I visited a rail trail recently that I hadn’t been on for many years. This is where we start; at the depot in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and other notables passed this way on their way north out of Fitchburg, Massachusetts to the town of Troy, New Hampshire where they then hiked to Mount Monadnock to climb it.
This depot still has its colored glass signals on top of a high pole. The meaning of three of the colors is much the same today as it was then; green meant it was safe to proceed, yellow meant an impending stop or speed reduction, and red meant come to a full stop. Blue meant that another track met the track you were on. Purple was used for derails at one time, but became obsolete. Amber was used in foggy conditions and white or clear meant restricted conditions. These colors are also still used by railroads today. Since I’m color blind I’ll let you sort out which is which on this signal.
I was surprised-actually shocked is more accurate-to find pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) still blooming out here, and they were everywhere. These plants have bloomed longer this year than I’ve ever seen. It could be because of the cool, damp weather we’ve had but I don’t really know.
Before you’ve walked too far you come to a pond, and as you look around you see that things aren’t quite right. Nowhere else in this part of the state that I know of will you see piles of granite lining the shore of a pond like they do here. I wonder what Thoreau thought of them.
Bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia) grows on the banks of the pond. As I walked toward it to get some photos I startled a young mallard. It couldn’t fly but it sure could swim in circles fast and made quite a racket. I felt bad about scaring it so I took a couple of quick shots of this beautiful laurel and left.
If you know the way to get to it, you can find an old abandoned granite quarry out in these woods. I always wondered what happened to the excess granite in a granite quarry, and now I know. When they weren’t dumping it on the shores of the pond they were stacking it up to make walls. This one was at least 10 feet high and 3 times as long.
Fitzwilliam granite is of very fine grain and has an even color and a very low iron content, which means it doesn’t stain and discolor over time. Some of the buildings that were built with Fitzwilliam granite are the State Capitol of Albany, N.Y., the Public Library at Natick, Mass., the Union Depot and Court House in Worcester, Mass., the Union Station, Washington, D.C., Marshall Field’s, Chicago, Ill., and the City Hall and Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Newark, NJ.
This bent iron rod in a block of granite was about an inch in diameter and my arm would have fit into the opening it made right up to the shoulder, with room to spare.
I was surprised to find beautifully carved granite out in these woods. In the 1800s this was done with hammers and chisels, but the really remarkable thing about the French cove carving shown here is how it was carved into a curved block of stone. It’s hard to see in the photo but as you look down the length of the carving the far end is lower than in the foreground, so the block was cut into a large radius with a molded edge added. It must have been meant for a building. Too bad to do all that work and then just leave it here.
The granite industry was very important to Fitzwilliam for more than 50 years and many of the stonecutters that settled here were from Scotland. At their peak about 400 men worked the quarries. Stonecutters were paid a minimum of $2.00 per day.
Beavers miscalculated and felled this tree in the wrong direction so it got hung up on others that were still standing.
If the beavers had made their cut on the other side of the tree it would have dropped right into this granite quarry, which is now filled with water. A quarry in an area with a shallow water table begins to fill with groundwater almost as soon as it is started and has to be continually pumped out while the stone is being quarried. In the early 1800s windmills or steam engines often powered the pumps but they could only do so much. As the quarry gets deeper more and more groundwater flows in and when it becomes too difficult or too expensive to pump it out it is abandoned and fills with water. You can see large blocks of granite and trees just under the surface a few feet out from shore. These hidden objects make this a very dangerous place to swim, but I and many others used to do so.
For some reason the workmen went to all the trouble of splitting this huge block of granite and then left it here. Lucky for us though, because it illustrates perfectly how feathers and wedges were used to split stone. First, 3-4 inch deep holes were drilled (by hand) in a line where the split was to take place. Then feathers and wedges were placed into each hole and tapped down with a hammer until the stone split.
This photo from Wikipedia shows various sizes of feathers and wedges. The curved pieces are the feathers and the wedge is driven in between them. As happens in splitting wood, the force from the wedges being driven ever deeper splits the stone.
This photo shows the half holes that remain after the stone is split. Most were about as long as, and the same diameter as my pointing finger. There was once a railroad spur that connected this quarry to the rail line that ran near here but its presence has all but disappeared. Quarries boomed by the mid-1800s, producing paving blocks for previously rutted and mucky city streets. Many millions of 4″ X 8″ X 11” cobblestones were produced in quarries all over New England.
