Summit Mountain, Woodstock NH

In the book "New Hampshire as it is" by Edwin Azro Charlton (see http://books.google.com/books?id=nA...&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result ), there is a reference to Summit Mountain in Woodstock NH.

"Near the base of Summit Mountain is a cave, extending under ground several feet, and spacious enough to hold many hundred people. It communicates with various apartments. Its sides and the partition walls are- of solid granite; and from the fact that ice, of the greatest purity, may be obtained here through the entire warm season, it is called the Ice House..."

I have been unable to find any other references to it or find it on any old maps. I even visited Don at the Woodstock library and he dug out many old books but was unable to find any reference to it.

Anybody know where this is or what it may be called today?

Thanks for any help / pointers to re-find this mountain!

In Frank Carpenter's 1898 guide to Franconia Notch and the Pemi Valley, he includes a description of the so-called "Ice Caves." Here's what he wrote:

"Leave the road three miles south of North Woodstock at Fern Hill Farm (Sylvester Sawyer's) opposite the house, beside a sugar house or shed. Follow a plain path up a steep pasture slope the fern. At the top of the slope the path passes along a few rods at a gentle grade, crossing a wet, springy spot, and just beyond leads to a small, level, swampy meadow on the left of the path. At the top of a second steep pitch the path forks; the left hand forks descends the slopecurving around a hill, goes through a bit of open woods, crosses a low hummock with a pile of broken boulders on the left, and comes to a second small, marshy meadow on the right of the path. Above this on the left of the path is a larger pile of broken rocks, in which the ice caves are located. There are two caves, each long and narrow, and about forty feet long, where a candle or lantern is needed. Ice can be found in the caves in early summer. The caves are the haunt of hedgehogs, and are wet and dirty; not worth visiting, except from the farms near by. The walk through the pastures, however, is pretty and is worth taking."

I also checked to see if the caves were referenced in the North Woodstock Improvement Association's early "Pathfinder" to the North Woodstock region but there's nothing to be found, at least not in the 1914 edition of this guide.

I'm assuming the Summit Mountian you referenced is off the west side of Route 3 as your are heading south. That would jive with Carpenter's description above. Without a topo map of the area in front of me, I can't even begin to speculate where Summit Mountain is, or the location of the caves.

Hope this has been of some help.

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and here are some thoughts for what they are worth.

JCE's quote comes from an 1850s source, Charlton. It does not originate with him, apparently. I've found the same description of the "ice house" in several other early (mid-century) sources, NH guidebooks and gazeteers, including one published prior to Charlton. (These are not on google.) One uses the name "Summit Mountain," two other have dropped it. The best I can tell, all these sources are describing a place on or near "the road to Franconia," i.e., the old Rt. 3 that goes up through town, past Clark's, Indian Head, etc. At least that is what the context suggests; it's hard to tell. But if that is the location, then it sounds as if it is north of Woodstock,

That would rule out the Lost River caves, which are east of Woodstock. I don't know how early they were being explored. The AMC was taking trips there by about 1900, others possibly much earlier.

4KHiker cites a source from 1898, Carpenter. Again, this does not originate with Carpenter. (Guide book writers notoriously lifted from one another.) It probably originates in Moses Sweetser's guides from several decades earlier. In any event, this set of descriptions clearly points to a location several miles south of Woodstock. Sweetser's emphasis, echoed by Carpenter, has shifted from Charlton's wonder to the romantic, picturesque nature of a horrid and haunted place, all standard fare for later 19th c. attitudes to the WM (and elsewhere). It's also smaller.

So, I think these are two different ice caves, and my guess would be to center your search for the old Summit Mountain north of Woodstock, not south.

Waumbek is correct in her assertion that Ice Caves referenced by Carpenter were indeed also included Sweetser's early White Mountain guides. He notes that the mile-long path to the caves began about 3/4 m. north of Woodstock village; in other words, well below North Woodstock. I'm not familiar with Chalrton's works and his reference to Summit Mountain, nor have I seen other such references to a peak of that name. I'm curious, Waumbek, as to the other places where you've seen the "north of North Woodstock" ice caves mentioned, both before and after Charlton.

4Khiker said:

I'm not familiar with Chalrton's works and his reference to Summit Mountain, nor have I seen other such references to a peak of that name. I'm curious, Waumbek, as to the other places where you've seen the "north of North Woodstock" ice caves mentioned, both before and after Charlton.

