How many of us go about our lives never noticing all the fascinating and unique things around us, because we're just too caught up with life. We bring the kids to school, work all day, go shopping on the weekends, and all the while there are treasures just waiting to be noticed, if only we'd put down our phones long enough to go look for them. I'm talking about myself as much as anyone here, of my recent fascination with balancing my digital life with my real life, and of my quest to peel back the layers on everything interesting within our communities.
In the past couple years this has brought me to many interesting places, and although there are different degrees to just how secret each one of these tunnels is, I've lived in Dover the past 20 years and it wasn't until the last couple that I knew a single one of them existed. That's off the beaten path enough for me to call each one of them hidden.
How many of them can you name?
Walking Tunnel Below the Spaulding Turnpike
Here's a perfect example of taking the path - or in the case the road - less traveled. On a recent bike ride I was rounding the corner between Knox Marsh and Littleworth Roads, and on a whim took the long way through a side neighborhood I'd never traveled. Where the road dead-ended a paved walkway disappeared into the trees, and that's where I found this tunnel passing underneath the Spaulding Turnpike and into a neighborhood off Silver Street. A nice little walk for local residents, a couple of whom I passed along the way, and since it doesn't take much to excite me, after riding it back and forth I returned that weekend to show my wife and make her pose for this picture. Click For Location
Blackwater Brook Tunnel
Making a visit to this tunnel is not for the feint of heart, but for anyone not afraid of learning the true meaning of the term bushwhacking, it's definitely worth the visit. Follow the path on a map that the former Newington Branch Railway once traveled to the north, and you'll find where it crossed over the Blackwater Brook. Put on your boots and make the nearly half-mile hike from Pickering Road to this location, and you'll find how the former railway crossed over the Blackwater Brook. This beautiful arched tunnel stands alone in those woods, continuing to do its job even though nobody is watching. My wife had to perform double-duty on this day, first enduring the bushwhack and then posing for my picture once again. Click For Location
Community Trail Tunnel Below Silver Street
I'm guessing this is the most commonly known of the bunch, but in the words of my thirteen year old son it's also one of the coolest. We've all traveled over Silver Street at one point or another, but how many of you have traveled under it? If you haven't, I highly recommend taking a walk along the downtown portion of Dover's Community Trail, bringing you underneath Silver Street in this long metal tube, which if you're like my wife will make you immediately start singing. Click For Location
Cow Tunnel Behind Measured Progress?
I will stop to look at anything that catches my eye, and while walking the Watson Road portion of the Dover Community Trail I found myself climbing down the embankment to look at what I assumed was a culvert, one of many that line this section of former railbed. This one was extremely large however, and I called back up to my wife that I'll be darned but it almost looked like a cow tunnel. After taking several moments trying to figure out if I was punking her, she humored me and asked what's a cow tunnel. Back when much of New England was a farming community and railroads often came cutting through, people would sometimes need ways to safely get their livestock from one side of the tracks to the other. Hence what is commonly referred to as a cow tunnel.
Knowing there are several confirmed ones throughout New England, I wrote to the NH Division of Historical Resources with pictures of it, and after exchanging several nice emails with coordinator Peter Michaud he felt that given the size and location there was a pretty good chance this was indeed another one. Of course this is based strictly on information I provided him, he has not seen it for himself, so rather than put him on the hook for any claims I make, I'll leave it with a question mark and a hope; that someone more knowledgeable than I am will someday learn more about it. Click For Location
Honorable Mention - Stone Railroad Tunnel
As much as I wanted this one to be part of the official list, it's not a place people should be visiting (do as I say, not as I do) so I cannot give its location. But it is in Dover, and it is very picturesque.
That is my list, but I'm certain there are others around town that are as impressive as these, or even more so. For example, haven't we all heard stories about old houses and buildings that have secret tunnels leading underneath roads or to other buildings? I like to think that not all of those stories are urban legends.
I also like to think that one day I'll find myself standing inside one of them.