During its operation a lot of granite was taken from this quarry. Some of the ledges in this photo are 100 or more feet from the water. To give you some sense of scale-that’s a full size white pine tree leaning against that far wall. Since I fell out of a tree and shattered my spine when young I wasn’t able to jump from anything much higher than the soles of my shoes, but I used to swim here nonetheless and I’ve seen many people jump from those ledges. I remember being told that the water was hundreds of feet deep and that there were cranes and steam shovels and even cars that you would get tangled up in if you swam in the wrong places, and I remember the feeling of apprehension that came over me whenever I swam here. If the truth were told I never really did enjoy it much, but being able to overcome your fears is powerful medicine for a teenage boy.
Recently some professional divers dove here to see what they could find and their report was what you’d expect; silt covered granite under water about 40 feet deep, with some pocket change glistening on the stones. There were no steam shovels, cranes or cars down there.
Today all of the old ghosts have evaporated from this place and it seems much like any other swimming hole, but no shouts bounced off the granite walls and nobody swam. As I sat on a sun warmed slab of granite I thought back to an old Twilight Zone episode in which the residents of an old folks’ home became children again by playing the games that they’d played in their youth. But even so, I didn’t swim either.
No matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. ~Haruki Murakami
Thanks for stopping in.
This was great. I’ve been there more than a few times around 2010 – 2014. I also remember hearing about a crane being underneath but never knew whether it was true or not. I’m curious, where did you obtain a report of the divers finding nothing but silt?
Thanks for this. Very well written.
Thank you. I think I just Googled something like “Is there machinery at the bottom of the granite quarry in Fitzwilliam NH?” Anyhow I ended up at a scuba diving site and I think it is this one: https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/nh-quarries.253026/
It said they searched the bottom and found basically a lot of sand.
I hope this helps!
So well written…I was one of those who jumped off the cliffs. It was never enjoyable but a rite of passage so I would be accepted by the boys. I would go there in the early 1970s. I also remember the most enormous frogs there. Also, loved seeing the lady slippers. I think they are endangered. I was told never to pick them. Loved the reference to Thoreau.
Thank you Mary. I would have been there probably mid seventies so I probably missed your group but I’m glad the post brought back some happy memories!
I don’t remember seeing frogs there, or lady’s slippers for that matter so I was happy to find them this time. It’s true that you shouldn’t pick a lady’s slipper. In fact in some areas they’re protected by laws.
I remember those Pink Lady Slippers as a child my mother would tell me I’d go to jail if I picked them, beautiful photos my dear!
Thank you Nana. I remember being told the same but the truth is, they aren’t protected under law here. But I still wouldn’t pick one.
Oops it was in Maine!
A beautiful place. Sizes seem different across the Atlantic. A swimming hole in my mind would be smaller than an Olympic swimming pool. Your swimming hole could pass for a small loch in Scotland! Amelia
We have lakes and ponds here that are quite big, so I call anything smaller a swimming hole. I think the camera might have made it seem bigger than it really is. It’s small enough so two people could talk across its length and still be heard.
I enjoyed that walk down memory lane, as well as the history lesson. If only my school history lessons had been half so interestingly presented.
Thank you Ben. School history was a bit dry but I always enjoyed learning about what went on in other times.
Yes, but I always preferred getting a book out from the library for that.
Me too!
What a beautiful place. It’s nice that the quarrying of granite leaves behind some lovely pools. In Egypt we visited an old quarry and it’s interesting to see the methods used there are the same, more or less. I guess the Egyptian way of getting stone was hard to improve on. Very interesting post.
We have quarries all over the state and most have now filled with water. These days they use diamond saws and other modern equipment in active quarries but it was done with hand drills and feathers and wedges for centuries.
Having been out of town for nearly 2 weeks, I love coming back and reading your posts. After reading them, I feel caught up on what I missed while I was away.
Thank you, and welcome home.
A really interesting post. I am interested in the pink ladies slippers – how tall are they? They look quite large plants but I could be mistaken. I was also interested to see the abandoned blocks of split granite and the carved granite. I am to re-visit the English Peak District in Staffordshire and Derbyshire very soon. When walking in the hills there we often come across abandoned carved mill stones – great rings of stone lying on the top of a hill or deep in a wood.
Thank you. The lady’s slippers get about 6-8 inches tall but that’s all stem and flower, because the 2 leaves sit just about on the ground. They are one of our native orchids and are fussy about where they grow.
We find millstones in the woods here too but it’s a rare event. I like the fact that you never really know what you’ll find out there.
A well written post and very interesting about the granite quarries. So what was it that caused the demand for granite to drop?
Thank you. Concrete put an end to the granite industry boom. It was much cheaper and just as strong as granite.
Fascinating! Your musings are both informative and poetic. I can just imagine the allure the place had (and still has).
