasn't any continuing. On a related note, I'm one of those guys who will stop to say cheese for the camera under any circumstances.

Now it was on to the second part of this adventure, the Paddock Pit, and what turned out to be my biggest surprise of the day.

When I was considering that we would be climbing down into a vertical mineshaft, I mistakenly assumed it would be a shaft with a steep decline, and that we'd just need some rope to guide the way and help steady us down. Nope. A pit means a pit, and in this case it means a hole wide enough my wife could have driven our car into it. You can imagine how silly I felt standing at the edge of this thing holding not much more than a clothesline, but I threw it down anyway because if nothing else it would give us a measurement of how deep this hole went. We heard the plastic spool smack the bottom just before we ran out of slack at the top. That was a fifty-foot stretch of rope we'd just heaved in there, and this pit had swallowed almost every last foot of it.

It was time to head home for us as we knew we wouldn't be getting into the pit on this day, but at least I knew exactly what we were challenged with now - finding a way to climb straight down into a fifty-foot hole in the earth. Off to the drawing board I would be going.

And you know what that meant ... another trip to the Paddock Mines would soon be in the works.


Links:
Searching For The Paddock Mineshaft - Part 1
WeRmudfun - Abandoned Paddock Mines Shaft 1 and 2

Ruins Of The Cornish Estate Mansion

At least once a year our family takes a trip outside our usual sphere of travel, far enough away that an overnight stay is required. It's fun to break away from our everyday lives for a weekend of exploring someplace new, and as teenagers our kids are still good enough sports not to complain about spending a night in the same hotel room as their parents. This year's getaway brought us to the state of New York, for a ferry ride up the Hudson River and a tour of the Bannerman Castle ruins on Pollepel Island.

That tour was everything we'd hoped it would be, and when it ended that Saturday afternoon our kids would have been perfectly happy returning to our hotel room for a night of Snapchat selfies and Minecraft. But they aren't the ones who paid for this trip, my wife and I are, and in my bag of tricks I had several nearby interesting places I'd scouted just for such an opportunity of having some free time. So we did what any mean parents would do in this situation, we dragged the kids on a short hike into the woods to explore the ruins of a burned down mansion.

Sometime around 1910 a wealthy merchant named Sigmund Stern and his wife built the Northgate mansion on a 650 acre plot of land in the Hudson Valley. Unfortunately, they only got a couple years use of the place before Stern's wife passed away, prompting him to sell the estate to Edward and Selina Cornish. The Cornishes lived at the property until they both died in 1938, and the mansion remained in the family until burning down in 1958. Today, what remains of this property is commonly referred to as the Cornish Estate ruins.

The popular directions to the ruins involves a four mile hike through the Hudson Highlands, but what most websites don't mention is that you can park along the side of Route 9D, and by climbing uphill through the woods reach the site within fifteen minutes. Maybe they don't mention this because it takes away from the spirit of finding the place, but come at me with that argument when you're accompanied by two teenagers who that day you've already put through a five-hour car ride, an hour of boat riding, and a two hour walking tour under some unseasonably warm June sun. Even the prospect of this fifteen minute hike led to a spirited conversation in the car, one that only ended when my wife threw up her hands and told the kids "well, you know your dad!"

Once we found the ruins everyone agreed the short hike was worthwhile though, as these were some of the grandest remains we've come across. Much of the mansion was constructed of stone, which after the fire left many walls and arches still standing for us to wander among and pose with.

Another thing this mansion had no shortage of were fireplaces. Several chimneys still stand at their full height with fireplaces jutting out at crazy angles, and I've played enough games of Jenga to know better than fool around with any of them.

Other sections were much sturdier and made for some good climbing, prompting Logan to turn the entire complex into his own personal jungle gym.

The Cornish family were also well known cattle farmers, and if you walk a little ways further up the hillside you'll come across what remains of their barn. If you're up for a bonus challenge, go into the basement of the barn and look for a crevice behind a wooden post, I hid one of my foreign coins in that wall.

We also found a few random structures we couldn't identify, such as this small platform that Barry is making himself comfortable on. On a side note, whenever we talk about going places with our family, Barry is more often than not a part of that group.