Our family took a vacation this summer to see my parent's new house in Tennessee, someplace they've lived in for nearly a year but we'd only seen pictures of to that point. My brother and two sisters were there with their families, and it was a wonderful time catching up with my folks, marveling at how big the nieces and nephews are getting, and enjoying a week with no deadlines or spreadsheets. But if you think we didn't sneak in a few adventures while we were down there, then I haven't been doing a very good job of explaining what our family is all about.
Part one of our adventure brought us to the Virginia Creeper, a wildly popular rail-trail through the mountains of western Virginia. The main attraction is to shuttle up the mountain in vans, hop onto rental bikes and enjoy a winding 17 mile ride down the hillside and back into town.
This is meant to be a leisurely ride with various lookout points and sights along the way, and halfway down you can stop at a diner that does more business off the dessert menu than the lunch. I've seen plenty of double-fisting in my days, but never in a situation that didn't involve lots of beer. My dad is a trend setter though, and here was his logical solution for whether to get an ice-cream cone or a brownie square for lunch.
This was my dad's third time riding the Creeper, and although mom wasn't able to join us on this day she'll proudly show you her scars from wiping out the last time she rode it. But don't let that scare you, this is a smooth and relaxing ride that is enjoyable for all ages.
Having spent some time adventuring above ground we now decided it was time to spend some time below, so we visited the Appalachian Cavern's in nearby Blountville TN. Our drive there featured a spirited conversation with my southern-transplant sister Becky on the proper pronunciation of Appalachian. Like most northerners I was saying "a-puh-lay-shun", and like most southerners she kept trying to correct me with “a-puh-latch-un”. I finally ditched them both and started calling it "a-puh-la-chee-an", which wound her knickers right up tight and made for a quiet rest of the drive there.
Although it's a commercial cave now, Appalachian Caverns has been known and used for as long as people have lived in these parts. We're talking pre-Columbus days too - carbon dating of burnt wood found inside has been dated all the way back to 675 AD. In later years the caves were used by soldiers throughout the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and in times of peace they proved to be a handy spot for the local moonshine business. Equipment from this was still on display, but to my mother's disappointment this particular rig was only a mock-up.
For my parents - whose weekend trips include likes of Luray Caverns or Mammoth Cave - this system is on the smaller side, but for us New Hampshire folks, whose largest caves are cubbyholes created by boulders, this was an impressive system with many beautiful rooms.
Unlike most commercial caverns where touching is not allowed (lest your hand leave a layer of slime that stunts the growth of stalactites and other cool formations), much of Appalachian Caverns is open for exploration. They even offer a mud-tour, which is exactly what it sounds like - bring old clothes because they'll have you crawling through every nook and cranny you can fit into, and possibly a few you can't. Our guide welcomed the kids to a taste of this by letting them crawl through this tunnel, and since I didn't see any signs defining what they considered a "kid", down I went after them.
The first half I managed pretty well but it soon pinched me down to my stomach, and only the combination of my breakdancing worm skills and my nephew's encouragement got me through the last squeeze.
An even more unique thing about Appalachian Caverns is that they have a mascot, a cat that is given free reign of the caverns and pops in and out of view throughout the tour. In additionally to that furry guy, one of the pools featured a couple large turtles, and unlike the cat they were happy to stop and pose for our pictures.
Any day spent wandering an underground tunnel is a day worth getting out of bed for, and thanks to the handiwork of a river that millions of years ago dried up, this day was just that.
It was great to do some exploring during our vacation, but it was even better spending time with family who I don't get to see nearly often enough. If anyone is to blame for my own sense of adventure, it's those two in the bottom right corner of this picture. Whereas too many people go into retirement with the mindset of, I've finally arrived, now I get to relax, my parents went into their twilight years full speed ahead, still looking toward the future rather than over their shoulder at the past. Always ready for that next chapter in life, this one has brought them to brand new state and an area that's full of fresh experiences to be had, and when you're the original Rondinone Adventurers, what else could you ask for in life.
This adventure began with a casual conversation between my wife and I one night, involving a subject that is very near and dear to her heart - graveyards and tombstones. In the midst of the chit chat something triggered a memory with me, and I asked her if she'd ever heard about the guy in Massachusetts who was buried with six of his young wives, each of whom had somehow died in their 20's or 30's. She gave me about a five-second blank stare, then made me slowly repeat what I'd just told her - that six of this man's wives mysteriously died at a very young age, and now the whole group of them were buried alongside each other at a cemetery in Massachusetts. There's a boatload of questions a statement like that could lead to, but my wife followed it up with just one.
