Town Pounds of New Hampshire

I can be as guilty as anyone when it comes to cruising through life with my blinders on. It's so easy to get caught up with things like work, the house, and family commitments to where we're oblivious of all the curious and interesting things around us, and that we just need to slow down every once in a while to remind ourselves what a pretty cool place our world actually is.

This was the case as we were driving through the town of Chester one afternoon. Enjoying a day of just seeing what we could find, my wife spotted a curious stone structure along the side of road that somewhat looked like an old house foundation, but stood too high. I've turned the car around for a whole lot less during our drives, so back we went where we found something I'd only read about until that point - a town pound.

Location in Chester

It's hard to imagine in today's society of McMansions and Super Walmarts, but go back a few hundred years and nearly all of New England was farmland. Cows, sheep, goats, and many other animals were part of everyday life for our ancestors, a life that included problems as foreign to us as my wife's flatiron being on the fritz would be as foreign to them. And one particularly problem people dealt with in those days? Sometimes your animals wandered away.

The solution to this was simple enough, however - designate a place where all the strays could be rounded up and kept, until their owners came along to claim them. With that solution came the creation of the town pound.

Location in Marlow

I soon learned that there are town pounds throughout much of New Hampshire, which brought me full circle with my point about taking off the blinders. Our neighboring town of Durham has one that's maybe fifteen minutes from our house - which I'm convinced I've driven by at least more than once - and I never knew it was there. But now that we were on the hunt for them it quickly became a destination. This one turned out to be part of someone's yard, and either the homeowner or the town is to be commended for keeping it in such good condition.

Location in Durham

As to be expected, many of these pounds date back to the early 1800's or prior. We visited one in Hudson a few weeks ago that has been in existence longer than America has even been a country.

Location in Hudson

Because they all seem to be found along the sides of roads, not only are town pounds great places to stop at to break up a long drive, but every now and then you'll come across one entirely by accident. This is how I found Gilmantown's last winter, and thank you to the neighbor who unknowingly let me park in his driveway while I scooted across the street to take these pictures.

Location in Gilmanton

I know this post is about town pounds of New Hampshire, but I'm including one from outside our state simply because it made me chuckle. Look closely and you'll see that the fun people of Upton Massachusetts have a couple of cows occupying their town pound. I tried to get Tina to pet one of them, but she quickly figured out the ruse.

Location in Upton

Exploring doesn't always have to mean hiking miles into the woods in search of some unknown cave or ruins. Sometimes it just means getting into your car and driving to a place you've never been before. There are many town pounds that I didn't include on this list, so the next time you're out for a Sunday drive I encourage you to look one up and go for a walk through it. It's a very easy way to experience, if only for a moment, one small part of how our ancestors lived.

Myles Standish's Missing Body

The past 100 years have been one wild ride for the statue of Myles Standish. After first suffering a direct strike by lightning, then getting cut in half at the waist, and finally being discarded as rubble in a local quarry, only half of his body can be accounted for today. But before we can tell you about Myles Standish the statue, we first have to tell you about Myles Standish the man.

This story begins in 1620 with the Mayflower's voyage to America, in which Standish was a passenger. He had been hired as militia commander for colonists of the new world, something he would continue to be elected to for the remainder of his life. He fought many battles against Native American tribes as the colonists struggled to survive in those harsh, early years, and his reputation grew as both skilled in battle and brutal toward his enemies. He was known for using mutilation as a way to inflict fear, and it's for this reason that certain groups find it fitting his statue be in the condition it is today. Others look upon Standish with admiration, however, and it's one of those groups who banded together in 1872 to construct this 116 foot tower in honor of him. The process did not go smoothly, but after a 26-year period of stop and go funding the tower was completed in 1898.

Although worthwhile seeing it from the outside, the main appeal for visiting the tower is to be able to climb it. The tower is only open Saturdays and Sundays during the summer season, however, which this year began on May 27th. And the day I started writing about our visit to the tower? You guessed it, May 28th, the very next day.

Inside the tower is a single, continuous spiral staircase to the top. Only one platform exists about a quarter of the way up, however the circular protective cage that was added in later years prevents you from walking onto it. This means that once you start up these 125 steps there's no stopping, unless it's to let people coming down have the right of way, one of the tower's rules. I was on light duty and using my cane that day, and with those metal steps in that tight, echoey chamber you can bet there were some people at the top wondering what was coming clicking up the stairs after them.