Although the Cornish Estate Ruins aren't comfortably within the range of a single day's drive, I introduce them to you not only in the hopes that a few of you find your way out to them someday, but also as a reminder. Never pass up an opportunity to see something new and unusual in life, and always be on the lookout for ways to create these opportunities for yourself.

Links:
Historic Photographs of the Cornish Estate (aka Northgate Mansion)
Location of Cornish Estate Ruins

Curious Graves - God Aimed The Tree That Crushed Him Dead

Sunday drives with our family are not your typical afternoon ride, and if you ever find yourself in our car during one of these trips your apt to see something like this as the destination on our GPS.

This day we were on the hunt for the gravestone of David Moors, buried in the town of Hancock New Hampshire and with a tombstone that has been mentioned in a graveyard oddity book I found at the library. David met his untimely death while chopping down a tree, which is unique enough, but on the grave's eulogy was a poem that described how "God aimed the tree that crushed him dead". This seemed a bit accusatory to us, or else reflected a weird sense of humor by his widow, and although we couldn't find pictures of the grave the transcript was listed in the cemetery's burial records so we knew it existed. Our plan to find this tombstone was, in terms of computer hacking, what is called a brute force attack. That is, to systematically try every combination possible until you find the right one, or in our case, read every single headstone until we located the one we were looking for.

One thing about reading every headstone in a cemetery is you're bound to find a few gems, and this day did not disappoint. First there was the wife of Hiram Whittemore, a lady I'm guessing didn't win any lifetime achievement awards in her day. She is described on her tombstone simply as someone who "Hath Done What She Could".

People weren't shy 200 years ago about informing us of how their loved ones died, either. Meet George Edward Sheldon, a man whose life was cut short the day he was "shot by a ruffian".

This is actually a pretty good life-hack to try yourself someday. Pick a cemetery - older ones work best for this - and spend an afternoon reading every single one of the headstones. You'll never be at a loss for small talk again. The flip side of this is you may find yourself at a loss for people who want to keep hanging out with you, but fortunately that's never been an issue for me. I was lucky enough to find someone who enjoys these jaunts as much as I do, and even after scouring the cemetery and not finding David's grave the first time through, my wife was eager to swap sides and give it another go.

It was on the return sweep that I spotted the grave, and with writing that has somewhat faded over time it was easy to see how we'd missed it the first time through. But the words were still plenty legible once you zero'd in on them, and they matched the transcript exactly.

David Moors

Died Sept. 15 1811

AE.29.

Here peacefully lies the once happy father

The joy of his beloved wife & daughter

But whilst in health the woodsman's ax he sped

God aimed the tree that crushed him dead

It was another successful expedition, and we did our usual high-fiving and posing for pictures before packing it in and calling it a day. In our scavenger-hunt battle for who can find the most curious headstones, I am now in the lead 3-0 against my wife Tina.

Related Links:
Curious Graves - Persecuted For Wearing The Beard
Curious Graves - Grave For A Leg

A Hermit's Chamber

Like many couples do, Tina and I like to divvy the driving up between us, especially when taking our weekend jaunts throughout New Hampshire. Not just to share the workload, but so that each of us have an opportunity to be on the lookout for cool stuff. We'll pull over for just about anything goofy or interesting, such as this three-wheeled car, this community that's very proud of an apple tree, or even this neighborly dispute that left us chuckling and wanting to know more. So when my wife squawked for me to stop the car as we rounded the bend of some back road recently I knew she'd spotted something good, and had anybody been following too closely behind us we would have soon found ourselves swapping insurances. I backed up the Jeep until seeing for myself what had gotten her so excited.

Not too far into the woods was this chamber, and my initial thought was that we were looking at an opened and abandoned crypt.

Anyone who has spent time in New Hampshire is familiar with the countless small cemeteries that line our roads and are hidden within our woods. Many are family plots with only a handful of markers, and it's not uncommon to see one that has a crypt build into the hillside. Marked by a break in the stone wall and with its half-size doorway that is what this looked like from a distance, and although I'm personally not keen on seeing a 200 year old decomposing corpse, we walked over to take a look.