And we haven't been to see this grave ... why??
I didn't have a good why to respond with, so that's how two days later we found ourselves driving to the Bradford Burial Ground in Haverhill, to look for the grave of Nathaniel Thurston.
If you trust what's written on his epitaph, Thurston was a well respected member of the community who was involved in local legislature for many years, and not the type of person one would suspect of rubbing out a wife every few years or so when he got tired of waking up next to her. Taking everything at face value, he would appear to be just the world's unluckiest man when it came to the life expectancy of the women he wed.
For many years he was a member of the Legislature, was distinguished for his benevolence and greatly lamented by his friends
Unlucky indeed, for between the years of 1790 and 1808 six of Thurston's wives passed away, an average clip of one death every three years. I'm not looking for any of his descendants to come beating down my door with pitchforks, however, so rather than accuse the man of being New England's version of Henry VIII, let me simply present the facts of Thurston's curious love life as they happened:
1780 - Married Elizabeth "Betsey" Thurston, who died on November 25, 1790 at age 34.
1791 - Married Martha Thurston, who died on May 12, 1799 at age 32.
1799 - Married Huldah Thurston, who died on September 8, 1801 at age 24.
1803 - Married Clarrissa Thurston, who died on November 14, 1803 at age 36.
1804 - Married Martha B. Thurston, who died on July 27th, 1804 at age 25.
1804 - Married Mary Thurston, who died on March 3rd, 1808 at age 27.
1801 was a particularly cruel year in the Thurston household, for not only is that the year wife Huldah died, but a son she and Nathaniel had passed away also. Benjamin Thurston was only 8 months old when he died on March 7th of 1801, just months prior to his mother's demise.
Between 1803 and 1804 was another flurry of activity, as Thurston was married three times and widowered twice in a period of just over 12 months. As a testament to whatever charisma he had going for him, as quickly as the man could bury one wife he somehow attracted a new one. Not only that, but the older he got the younger the girls were that he landed. Thurston was pushing 50 years of age when he wed wives 5 and 6, each of whom were only in their mid-20's at the time.
A cooling off period followed this sixth marriage to Martha B., and they remained a couple for approximately four years until she too died at 27. This was in 1808, and without skipping a beat the 54-year old Thurston was married for a 7th time to 25-year old Frances Fletcher in 1809. That is where the craziness finally came to a stop, as Thurston passed away in 1811 with wife number 7 still alive and well.
I'd bet my Jeep there's a whole lot more to this story, but I don't know how to investigate a 200 year old cold-case therefore it ends with Frances having done something none of the other wives were able to do - outlive Thurston. And as a result of that accomplishment Frances distinguished herself from the others in another way as well, she is the only wife who will not be spending eternity next to Thurston, alongside wives 1 through 6 at the Bradford Burial Ground in Haverhill Massachusetts.
In the summer of 2017 I set out in search of an abandoned gold mine, said to be located somewhere in the woods of central New Hampshire. Two weeks later I found a mine in those woods, but far enough away from where I'd started to make me wonder; was this even the same mine I'd been looking for? And not that there were any shiny rocks kicking around for me to verify, but I subsequently learned that the mineshaft I'd stumbled onto below is a silver mine, not a gold mine. So was my original information wrong and are these one and the same, or is there a second mineshaft in these woods still waiting to be discovered?
Let me start at the beginning. A 1946 historical book I bought on Amazon describes how in the late 1800's a gold mine was opened in these woods, and it operated until enough people didn't get rich from it that the entire project was abandoned in frustration. The location wasn't given, but I later uncovered two separate clues that gave me enough confidence to set out on my search. One being that the mine was located a certain distance south from a railroad bed (which no longer existed, but you'd be surprised how those raised beds are still noticeable on Google Earth), and the second being that it was located a distance east from an old railroad depot. That depot no longer existed either, but I didn't see that being an issue. Finding its address should be all over the historical records of the town. At least one would think so, but I'll be darned if it didn't take me finding a postcard of it on Ebay to finally pin down its address.