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Here are a few that refer to the presumptively "northern" (north of N. Woodstock "on the road to Franconia") ice caves of Charlton, an early Ticknor's guide, both with and without the reference to Summit Mountain:

1) John Hayward's New England Gazetteer (1856) mentions the Ice House and Summit Mountain;

2) Coolidge and Mansfield's History and Description of New England (1859) references the Ice House, but doesn't use the name "Summit Mountain." Ditto J. W. Meader's The Merrimack River (1869).

It is entirely possible that Carpenter's ice caves south of N. Woodstock and Charlton et al's that appear to be north of N. Woodstock (i.e., "on the road to Franconia") are one and the same.

And, just to complicate matters further, here's Osgood's entry in the Ticknor's WM guide of the '70s and '80s:

"The Ice Caves are reached from the road that diverges W. about 3/4 M. N. of Woodstock, by a path nearly 1 M. long. They are a series of dark, damp and otherwise uninteresting crevices in a rocky hillside wherein ice is found throught the summer. Near this point, on the N., are the small cascades and pot-holes of Beaver Brook (hardly worth visiting)."

Is this the same place as Carpenter desribes? If Osgood's reference is to the Beaver Brook of the Kinsman Notch, then it's in the Lost River area. But I do not believe that there was a road there from Woodstock this early.

Waumbek said:

That would rule out the Lost River caves, which are east of Woodstock. I don't know how early they were being explored. The AMC was taking trips there by about 1900, others possibly much earlier.

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You need a new compass

My recollection is that Carpenter implies the Lost River discoveries were fairly recent, but I don't own a copy to check

FYI, Elmer Woodbury wrote in the early 1900s that the builders of the first road through Kinsman Notch (1810) probably knew of the existence of the Lost River caves, but Royal Jackman and his son, Lyman, are generally credited with their "discovery" during an 1852 fishing trip in the vicinity of the Notch.

There's also on record a Sept. 1874 trip to the caves by a group of locals and tourists, and in the 1893, Royal Jackman led a party of tourists to Lost River. Woodbury adds that during the 1890s, Jackman and Prof. W. S. C. Russell "made extended explorations in the gorge and wrote several articles for the Boston and New York papers." Woodbury and Carpenter visited the gorge in 1896, and it was on this trip that Carpenter gave names to many of the caves.

One may assume that interest in the Lost River caves would have been on the rise at this point, especially after Carpenter's description of the gorge appeared in the May 1899 edition of Appalachia.

For what its worth, I firmly believe the caves that Sweetser and Carpenter referenced in their respective guides are one and the same, and are not the Lost River caves; the geography just doesn't match.

RoySwkr said:

My recollection is that Carpenter implies the Lost River discoveries were fairly recent, but I don't own a copy to check

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Now you do, courtesy of Google Books.

I'm not sure if this has any relation to the Ice Caves of Summit Mountain, but I have wondered for quite a while about a cave called MBDaTHS which is said to be located in North Woodstock on WMNF land. According to the USA Long Cave List, it is made of granite and is a mile long.

I spoke with a few old North Woodstock natives, one who described taking a tour through this cave (they called it "quarter-mile") with an old guide when they were a child, but could not remember where it was other than somewhere near Mt Wolf, and that it wasn't part of the Lost River system.

Another person told me that rocks had shifted a while back in the cave and it was too dangerous to go into. He said that the entrance was difficult to find and that he wasn't going to tell anyone how to get there.

Not sure if it is a bunch of make-believe, but a google search of MBDaTHS gives just enough info to raise some curiosity, though no hints as to what the letters stand for or to where it is.

(I'm half expecting someone to inform me that this is an acronym for something that stands for "Lost River" and make me feel a bit silly!)

NeoAkela said:

I'm not sure if this has any relation to the Ice Caves of Summit Mountain, but I have wondered for quite a while about a cave called MBDaTHS which is said to be located in North Woodstock on WMNF land. According to the USA Long Cave List, it is made of granite and is a mile long.
...
though no hints as to what the letters stand for or to where it is.

(I'm half expecting someone to inform me that this is an acronym for something that stands for "Lost River" and make me feel a bit silly!)

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I have been there, it's a huge talus cave on the N slope of Kinsman Notch above Lost River. There are maybe hundreds of entrances among the rocks and most of the cave is near daylight although there are some deeper passages and a room maybe the size of a small living room with a register. The original explorers thought it too complex for an accurate survey and a more recent group thought the talus too unstable although I didn't consider it dangerous except for the risk of being permanently lost. Originally there were a number of named caves on the hillside such as Scotts, Barn Door, etc. but as passages were found to connect them the name of the whole system is an acronym of their names.