As a disappointment to one of us there were no corpses inside, but that doesn't mean it was empty. What we found was evidence that someone had probably spent a lot of time in there - and possibly even lived in it - starting with this ratty old sleeping bag that barely looked warm enough for our months of July and August. The bamboo fixture on top is the base of papasan chair, which all things considered could actually have been quite cozy in here.

And these boards might even have served as a jailhouse cot for the owner of the sleeping bag.

I'm making a couple assumptions in the course of writing this. First, that this isn't the remains of some old basement and that it was in fact a crypt. Although my head leans toward the basement theory my heart is sticking with it being a crypt, for Tina's sake if nothing else. My second assumption is that someone was actually living in here and not just camping out for a night or using the place to dump some garbage. It's a possibility, but certain toiletries outside - the likes of which you'd be thankful I didn't take pictures of - make me think someone did spend a fair amount of time in here.

If that is true, then wherever this person is today I hope they're in a much better place now than they were back then.

Ruins of Highover Estate

When considering new adventures to go on I like to balance the amount of hiking needed against the amount of cool stuff we'll get to see once we arrive. The hike is often a necessity of exploration, not just because most of the good places are hidden from the public, but for the same reason a cold beer always tastes better following an afternoon of mowing the lawn. Things are more enjoyable when you have to work for them first.

The JC Phillips Nature Preserve of Beverly Massachusetts hits that sweet spot with just the right balance of hiking and exploring. It's located behind the historical Moraine Farm, which is where this adventure begins nearly 140 years ago. John Charles "JC" Phillips, a businessman from Boston, purchased 275 acres with the intent of creating both a future logging site and a working farm. Only problem was, this 275 acres was a wasteland that was as barren of vegetation as the top of my head is barren of hair. But for a problem solver such as JC this was no biggie, he simply rerouted 40 acres of drainage, planted 60,000 trees, and terra-formed the entire land into a farm that is still in operation today. JC passed away in 1885 but the land remained in the family, and in the early 1900's one of his children, William Phillips, built a mansion he dubbed Highover Estate in the woods of the property. Highover burned down in 1968, and that brings us to present day 2017 when we set out to hike this area and find the remains of the estate for ourselves.

If you drew a circle around the preserve Highover would be the bulls-eye, so in the spirit of balancing work and play we took the long way around to first enjoy the sights of bordering Wendham Lake. This is a spring fed lake that produces ice so pure it was harvested each winter and packed in straw to be shipped worldwide, a business that continued into the 1930's. With such a nice view you'd think I'd have a picture or two of the water, but twice through my photo album says this peek in the background is the best I've got.

During the hike we did get a couple good action videos, because it just wouldn't be a hike if we didn't risk breaking a tailbone now and then. I chose to risk mine by showing off my tight-roping skills on this toppled tree.

This teepee structure was curious, and I liked imagining it was a communal effort where each person to come along would add another log to it. I also liked imagining I was going to have to crawl inside and rescue Tina, but she managed to find her way out.

After some helpful directions from a trail-jogger we started coming across remnants of the burned down mansion. First it was a solitary stone pillar, then some random steps, and finally on top of Prospect Hill we reached our destination, the beginning of Highover ruins.

I've seen pictures of the original mansion and my best guess is this was the courtyard in the rear. It is also the structure that convinced me to make this hike when I first came across it online, so I was happy to find it still standing where we could get a few pictures with it.

Another spot that held up over time is this archway. I can't figure out it's purpose other than just being decorative since a brick wall stands behind it, but be sure to look for the Latin writing carved into the rounded stone at its base.

This corner where two walls meet was another head-scratcher, almost like each of them was built in different eras. Or maybe on different budgets, not unlike the sunroom we tore off our house a few years back.

Also, we've come across some pretty creepy things in our years of explorations, but this gargoyle fountain is right at the top of that list. Look close and you'll see that it's still spitting out water.

85 acres of the original Moraine Farm are owned today by the cities of Beverly and Wenham, under an arrangement that protects the land from any development. The area is open to the public, and a kiosk at the site of Highover ruins offers further history of the property and former mansion. For anyone looking to make an enjoyable hike and explore a piece of history, I highly recommend you spend an afternoon at the JC Phillips Preserve.

