Ruins on a river

It's finally, really spring here in western Massachusetts, and I am very happy to be back on my bicycle. One of my favorite rides -- which I took this week, for the first time since freezing temperatures and snow forced me to put my bicycles away last year -- is a street and then a dirt path, both of which run along or within sight of the Mill River in Northampton, ending near Smith College's Paradise Pond. It's a winding, tree-shaded path, slightly bumpy in spots but almost always pleasant to ride on. I encounter walkers, parents pushing baby carriages, runners, and occasionally (though not too often) other bicyclists. Occasionally, some bicycling friends and I have taken hand saws with us to cut up trees which have fallen in windstorms and blocked the path. In the fall there is one stretch of the path which has these small trees, or bushes perhaps, with leaves that turn exquisite shades of pink.

There are also some ruins along the way -- nothing terribly dramatic, but they catch my eye every time. On this ride, I stopped to take a few photos. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with the great zoom lens on it, nor did I clamber down a few slopes to get a better vantage point for photographing one spot… so these are not the best photos.

(I should point out here that this Mill River (probably one of dozens if not hundreds in this part of the country so-named) is the same Mill River featured in Elizabeth Sharpe's wonderful book "In the Shadow of the Dam", which recounts the terrifying story of the collapse of the Williamsburg  reservoir dam and the horrific flood that caused. Ever since I read that book a few years ago, I wonder if the ruined things I see along this stretch of the river have anything to do with that incident.)

This first ruin is a little hard to see through the trees -- and I suspect that in a month or two, when the trees are dressed in their green finery, it will be almost impossible to see. This is now visible from Riverside Drive, which (per its name) follows the river for a ways. I stopped to take a few photos when I spied these ramparts across the river, high up on the far bank. I do not know what they are, or perhaps more to the point, what they were.

On my side of the river, almost directly across from the ruins on the other side, was this partial stone wall.

Could these have been two sides of one dam spanning the river, perhaps providing power to a long-vanished mill? Possibly.


About a mile further, the path begins, and not too far down that path is this:

Two slightly boxy, three-sided concrete structures, the far one with a large chunk taken out of it and bearing two sizable cracks, sit on either side of the river. Between them runs a curved concrete ledge, battered and cracked and eroded, and barely visible under the water for the most part. You can see the exposed portion of it on the left, to the right of the tree in the foreground.

And over to the right in this panoramic image, there is an odd little doorway in the bank of the river. I have always wondered about this thing -- it seems, in its construction, almost primitive.

As I stood on the river's edge, taking these photographs, I looked down into the water and gravel near my feet and saw chunks of brick, some with broken corners smoothed -- I assume by years of erosive action from the river water.

Could these possibly be from the homes and mill buildings washed away by the flood on the Mill River in 1874? Or are they from some more recent bout of destruction, probably more limited in scope?

 I don't know. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in the history of brick making could tell at a glance.

About thirty feet to the left of the concrete structure on the left in the above photo, just off the dirt path and almost buried in last fall's leaves, there are these:

To my eye, they appear to be robust concrete and steel mounting plates… but for what? What was secured here? Did it have something to do with those aging concrete structures on the river's edges? I suppose I could ask the Northampton DPW, or perhaps someone at Smith College… and probably someday I will. But for now, it if more fun to speculate.


Moving down the path another tenth of a mile or so, I spied these on the far bank of the river:

I would guess that this tumbled pile of cut stone blocks is not the remains of a building which fell on this spot, through action of the river or inaction and neglect by its builders, but rather were pushed here, down the bank from the dirt road above, to get them out of the way. Not too far away from this location, on that side of the river, is the site of the former Northampton State Hospital, an institution for the mentally ill. Did these blocks of stone come from there? Why were they disposed in this way? Again, I don't know. -- PL

Ruins in New Hampshire and Maine

A few weeks ago, Jeannine and I took a small vacation (three nights) after she did a presentation for a group of teachers in Danvers, Massachusetts. We drove from there up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for our first night, and the next day I told her that I wanted to try to find a local ruin site, similar to Odiorne State Park in that it had abandoned shore battery emplacements from World War II. I could not remember what it was called, or where, exactly, it was -- all I could remember was that it was near the southern outskirts of Portsmouth, and the street where'd we'd parked, probably about twenty-seven years ago when we'd visited the site for the first and only time, had something either floral or fruity in its name.

I did a little web searching in the hotel before breakfast, and quickly found it -- Fort Stark, at the end of Wild Rose Lane in New Castle, New Hampshire. After checking out of the hotel, we headed there, and found it easily (thanks to the car's GPS, that is!)… but it didn't look much like I'd remembered it. That first time, as I recalled, we'd parked on the side of the road, and had to make our way through some thick bushes before we came to the site of the abandoned fort, where rusted circular steel rails -- the mounts for the long-gone shore artillery -- basked in the bright sun and salty air.

I think I may have misremembered this, because when we got to the site this time, there was a parking lot (unfortunately closed, with lots of dire-looking "NO PARKING!" signs around the area in front of it) and a large, open area between the parking lot and the fort, which sits near the edge of the ocean. Because I did not want to risk having our car get towed (which would have put a significant damper on our enjoyment of our little vacation), we only stayed for about ten minutes, and never got out of sight of the car. But I did manage to get a few interesting shots as we walked on the shore for a bit, on what I am pretty sure was the north end of the fort.

There was a large, curved concrete wall at the edge of the ocean, with large chunks missing from it's edges, very likely from the erosive power of the sea and the effects of many a New Hampshire winter. The wall was surmounted by a large mound of earth, from which grew a profusion of scraggly, slightly-stunted trees, grass, and tall weeds. And in the middle of the mound atop the wall, there was some kind of squarish concrete structure -- what looked from our vantage point like the entrance to a bunker. I took several photos and later stitched them together into this small panorama.

And here are two more shots of the wall, one a close-up of the wall showing the damage to its underside, where the waves hit it…

… and the other a medium shot from the other end of the wall (that's Jeannine strolling across the beach rocks in the distance -- I think she's trying to soak up as much of the March sun as possible).

The Fort Stark site was not open for visitors when we went there this time, but I hope to get back later in the year to give it a more thorough look, and take more photographs.

We got back in the car and proceeded to meander to our second destination, the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine. Neither of us had ever been to Kennbunkport before, even though we have spent a lot of time in southern Maine over the years. We had reservations to stay in one of the Inn's small cottages, and this one overlooked the Kennebunk River. 

Walking to the end of the short, dead-end street on which the cottage stood, I noticed that tide was out, and some old rotted piers, long-collapsed, had been exposed. 

This is something I have seen in various places, mostly near the ocean, and I have often wondered why these large hunks of wood are just left to rot, possibly interfering with boat traffic, snarling anchor lines and so forth, instead of being pulled out and perhaps recycled. Do people think it's just not worth it? Or do they calculate that, for tourists, the sight adds some kind of visual flavor to the shoreline when the tide is out? I am inclined to think it is the latter, because they do offer -- especially to the ruin fancier -- an intriguing, if literally and figuratively murky, glimpse of history.

Later, during our second day, while Jeannine was hard at work writing in the cottage, I took a stroll to the center of Kennebunkport to see what kinds of interesting shops and such might be found there… and saw another group of abandoned, rotting piers, again exposed by the low tide.

I wonder if anyone is still alive who remembers what these once represented? Or maybe these things are not as old as they seem, and there are many locals who know what they are (or were). Perhaps next time, I will ask. -- PL