At the top you'll find yourself standing on a platform that could fit maybe two dozen people, with four small windows facing in each direction and offering a limited view. Prior to this I'd had it in my head that climbing the tower meant we'd actually be right on top of the thing shaking hands with Standish himself, but access to the statue is possible only through this small trapdoor in the ceiling.

Having completed the first part of that day's adventure in climbing the tower, it was now on to part two. The statue that stands up there today is not the first one to adorn this tower. In 1922 a lightning strike partially destroyed the original one, decapitating Standish and sending his head toppling to the ground. Workers cut the statue clean at the waist in an effort to install a new body, but after a crack was discovered above the right knee that raised concerns, the remains were discarded and a new statue built from scratch.

Fast-forward 60 years to those legs being a long gone memory, when in 1990 they were discovered at a local quarry in Quincy Massachusetts. They were retrieved and given to the group that oversees the tower, and today can be seen standing at the house of the Myles Standish Monument Director, in nearby Halifax Massachusetts.

Our intention was to drive to the house for a quick picture to complete our story, but when we pulled up a friendly man came out and we spent the next half-hour listening in fascination to the history of Myles Standish, his statue, and what they all mean to people in that area today. Marc, the monument's director, even pointed out the crack that caused this statue to be discarded 100 years ago, which if your eyes are better than mine you can see in this picture below.

One question remains when Marc considers the statue today, though - what ever happened to the top of it? Although broken off in the lightning strike and falling over 100 feet, the head never shattered. It survived, but was never found discarded with the rest of the statue years later. He's still looking for it to this day, and recently he was given a clue.

A picture surfaced that seems to show the original head, with a young girl leaning against it in what looks to be a private garden. Could someone have scooped it from that quarry many years ago and brought it home as a curious showpiece for their backyard? Marc thinks it's possible, and I like to think so, too. I hope someday he finds it, and I look forward to writing a follow-up to this story when he does.

Links:
Myles Standish Monument State Reservation

Herman Chase Cabin

The Herman Chase Cabin was a tiny house before tiny houses were even a thing. Built in 1971, this small structure has stood for over 45 years near the peak of Saddle Hill in New Hampton, New Hampshire, welcoming anybody who makes the less than one mile hike to visit it.

Herman Chase was a New England native who earned his Ph.D from the University of Chicago in 1938. He remained in Illinois as a professor for another 10 years, then returned to New England to continue his career while at the same time authoring books and papers on several subjects he had become an authority on. These topics included biology, genetics, and something I could write a few chapters about myself, baldness. 

But as busy as all this must have kept him he still found time to spend at his favorite spot, where he and his wife had this cabin built.

We made the trek during the heart of snowshoe season this past winter. Although 1.4 miles might not fit everyone's definition of a hike, there was enough of a climb to impress me that a man, 58 years old when the cabin was first constructed, regularly made this trip.

Although the front door sticks a bit, it's not locked, just warped. Step on the middle beam and it will release the door like a secret latch, something I discovered completely by accident.

Two folding beds take up the majority of the space, and some cooking items are tucked away up high. Chase passed away in 1984, however the cabin has been maintained remarkably well and kept open for public use.

And in case you had any reservations about being here, look above the door for a bin containing a logbook and welcome letter, telling you the cabin is free for anyone to use on a carry-in carry-out basis.

Although modest in size, this place comes with a million dollar view. Or at least it used to. Nowadays you need to sneak through the trees to take it in, but there was a time when this area was all cleared and Chase would have enjoyed this overlook right from the steps of his cabin.

We left that afternoon having pretty much decided this was the perfect day. The snowshoeing was enjoyable and not too strenuous, the sights from the top were wonderful, and Chase's cabin was a great hidden gem to find at the end of it all. I'll always choose warmth over cold, but afternoons such as this have given me a whole new love for winter.

Links:

Herman Burleigh Chase
Hiking To An Abandoned Cabin

Norumbega Tower

Norumbega Tower's creator, Eben Horsford, was convinced of a couple things that contradict what we learned in school. First he argues that Vikings came to America over 1,000 years ago, pre-dating Columbus' discovery by 500 years, and although this isn't a popular theory it at least seems up for debate. But his second belief is one that leaves most people shaking their head, which is that the lost city of Norumbega - a mythological viking city where houses were built with pillars of gold - was not only real, but was built on this exact spot in Weston, Massachusetts.