But now that I had triangulated its position, it was just a matter of working out all the details so I could begin my search. Do I bring my mountain bike so I can cover more ground, or hike in case the woods were too dense for riding? Should I wear shorts to keep myself cool, or long pants to protect against thorns when bushwhacking? What type of beer should I celebrate with when I returned? Many tough decisions, but with the logistics finally worked out, on a recent Saturday morning I went for a ride.
My starting point would begin forty-five minutes from my house, where a trail led behind a town park and into the woods. Happy to have made the decision to bring my mountain bike, I started out quickly and within 15 minutes reached my suspect location. And my first disappointment. The area was just a big open marsh and there weren't any holes to be found.
Not that I was surprised, considering I'd pinned this location from an address on a postcard and satellite images of a railroad bed that no longer existed, so I did what I always do after strike one. I began fanning out my search in wider and wider circles. This mine proved to be a stubborn place to find though, and soon my circles had grown to the quarter-mile variety. Just when it looked like I might be done for the day. I stumbled onto a path that, although obviously not traveled in a long time, was definitely a dirt road at some point in the past.
I followed it for about ten minutes before finding this old picnic table in the middle of what used to be a clearing. This wasn't just some backyard table either, this was large and rustic and looks like the kind of place where miners might once have gathered, grimy and sore after a hard day's digging. Real men, not men who put SPF 40 on their scalp and take vitamin D supplements because they often feel "run down". I wouldn't belong at this table any more than my youngest belongs at the grown-up table during Thanksgiving dinner.
Thinking I must be close now, I fanned out my search into smaller circles, but for all of my optimism and determination there were no mineshafts to be found on this day. I'm convinced these woods hold a secret though, for I spotted this structure not too far off the main trail.
Which on closer inspection turned out to be a decrepit outhouse. On a related note, don't let anyone ever tell you that miners don't have a sense of humor.
So back home to the drawing board I went, and although I swore by my original research, this time I found something that pointed me to a different spot. Two things about this new location - it was just over a mile from where my original clues had led me, and this one listed it as a silver mine, not a gold mine. So either one of the articles had some explaining to do, or these were two different places entirely. I planned to find out the following weekend, which would be my next day off from work and just enough time for my legs to recover from round one.
Compared to the ordeal I'd gone through originally, my search the following week was uneventful and not nearly as treacherous, and in fact almost anticlimactic. Although it still took me a couple hours searching, at about a quarter-mile from where I'd begun the day I was rewarded with this sight.
Closer inspection revealed this wasn't a welcome sign at the entrance, and I did cross that no trespassing sign to explore the tunnel. My other reprehensible act of the day was forgetting to record the video of it in landscape mode.
Start to finish the shaft is roughly fifty feet in length, with a small puddle at the entrance and dampness throughout. I respected the property as if it were my own, and even left a small gift in the form of a foreign coin I placed into the wall, before I was on my way.
So what have I learned about this mine since the time I explored it? In 1875 a white rock was found that was thought to contain silver, and after a newspaper article fanned the flames by speculating how extensive "gold, silver, lead and coal" were in these woods, the rush was on. Several companies attempted to mine the area before a new company was formed for the job, and $1 stocks were sold to fund the purchase of equipment. At least two shafts of equal length were dug into the hillside, and although silver turned out not to be the jackpot most expected, enough mica deposits were found to supply washers to General Electric in Schenectady NY, and crushed stone and poultry grit were sold to supplement the search. But these incidental businesses were short-lived, and not even ten years later remains of the entire operation were sold at auction.
Having learned that there's a second shaft, I have to wonder how close I was to finding it on my first attempt. Maybe someday I'll venture back into these woods for another go at it, but for now I'm content with the pictures I have of shaft one. New Hampshire's mini silver-rush was not the windfall many hoped it would be, but my mission to find it closed with a much happier ending. And to complete the story, when I returned back to my house that evening, Smuttynose IPA was my beer of choice to celebrate another successful adventure.
