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Date: | Sat, 8 Jul 2006 23:21:09 -0400 |
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I just returned from Durgin Bridge in central New Hampshire, a covered
bridge named after the man who ran a grist mill nearby and ran the
"underground slave railroad" from Meridith to Conway, New Hampshire,
according to the state marker there. The bridge "is 110 feet long and
spans the Cold River. It was built in 1869 by Jacob Berry with
Paddleford truss construction. This is the fourth bridge to be built
over the swift and easily flooded Cold River and is high enough to
escape a flood crest of ten feet. It was repaired and arches added in
1967." - DeLorme c) 1987 "The New Hampshire Atlas and Gazetteer"
Eighth edition. There are some substantial stone foundations in the
valley sides not far from Grover Cleveland's sons place on Cleveland
Memorial Road near Tamworth, NH, where American poet Robert Frost, who
spoke at President JFK's Washington D.C., inauguration said he spent
some of his childhood. (Interestingly JFK spent some of his childhood
in Riverdale in the Bronx county of NYC, before the stock market
crash, his father was interested in investing in the movie business
here in NY)
This would place that linkage in the foothills of the Federal White
Mountains, not far from Sandwich Notch, the last unprotected "notch"
in New Hampshire. Back in the 1940's I think a timber railroad ran
nearby and on a very hot Fourth of July a spark from the locomotive
set the whole Sandwich Range on fire and it was fought for weeks to
put out making national headlines. The Sandwich Notch Road runs
through the range from Sandwich, NH to the Mad River, near Waterville,
in part in the Federal forest. There's a complete set of "flow blue"
transfer printed ceramic ware in the Sandwich Historical Society, once
a wedding gift, though better off in the barn in a barrel.
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