Horsford's belief might have ended up as nothing more than a tall tale to make his friends chuckle, were it not for one thing. Having earlier in life invented an improved formula for manufacturing baking powder, Horsford was rich. And in 1889 he used some of his riches to build the 38 foot tall Norumbega Tower along the Charles River in Weston, to commemorate his "finding" of the lost viking city.

The main piece of evidence for Horsford's claim is his loose interpretation of the word Norumbega, which he argued was an adaption of the word Norbega, itself a variation of Norvega, and that which was another name for Norway. Or, something like all that. If you can follow it, his evidence is laid out on a plaque at the base of the tower, although none of this logic has ever passed the sniff test of experts in the field.

This is an interesting place in that the tower itself is quite beautiful, but the area it sits in feels neglected, or at least forgotten. There wasn't even a place to park, we had to just hop the curb and hope we were out of the way of passing cars. A short field separates the road from the tower, then a little creativity is needed to actually see what it looks like on the inside.

The view from on high was just as neglected as the area below, but beyond all those trees I'm sure it was quite a sight to see.

We spent some time on top of the tower ducking out of view of passing traffic, then paid a small toll before making our way back down the winding steps.

Although Eben Horsford's research is considered suspect, his character is not. He was by all accounts a descent person who did many great things with his money. He made various donations to Wellesley College in support of higher education for women, and he also funded the opening of a public library in Shelter Island, New York. All good stuff indeed. But not to be forgotten in that mix, he continues to bring afternoons of adventure to people like my wife and I, over 100 years after his death.

Location of Norumbega Tower on Google Maps

[my transcript of the plaque]

CITY COUNTRY FORT RIVER

NORUMBEGA = NOR MBEGA

INDIAN UTTERANCE OF NORBEGA THE ANCIENT FORM

OF NORVEGA NORWAY TO WHICH THE

REGION OF VINLAND WAS SUBJECT

CITY

AT AND NEAR WATERTOWN

WHERE REMAIN TO DAY

DOCKS - WHARVES - WALLS - DAMS - BASINS

COUNTRY

EXTENDING FROM RHODE ISLAND TO THE ST. LAWRENCE

FIRST SEEN BY BJARN HERJULFSON 985 A D

LANDFALL OF LEIF ERIKSON ON CAPE COD 1000 A D

NORSE CANALS - DAMS - WELLS - PAVEMENTS

FORTS TERRACED PLACES OF ASSEMBLY REMAIN TODAY

AT BASE OF TOWER AND REGION ABOUT

WAS OCCUPIED BY THE BRETON FRENCH IN THE

15TH 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES

RIVER

THE CHARLES

DISCOVERED BY

LEIF ERIKSON 1000 A D

EXPLORED BY

THORWALD - LEIF'S BROTHER 1003 A D

COLONIZED BY

THORFINN KARLSEFNI 1007 A D

[FIRST BISHOP]

ERIK GNUPSON 1121 A D

INDUSTRIES FOR 350 YEARS

MASUR WOOD (BURRS) - FISH - FURS - AGRICULTURE

LATEST NORSE SHIP RETURNED TO ICELAND IN 1347

Precious Blood Cemetery

Some guys choose to romance their wives with run-of-the-mill gifts such as flowers or jewelry. These old-fashioned tricks may still work on some women, but the way to my wife's heart is an afternoon spent exploring a brand new cemetery. And if the name of that cemetery resembles something out of a Stephen King novel - such as the Precious Blood Cemetery - well, you probably just earned yourself a night of free beers, mister.

Precious Blood Cemetery is located in Woonsocket, RI, and the first thing to know about this place is that don't go judging a book by its cover. Or its name. This is a cemetery that above all else is known for its beauty. There are monuments here that would rival the best that nationally famous cemeteries such as Mt. Auburn have to offer.

Where it differs from Mt. Vernon, or some of the other "Garden Style" cemeteries, is that the majority of Precious Blood is actually filled with very modest headstones. It's the remaining 25% that will stop you in your tracks.

Most impressive of them all, and what originally put this cemetery on my treasure map of places to visit, is Aram Pothier's family mausoleum. Pothier was a six time Governor of Rhode Island, who served at various times from 1909 until his death in 1928. He was once the town's most notable resident, and with his peristyle monument standing atop one of the highest peaks, he is perhaps the cemetery's most notable resident as well.