"Underground New England" by Clay Perry says nothing about the Ice Cave, he is usually good at picking up rumors but short on facts such as treating Franconia and Crawford Notches as one and the same.

It should be easy to find from land records where the farm was and then hike that distance up. A good time to find caves is late fall when the warm air rising from the cave creates fog, but I'd consider a spring trip if anyone is interested.

In doing a little more research today, I found several references to "Walker's Ice Caves" in Woodstock. My source was the "White Mountain Echo and Tourists' Register" from the years 1893-1896. Unfortunately there's no mention of where these caves were or how to get to them. Given the time period, I'd say these were the same caves mentioned by Sweetser and Carpenter.

There were also several brief accounts of visits to Lost River that I quickly browsed. It is obvious from these reports that the gorge was just then really being discovered and explored by visiting tourists.

Several years back I wrote up a brief history of Lost River for the Forest Society and I know I had a fair amount of detail in this piece. Unfortunately I cannot put my hands on it right now. Verrrrry frustrating.

The "Natural Ice Cellar"

I believe that I have found the location of the Sweetser-Carpenter "ice cave" on an 1892 map (Hurd Atlas) of Woodstock and N. Woodstock. It's south of N. Woodstock on the current NH 3. Specifically, on the current 3 approximately 2.5-3 miles south of the center of N. Woodstock (i.e., where the Deer Park Hotel was near the junction of the current NH 112 and NH 3) and about .5 mile south of where Beaver Brook (with its cascade) crosses NH 3, the "Natural Ice-Cellar" is listed. Said Ice-Cellar is about .5 miles north of the Woodstock P. O. of 1892, also on NH 3; this P. O. sits at the junction of 3 and a road that ran southwest towards Elbow Pond, but did not reach it. (I don't know if that road still exists.) The Ice-Cellar is on the west side of NH 3, almost directly across the road from "S. Sawyer," who I assume is the Sylvester Sawyer who ran the boarding house, Fern Hill Farm. The 1892 map does not suggest that the Ice-Cellar is as much as a mile from the current NH 3, as Osgood-Ticknor does, or even as far as Sweetser-Carpenter suggests the ice cave is, but the Ice Cellar and Ice Cave are surely the same place. (The map is not scientifically drawn.) There is no indication of a "Summit Mountain" or "Ice House" at this location.

Sweetser-Carpenter is noticeably underwhelmed by this tourist destination. I'll wager a guess that Sawyer promoted it as an attraction for the guests at his boarding house. Ice caves, natural ice cellars, and such were of considerable interest in the late 19th c.--this was the era of artificial ice-houses, of course--and Sawyer may have jumped on the bandwagon even if his attraction was small, grimy, full of hedge hogs and, by Carpenter's time, deemed not worth visiting. (Lost River was a much better destination if one had to be selective about sight-seeing in Woodstock.)

JCE, this does not answer your question about where Charlton's Summit Mountain is, unfortunately, but I believe it does rule out Sweetser-Carpenter's cave south of N. Woodstock. I'd still be looking for Summit Mountain north of N. Woodstock "on the road to Franconia." The 1892 map lists nothing there, however.

The 1892 map shows another tourist attraction, "Walkers Mineral," the spring that Carpenter mentions, further south on NH 3, about 2 miles below the 1892 Woodstock P.O. If Walker's mineral spring is near the "Walker's Ice Caves" mentioned by 4Khiker, these caves are about 2.5 miles south of the Carpenter-Sweetser's Ice Caves/Ice-Cellar, i.e., not the same. But Walker's ices caves may be further north. The 1892 map does not, however, include them by that name.

Long known as the Franconia gateway, Woodstock/N. Woodstock was clearly working to create its own identity, its own brand of tourist attractions, during this period.

The 1892 map (Hurd Atlas) is here if you can find a way to enlarge it:

http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache...odstock+nh+1892+map&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us

Waumbek said:

The 1892 map (Hurd Atlas) is here if you can find a way to enlarge it:

http://74.125.45.132/search?q=cache...odstock+nh+1892+map&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=13&gl=us

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The actual map file is at http://docs.unh.edu/Hurd/images/GraftonCounty/Franconia.jpg.

Your link displays the map at full scale on my browser--enlarging it 2X helps some, but it gets worse at 3X. The smaller text is still mostly illegible.

Doug