A bridge through history

October 15, 2007 in Art, Geology, Places, Travel | 4 comments

Took a day trip up through Southern New Hampshire, along Highway 130 from Nashua to Brookline, through the town of Hollis. Picked some apples there at the excellent Linn Farm, then checked out a covered bridge in Brookline (that’s New Hampshire, not Massachusetts) that we’d read about the bridge in the morning’s Boston Globe. Later we found out that the bridge had been built in 2001 on the site (and the concrete supports) of the old FBrookline & Milford Railroad or the Fitchburg Railroad Line, and that it is now part of the Granite Town Rail Trail. The site is just south Potanipo Lake where once stood the largest ice house in New England, the Fresh Pond Ice Cream Company, which once employed up to two hundred people — a population that perhaps exceeds that of the present Brookline itself. Ice would be cut there and shipped to Boston in the days before refrigeration. I suspect that the Ice Cream name derives from one of the purposes to which the ice could be put.

4 comments

  1. Geoff’s avatar

    Geoff on October 15, 2007 at 6:46 am

    You might be interested in reading this – The frozen-water trade : a true story
    by Gavin Weightman – lots of interesting stuff on the ice trade.

  2. Greg’s avatar

    Greg on October 15, 2007 at 9:07 am

    Suprised to still see so much green that far north.

  3. Russell Nelson’s avatar

    Russell Nelson on October 16, 2007 at 1:18 am

    I plan to ride the Minuteman Rail Trail one of these years. Maybe this one! You want me to ping you when I go so we could ride it together? Iz used to live right next to it, but she moved south by 20 minutes.

  4. Doc Searls’s avatar

    Doc Searls on October 16, 2007 at 6:36 am

    Love to ride that trail. Goes right in front of our house, and behind the kid’s school. Need to get a bike first, though. Hope to soon.

Comments are now closed.