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
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