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News

  • Plan for Forest Society North at The Rocks meets another milestone

    Anne Truslow
    January 20, 2021

    The building renovation is the central element of a multi-phased plan to re-envision The Rocks.

  • NH Tree Farm Program announces 2021 Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year

    Anna Berry
    January 13, 2021

    The N.H. Tree Farm Program has announced that Charles and Mabel Niebling of Boscawen have been named the 2021 Outstanding Tree Farmers of the Year.

  • A New Way to See the Merrimack Watershed

    Anna Berry
    January 12, 2021

    Thanks to the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Merrimack has been cleaned up considerably over the last 50 years. But there is still work to be done.

Early Wood Manufacturing Powered By Water

NH Old Home Day and Forest Society share influential founders
Dave Anderson
August 14, 2014
Forest Society History
Clean Water
Working Forests
Historic water-powered mill in rural Davisville NH. Credit Nate McBean via flicker Creative Commons. History of early forest industries is tied to water-power.

In August, NH towns celebrate "Old Home Days." Forest Society founders, Frank Rollins and Nahum Batchelder conceived "Old Home Week” in 1899. It was designed to lure wealth back to NH to revitalize depressed rural economies and bring abandoned farms back onto tax rolls.

Frank West Rollins, Governor of NH and Co-founder of NH Old Home Day tradition was also a founder of the Society for the Protection of NH Forests in 1901. Credit Wikimedia Commons

Early NH manufacturing relied on rivers to produce an endless array of wood products from lumber to clothespins. A half mile stretch of the Lane river on “Corporation Hill” in Sutton, NH produced a litany of wood products:

Lumber, clapboards, shingles, bobbins, clothespins, excelsior, lathing, windows, doors, shutters, wagons and carriages and associated components.

Even modest falls of water were harnessed for wood manufacturing because poor roads made it impossible to haul timber long distances.

Early mills experienced fewer spring floods and summer droughts. Waterpower was more reliable year-round from wholly forested watersheds with thick layers of sponge-like litter and moss beneath centuries-old trees.

Nahum Josiah Batchelder, Governor of NH and a co-founder of NH Old Home Day traditions was also a founder of the Society for the Protection of NH Forests. Credit Wikimedia Commons

Even as valleys were cleared for farms and villages, old growth forests covered even the highest slopes – now bare ledges - on Mounts Monadnock, Sunapee and Kearsarge. New Hampshire history traces an ebb and flow of rivers, forests and wood manufacturing.

This summer, historical societies in the Contoocook, Warner and Lane River watersheds are collaborating in a series of “Along The River” exhibits and events. Attendees at Sutton Old Home Day’s “Voices from the Past” will learn about early mills simultaneously dependent upon both logs for raw material and upon uncut forests for power.

You can find more information on the Along the River project at this link.  [The site alongtheriver.org is lo longer available.]

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Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests54 Portsmouth St.Concord, NH 03301
Phone: 603.224.9945Fax: 603.228.0423info@forestsociety.org
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