But amidst all this extravagance, there was just as much charm to be found in the simplest of memorials.

In addition to its beautiful side, Precious Blood Cemetery has an ominous one, as well. In 1955, Hurricane Diane came roaring through town, breeching a dam along the Blackstone River and flooding Woonsocket, creating the worst natural disaster the town had every seen. Saturation pushed over 50 coffins out of the earth, with many being carried away before breaking apart and scattering bones all throughout town. Care was taken to piece the skeletons back together and return them to their original graves, but legend says that at the end of cleanup townsfolk were left much like I was after assembling our gas grill this past summer - thinking they'd completed the job but still staring at a bag of leftover parts. Because of this, spirits are said to roam the cemetery to this day, searching for their missing bones.

For a while last summer, while I was rehabbing a hip that would qualify for replacement if Mother Nature offered a lemon law, Tina and I took to spending our weekends walking cemeteries as an enjoyable way to get some non-strenuous exercise. Some were more interesting than others, but Precious Blood was in a category almost by itself. Which got me to thinking.

I googled a list of art museums in and around Boston, and according to the folks at tripadvisor.com at the time of this writing, the average ticket price for the top ten art museums near Boston is just over $15 per person. Not to take anything away from what those great places have to offer - in fact learning there was a Normal Rockwell museum added a new place to my treasure map - but if you're simply looking for a way to enjoy some beautiful sculptures, I'll argue that you cannot do much better than an afternoon spent wandering the Precious Blood Cemetery.

And the cost of admission? Only the gas it took to get you there.

Links:
Blackstone River Flood, Bodies Recovered - Providence Public Library
Images of America, Woonsocket - by Robert R Bellerose
Top Art Museum In The Boston Area - tripadvisor.com

On The Hunt For Abandoned Vehicles II

Life for me is one big treasure hunt, and some of my favorite things to find throughout this never-ending game are abandoned cars. Every vehicle left forgotten and rusting in the woods somewhere has a story to tell, and if cars could talk I'd sit down and have a beer with each and every one of them. Here is part two of my search for the abandoned vehicles of New England.

This first day of treasure hunting found me exploring a set of railroad tracks where I was actually in search of some graffiti, said to be very spectacular and hidden somewhere below one of the bridges. Unfortunately, the only graffiti I found was artwork by young boys just learning the human anatomy, but during the course of my exploration I came across this mostly buried car by the edge of the woods. I guessed it to have been sitting there for at least the past few decades, but remarkably when I returned to this area just a few weeks later, it was gone.

Unlike that first car which I stumbled upon purely through good karma, this next one I found after specifically marking it's location on Google Earth, then following a very weak cellphone signal to track it down. Adding to this challenge was that I went searching for it the same week a nor'easter came rolling through town. But telling myself that the harder the search the more rewarding the find, I was able to snowshoe my way out and catch a few glimpses of it beneath the snow. This car is located next to the Ellis River just north of Storyland, a place we visited often when our kids were younger. They're teenagers now and our Storyland days are long past, but you can bet my wife is counting the days to grandkids so she can go howling down that Polar Coaster once again.

Driving through the countryside one afternoon, this apocalyptic farming vehicle caught my eye just as we were passing a field. I pulled to the side of the road and pretended to read my phone until a lady disappeared back into her house from across the way, then I darted across the field as best a 48 year old with one hip can dart, and I snapped this picture.

Somewhere in eastern Massachusetts, abandoned within the no-mans land that separates a public hiking preservation and a private farm, sits this crane. Figuring it was close enough to the public side of things for us to stop and look at, Tina and I soon found ourselves taking turns in the drivers seat and snapping pictures. Only problem was, the cabin door had been rusted shut and it took quite a bit of banging for me to get it open. That attracted the attention of a farmhand who came wandering over, and he was none too happy to see me at that very moment tight-rope walking the boom. I tried explaining that because it sat right next to the trail we figured it was purposely left here for hikers to play on, but this guy was not in the mood for jokes. We got our pictures, but we also got an unexpected cardio workout, double-timing it out of there while the farmhand went yelling for his boss.