Just make sure you walk the long way to get to the ruins.

Links:
Where to park
Finding the Ruins

Barrington's Forgotten Devil's Den Cave

Among the many Devil's Dens, the cave at Barrington is one of the most remarkable. It has, probably, the longest underground chamber in New Hampshire, not man-made.

- New England's Buried Treasure, 1946, Clay Perry

New Hampshire isn't exactly riddled with caves, but this was still a bold claim. The longest natural underground chamber in the state, and not hidden somewhere in the White Mountains but rather an anonymous 400 foot hill in the little town of Barrington? Finding this spot had been on my wish list for a while now, but until recently the only clue I had was that the cave was located about a mile northeast of a well known landmark in town. I didn't imagine this meant an exact mile or an exact northeast either, which made a pretty wide area of woods when I started scoping it out on Google Earth. I saw many afternoons of fruitlessly searching in my future.

That's when my fortune changed and through discussions with a fellow adventurer I was given specific coordinates to its entrance. In return I happily offered him the location of any place I knew of, and soon after made my first scouting mission to the area. I found a trail off Route 9 that led in the general direction of the cave, so my plan for that weekend was to ride my bike as far down the trail as it would take me, then bushwhack the rest of the way.

The first part of this adventure was not only easy, it was surprisingly interesting. The trail turned out to be an old dirt road that led past several interesting sights I'd like to learn more about, starting with these stairs that led to nowhere.

I eventually reached the end of both the trail and all signs of civilization, gave my GPS a stern warning to accurately record the location of the tree I was chaining my bike to, and there I began my bushwhack. As the crow flies the distance from my stashed bike to the cave's entrance and back was roughly a mile, but I don't have wings and the route I hiked took me 2.83 miles round-trip that afternoon, a good majority of it being not very pleasant. The nastiest part was crossing this marsh, and if you're from New Hampshire I don't need to tell you that swamp water in early May is something less than a warm bath. I came out of that thing with a worse case of trench foot than Gary Dodds, but on I pressed.

During most of my adventures there comes a time when doubt sets in as to whether I'll succeed, and today was no different. After reaching the spot my GPS insisted the cave was but not finding any big holes, I had my first wave of concern. Not panic though, I simply expanded my search to a wider circle and tried again, including scouring an area with several massive boulders that I thought had to be the spot. But I still found nothing, and that's when I did something that has since made me a firm believer in the term temporary insanity. I turned off my phone and my GPS, put my electronics in my pockets, then looked around and thought to myself; if I were a cave, where would I be? And I began to walk.

Twenty minutes later I stood alone in the wood, no idea where I was and feeling more than a bit foolish. I'd just tried to outsmart a satellite GPS using nothing but my sixth sense. But before I never speak of that craziness again, let me say that two good things came of it. One, my wanderings led me to this small cabin perched overlooking a lake, which reminded me of a scouting camp I'd explored the previous fall.

The second cool thing that came of it, depending on your view of this stuff, were these two jawbones I spotted while retracing my steps. I'm no zoologist, but by the size of these things I'm leaning toward them belonging to a moose. Or a bigfoot.

So I decided to give the coordinates another go and fired up my GPS again, and I don't know what was suddenly so different - maybe that I was coming at it from the opposite direction, or maybe my Garmin was jumping on the first try - but this time I hiked right up to the cave's entrance as if I'd been there a dozen times before.

Now came the next challenge, making sure nothing was waiting inside to make me its post-hibernation breakfast. I raised all sorts of hell at the entrance, including chucking several stick and rocks down into the darkness, then waited a good fifteen minutes without hearing any noises from within. Knowing there's no guarantees when it comes to stuff like this but hoping that anything inside was more scared of me than I was of it, I crawled in.

The first ten feet felt like I was shimmying down a kid's tube slide I was too big for, then the cave opened to a hallway maybe twenty feet in length and with a ledge running through the second half of it. It was as impressive in size as Clay Perry's 1946 book described it to be. After a moment of thanks that I'd worn old sneakers, I crossed a stretch of animal droppings deep and squishy enough to almost flat-tire my shoes, then I was able to climb onto the ledge and reach the end of the first chamber.

