New Hampshire: Exploring Intervale
Thursday, August 28, 2014
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Today was forecast as a hot one, and it was, with it reading 36 degrees after lunch, so we decided to explore the local area a bit more. In the air conditioned car. There were a few things we wanted to try and find and a few places we'd meant to go and hadn't.
The house where we stay is in Intervale, which straddles the towns of Conway and Bartlett at the foot of Bartlett Mountain, a subpeak of Kearsarge North, which until 1957 was called Pequawket Mountain for the Abenaki people who descended from the region. On local maps Town Hall Road dead ends at Mountain Pond but on Google maps it heads straight across the mountain. Intrigued we headed up.
The first stop we found was Flat Rocks, an area of the river and surrounding woodland that has been given over for public use but is clearly only known to locals. A steep scramble from the road brings you to a shallow, flat section of the river, perfect for paddling and sunbathing.
As we continued further it became apparent that the way to dispose of old cars was to abandon them in the woods. We spotted several at varying distances into the trees, some completely rusted out and a massive old Chrysler stuck at the side of the road. It was quite bizarre.
The road turned into an unpaved one car track as it hit the Jackson town line and as soon as we saw the White Mountains National Forest sign the road ended abruptly. There is a beautiful lake further up there, Mountain Pond, but it's hard to tell how far it is or if it is accessible as the road was so badly damaged by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 that it's been closed since and not estimated to reopen until at least next year.
While researching the history of the area, I'd come across mention of an Abenaki totem behind the old Intervale railroad station. The station hasn't been used since 1958 so trying to find the exact location was proving slightly troublesome. While the actual building no longer appears to be there (or may be in someone's backyard), we did find the sign and right across the tracks is the Abenaki Indian Shop and Camp, run by Cheif Laurent until his death in 1917 and subsequently his son Stephen. The totem is no longer there but the standing is, which I managed to identify by the marking in the footing and the cross referencing the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/91000218.pdf
While it was disappointing that the totem no longer stood, finding the camp itself was still pretty cool. The history of the Abenaki people in this area is fascinating and incredibly sad. Smallpox, war and eugenics decimated the Abenaki population and many fled to Quebec making the case for US federal recognition difficult.
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