Back to my hometown of Dover, where I first spotted this truck in the woods off Tolend Road while driving an area we don't normally travel. Into my mental filing cabinet it went, until later that summer while on a bike ride I took the long way home for a closer look. I'm not very good with all the settings my camera has to offer, but given enough chances even a monkey on a typewriter is going to bang out a sentence every now and then. By this same law of randomness I was able to get all the colors just as I wanted them, for this final picture in today's edition of abandoned vehicles of New England.

Related Links:
On The Hunt For Abandoned Vehicles - Part One

The Medfield Insane Asylum

What do you do with a former insane asylum that is no longer being used to house patients?  You could fence it off to prevent people from getting near it, or you could tear it down to make room for yet one more condo association. But if you're the really cool folks of Medfield Massachusetts, you turn the entire area into a walking park and open it up to the public.

The Medfield Insane Asylum began operating in 1896 as a way to ease overcrowding among the state's existing facilities. By 1914 it had changed its name to the politically correct Medfield State Hospital, at which point its campus style grounds consisted of over 50 buildings and was home to 1,500 patients; a number would swell to over 2,300 in later years.

Today this entire area sits abandoned and boarded, and although some of the buildings have been destroyed in recent years, on the day we went I counted at least 30 of them still standing. Medfield was a community as much as a hospital, and what's left has the creepiness of a ghost town but the pleasantness of a city park.

We passed several people along the streets that day - including a family with young kids and a pair of elderly ladies - and all were doing exactly the same thing we were; getting some exercise while at the same time enjoying this glimpse into Massachusetts' past.

Anyone who remembers the cars I drove as a youth can tell you that I find beauty in the decrepit. Put me in a place like this and I'm a big old kid in a 900 acre playground, trying to see it all in one afternoon. I probably made Tina take a dozen pictures standing by this clocktower just to make sure I’d have a least one or two that wouldn’t end up in my recycling bin.

A few of the buildings were residential houses where I believe management kept themselves separate from the population, but mostly the staff lived in the upper floors and attics of the same brick buildings patients were housed in.

For a variety of reasons - least of all the hazardous materials released by the deterioration of the buildings - the town doesn’t want people going inside any of them. In addition to boarding up all the windows, security guards regularly patrol the grounds and signs everywhere warn of all the bad stuff you’ll be inhaling should you enter. I'm also convinced they have the buildings alarmed. Why I think that, I'll never tell.

Outdoor activities were a part of life for many patients of Medfield Hospital. They farmed the hundreds of acres surrounding the hospital, providing enough food not only for the hospital but excess to ship to surrounding towns. This was important not only for the hospital to help sustain itself, but for patients to keep busy while at the same time learning to lead productive lives. It wasn't all work for them, though - playtime did exist, at least according to a fenced-in yard and basketball court toward the back of the complex.

It took me the better part of a full beer to figure out how to write these next few sentences. I didn't want to finish this post by just putting up more pictures of boarded up buildings, or by stating a bunch of random facts I'd looked up about the hospital, but I couldn't translate that into figuring out how I did want to finish it. Finally I tried looking at things from a different perspective. The day we explored here I spent most of my time running around trying to get the perfect picture, and the rest of it wondering what the buildings looked like on the inside. But did I ever stop to think about the people who actually lived here, who considered this place home? I'm sure I didn't. At best I probably offered up a few stinks to have been them type comments before moving on.

So I forced myself to think about what this place must have meant to the people housed here, especially during those early years. I'm a healthy and free individual who is able to live the life I choose. Sometimes what I choose takes me in crazy directions - such as this past weekend when I drove 80 miles in search of some obscure cave on some even more obscure mountain - but that's the beauty of being free. I can do whatever makes me happy, even if it is something that leaves my wife muttering and scratching her head. With the limited health care and rehabilitation knowledge of their time, this was a choice residents of the Medfield Hospital did not have. For some of them, even if they only wanted to go outside for some fresh air, they had to wait for someone to come along and give them permission.

Rehabilitation methods vastly improved during the years Medfield State Hospital was in operation, and in direct relation to that came more patients being re-introduced into society and less need for them to be permanently housed. The population continued dropping, and by 2003, down to less than 200 patients, the hospital closed for good.

Although a public park (and occasional movie set) for now, attempts to turn this site into a massive housing complex have come up in the past, and will come up again. One day, nothing will remain of this place thousands of patients once called home and over 800 of them died, in many instances simply because they were born in a less fortunate era than those of us today.

Links of Interest:
Visit the Medfield State Hospital