From here the hallway dropped through another chute, and although I'm confident I could have squeezed through and continued into a second more narrow chamber, this is where I stopped for the day.

As with prior explorations, if I'm not certain I can make it through safely I'll wait for a return trip with friends.

So I left one of the foreign coins I carry on a ledge at the end of the first chamber, then triumphantly made my way back out into sunlight. And for anyone who reads this story, if you somehow find yourself in that cave someday and are able to locate that coin, I really do hope I hear from you.

That would mean your adventure turned out to be just as successful as mine was.

Related Links:
Devil's Den - Pawtuckaway State Park
Devil's Den - New Durham

Roaming The Crypts Below Boston's North Church

One If By Land, Two If By Sea.

As our guide spoke these words I recognized them in the dusty, high-school part of my brain, but I never could have placed where they were from. Some old poem by some old, bearded poet would've been my guess - and surprisingly I'd have been right - but I didn't know any of this until our recent trip to Boston's North Church. This phrase represented a warning, one that was memorialized in the poem Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. One if by land warned that if the British soldiers were attacking by land one light would be lit in the church's steeple, and two if by sea warned that the British were attacking by the quicker route of rowing across the Charles River. Two is the number of lanterns that hung from the steeple on April 18th, 1775, and with this warning Paul Revere and over thirty men on horseback (I'd been misled in school, it wasn't just Paul Revere himself) spread word all the way from Connecticut to New Hampshire of the British attack.

This historical church broadcast that warning over 200 years ago, and although the original steeple has long since toppled in a storm, the group who restored it only adds to the lore of the story.

The tower was our first stop upon entering the church, and because we'd signed up for the behind the scenes tour we were able to bypass the commoners and head up this rickety staircase marked no admittance.

Ascending into a steeple that had touches of both historical times and modern day, we next learned about the specialized art of bell ringing. This steeple has six bells, and you'd better make sure the phrase Master Bell-Ringer appears somewhere on your resume if you hope to put your hands on these ropes. At this church at least, ringing the bells is like playing an instrument, something each person trains at and is privileged to be chosen for. Their bell-songs are scripted, and together the band rings their music throughout the city at specific times.

Music lessons complete, it was now time for the real reason I'd taken a day off from work to come battle the crazies of Boston's rush hour.

On to the crypts.

Beginning in the 1700's it was common practice for North Church to bury its dead underneath the building, and today an estimated 1,100 bodies (nope, no exact count) are sealed in vaults that hold an average of forty bodies each. That's pretty efficient packing given the size of this empty crypt we saw, which I only dared enter because there was no door on it for Tina to seal.

Occupied crypts were marked by small doors, which lined both sides of a corridor that ran square throughout the basement.

Sometime around when the civil war was heating up the city decided maybe this wasn't the most sanitary thing people could be doing with the dead, and they ordered a stop to the practice. No more bodies were to be buried indoors. Not willing to give up the revenue stream so quickly, however - since the crypts made it easy to discard of old remains and make room for new ones, more and more often the church's larger doners - they ignored the city and continued stuffing their crypts with fresh bodies. This eventually led to the city entering the church and sealing the crypt doors with concrete, forcibly putting an end to the practice.

Although most of the concrete is gone today some crypts have only partially crumbled, revealing how the city tried to hide them so many years ago.

Exiting the crypts and returning to both sunlight and present day America, we continued our afternoon by visiting the main section of the church and its unique seating arrangement. This layout reminded me of a cubicle farm I once worked in, the memory of which gave me a nastier chill than any of the crypts.

On our way back to the car we made one last stop at a place that had caught our eye earlier, the church's cemetery, and there we found this final curiosity. Nearly every one of these old gravestones was adorned with a skull and crossbones, much like the one in this picture below. I don't yet know the significance of this (other than the obvious), but on a day whose theme ran heavy with the macabre, we couldn't think of a more fitting way to end our visit.

Links:
North Church Behind The Scenes Tours