Best Places
HISTORY
Lost Fire Towers From about 1900 until the late 1960s, almost 100 of New Hampshire’s mountains sported a fire tower on their summit, and a warden watched out over the forest, sounding an alarm whenever he saw smoke. Many of these fire wardens, or “lookouts,” lived in a small cabin on top of the mountain near the tower. Today only about 16 towers are still manned, and much of the fire-spotting is done by airplanes. The old fire towers and cabins were prone to lightning strikes, high winds, fire, vandalism or just age and deterioration once they stopped being used. Most are gone now, lost forever to history, but in some places you can still find tower anchor pins, concrete footings or some remnant of the cabin. On the Starr King Trail in Jefferson, the cabin is long gone, but the fireplace remains standing, reminding us of New Hampshire’s fire tower heritage.
The Kiss’n Bridges
Lost and Found
Finding New Hampshire’s lost or hidden places by marshall hudson
New Hampshire is an old state rich with history and full of lost or forgotten places, some of which may be hiding in plain sight. If you are willing to get off the tourist trails and do some exploring, you can rediscover these hidden links to our past. To find the best of these lost places, you’ll need to be prepared to drive the backroads, talk to the locals, read old maps and maybe do some brush-busting. To get you started, here are a few lost places to find once the stay-at-home order is lifted. 20
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BEST PLACES 2020
Lyme Horse Sheds Gone and forgotten are the days before automobiles, when everyone traveled by horse. While you can park your car, lock and leave it, that didn’t work well for horses, particularly in bad weather. What do you do with your horse and buggy when you need to go to Sunday morning church service? At the Lyme Congregational Church, they solved the problem by building horse sheds. A continuous line of individual horse stalls was erected on adjacent town land, and then the stalls were sold to church-going individuals (without the land). Above
photo by marshall hudson
The fire tower on Magalloway Mountain in Pittsburg
By my count, New Hampshire has 54 covered bridges left over from the horseand-buggy days when bridges were regularly built with roofs and sides to keep the elements from rotting out the wooden decking. With the development of iron, steel and concrete, the covered wooden bridge became obsolete. Remaining covered bridges have become lost or forgotten as new roads diverted to steel and concrete bridges, which could carry heavier loads and faster traffic. Which of the remaining covered bridges is the best one to go find is a subjective opinion, but I’d suggest the Bath Village Bridge in Bath and the Ashuelot Bridge in Winchester. Both are not to be skipped.
