New Hampshire - Day 17 - Hillsborough

Crow's Nest Campground
Tuesday, 17 July 2018

today's route

I went to Hillsborough, about 30 miles down the road, for 2 reasons: stone bridges and Franklin Pierce's homestead.

Rain was forecast for this afternoon, but it started early - about 8:30 - and it's still raining.  But they tell me NH is in moderate drought status and are very glad to have it.  I like rain but it made picture-taking more of a challenge.

Stone Arch Bridges

What's unusual about these bridges is that they were built using dry masonry, i.e. no mortar.  They date back 150-200 years and are still in use.  It's amazing.  And they're beautiful.

I'm told one of them was recently repaired because some of the keystones were coming loose, but apparently the workers used the old techniques.

Hillsborough has 5 of them and I found 4.

The Sawyer Bridge 1866

The Old Carr Bridge 1840

The Gleason Falls Bridge

Lower Village Bridge

The Lower Village Bridge is actually 2 spans, with the other one just on the other side of that pile of rocks on the left.  I tried to get a photo of both but the landscape was just too overgrown and it was too wet and rainy for me to want to tromp around in the weeds for a better angle.
While I was trying to find bridge #2, I got completely lost on a narrow rural lane.  It was raining and I wasn't looking forward to trying to turn around in the available space, and then got lucky.  I spotted the HQ for Fox State Forest and pulled into the lot.  A very nice employee gave me good directions, and then gave me information about a project they had going near their parking lot: chestnut tree reseeding.

seedlings

The chestnut blight wiped out the American chestnut trees all over the US during the 1930s and there've been efforts since then to replant them.

What they've been working on is grafting them with Chinese chestnuts, which aren't susceptible to blight.  But Chinese chestnuts grow into bushy shapes, while American chestnuts grow into actual trees.  Remember?: "Under the spreading chestnut tree the village smithy stands."  That's all I know of that poem but boy do I know it.  I even quoted it to the forest employee but she didn't seem to recognize it.  Too bad.

Anyway, New England chestnut varieties have different characteristics than those from the mid-Atlantic, they've learned, because the ones up here are more cold-hardy.  They've been having to learn all this as they go along because they're doing it the old-fashioned way of waiting for a tree to grow, nobody spending much time yet playing with chestnut DNA.  I'm sure it'll come, though.  Meanwhile, they're growing seedlings in Hillsborough NH. 

Franklin Pierce Homestead
He was the pre-Civil War president who tried to please everybody (it seems to me), which of course pleased nobody, and he was a one-term president whose administration is generally panned.

He was born 1804 and died 1869 of cirrhosis of the liver.  All of his children died before they were 12, sending his wife into permanent depression (and who can blame her).  His 3rd son died shortly before Pierce took office so the White House was draped in mourning for a long time.  Not an auspicious beginning.  His presidency was from 1853-1857.

Did you know at that time presidents had to bring most of their own furniture to the White House?

Pierce was a strict Constitutionalist and was very worried about the possibility of the breakup of the Union.  He thought the abolitionist movement threatened the Union (which it did, I learned in Vermont; abolitionists talked about secession in the 1830s) and, although he was a Democrat from a Northern state, he enforced the Fugitive Slave Act and signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act that nullified the Missouri Compromise.  He thought these things would hold the Union together and was surprised when they only increased north/south tensions.

He signed the Gadsden Purchase (the US bought southern Arizona and New Mexico from Mexico) but failed to acquire Cuba, then was slapped with the Ostend Manifesto from his own diplomats, a document that claimed to justify buying Cuba from Spain and declaring war on Spain if it refused (slave states really wanted Cuba).

He tried to clean up the civil service while still granting patronage to his Democratic supporters.

Basically, the poor guy tried to have it both ways and got slapped from both sides.

On the other hand, he was the first president to put a Christmas tree in the White House.  He was also the first president to introduce a flush toilet to the White House.  These are both significant innovations in my opinion so maybe we should give the guy a break.

On the other other hand, he was back living in New Hampshire when he criticized Pres. Lincoln, even though there doesn't seem to be much question Lincoln saved the Union; not a popular move on Pierce's part.