Thanks Sue. Quarries still seem to be a magnet, but for different reasons now.
Wonderful photography in today’s post, as usual. The railroad lights, granite cliffs along with the close ups and description of how it was worked fantastic.
Thanks Grampy!
Your pictures of the pink lady’s slippers is beautiful, a little late for blooming so it must be in it’s own little micro-climate! The Quarry is pretty cool, I bet the water is still cold but I would have been in swimming anyway. We have a lot of quarries are here too. As a kid I remember climbing over the fence to go swimming, it’s a wonder why we never got caught 🙂
Thanks Michael. I’m not sure why the lady’s slippers in that area were blooming so late, but it was nice to see them.
In my day there were no fences around the quarries here but they have started fencing some of them off now because people keep getting hurt.
Swimming hole, you say? Work of art by nature and humans, I say. Didn’t know the beaver to miscalculate, though. Glad to hear their are no steam shovels at the bottom of the quarry. Thanks for this excellent post.
Thank you Jim. Yes, they have found beavers that were killed by the tree they had cut down falling on them.
Quarries do have their own beauty in a kind of angular, jutting way. All those right angles should appeal to a mechanical engineer like myself, but I find the curve of a wave much more pleasing.
Wonderful post. I lived in Milford as a young teen and all my friends would swim in the quarries. The stories about the sunken objects are the same surrounding all of the quarries. It’s amazing the work that went into those granite blocks.
Thanks Laura. I didn’t know that there were quarries in Milford. Interesting that they come with the same stories!
Reblogged this on Dawn of Divine Rays.
I loved your story and the photos are quite amazing.
Thank you Charlie. I’m glad you enjoyed them.
I’d swim there! The water looks inviting, but that may be because it’s so hot here today. It’s also a place that I would like to float around in my kayak on a nice day such as you had.
It’s funny how those stories about things that sank in a man-made lake like that get started and become accepted as the truth after a while, there are a few places in Michigan where tall tales of what had happened in the past are told also.
I wonder if the piece of granite with the cove cut into it was a practice piece for a new worker?
I love these little history lessons you give from time to time.
Thanks Jerry! As you know, with a history post it’s hard to know where to stop. It would be fun to kayak in this quarry but you’d have quite a time getting it out there. The path isn’t hardly two feet wide in places.
In this case I think adults probably came up with many of those stories to scare us out of there but instead they had the opposite effect.
There were two of those curved and molded blocks there. I wondered if they were rejects but practice blocks make sense too.
Interesting reading and beautiful pictures!
Thanks! I wish there were fossils in that granite!
Do you have sandstone or limestone that could have fossils?
Not in this area, but there might be some in other parts of the state.
It certainly looked tempting for a swim. I don’t think that I have ever seen so many colours on a signal in this country.
Because the quarries are relatively small compared to a lake the water can get quite warm sometimes and feel more like a bath than a swim.
I think that signal is very old. It looked like it would have to be hand operated.
You should have been a state history teacher!
I don’t think I could take it. The research involved eats up a lot of time. I do learn a lot though.
I love your photos and enjoy reading your posts. So glad I came across your site. I visited New Hampshire frequently on my way to college in Vermont. I love your state. Hope to visit soon and not just pass through.
Diana from Canada
Thank you Diana. I hope you can make it back too. I often tell people that I can’t think of another state where you can see the tallest mountain in New England, swim in beautiful lakes, and visit the seashore all in one day. I’m glad that you’re enjoying the blog!
I was so sorry to read about your serious accident when young, what very bad luck. I fell out of trees when I was young and broke nothing worse than my nose. Loved your account of your walk.
Thank you Susan. It was more stupidity than bad luck, I’m afraid. I had a few months in a body cast to think it over, and I’ve never climbed a tree since. I learned that it’s all in how you land. You don’t have to fall from very high up to get seriously hurt. A broken nose sounds extremely painful too!
Nice post, Allen…looks like a great place to spend a few hours.
Thanks Scott. It can seem a little eerie, but it’s quiet there these days.
You’re welcome, Allen….and that quiet is what makes it all the more compelling. 🙂
Reblogged this on Writing Out Loud and commented:
The town in which I live, a must post.
This one hit home as they say. I learned more about the town I live in by reading and viewing your artistic side the last five minutes than I have in the twenty years I have lived in Fitzwilliam. It almost made me want to walk the walk, but then I sigh, look at the dog by my chair, and know I enjoy my study. I am in the right place.
I felt bad about not letting you know that I was going to be there but I didn’t know myself until I got there. I don’t usually plan, I just go. The trail was very muddy, so you didn’t miss much. It would be a nice walk with the dog on a crisp fall morning.