DOC cabin on Titus Brook ( Benton Range)?

[Jason Berard]

I found this map while doing some research on a Benton range trip coming up, and I know we have some Dartmouth alums on this forum. Does anyone know anything about this cabin, or where I could find out? I know its not a current cabin....

thanks!

 

[Waumbek]

This is a favorite area of mine so I spent a little time digging out some history. It's complicated, and I'm not sure I have all the details sorted out correctly yet but here's the gist of it. This part of the Benton Range was a logging area with a number of camps and forest roads, including the North-South Road, which the CCC completely rebuilt in the early 1930s along with the dam on Long Pond.

The USFS Long Pond Tr per se also dates from the early 1930s. It initially ran W from Long Pond (near the current dam) past a ruined logging camp at 1 m. and ended at the Black Mountain Tr at 2.1 m. There it joined DOC's trail to Black Mountain, which then joined what was called the Southwest Tr at the logging camps. DOC's Black Mountain Cabin was near the former junction on what was then its trail. DOC abandoned its trail and, presumably, cabin by 1940. The Long Pond Tr was formally abandoned sometime around 1955.

(P.S. Not a Dartmouth alum, just a local yokel who loves the Benton Range.)

 

[spencer]

Other than that it's long gone, I didn't know the answer so I looked it up in our bible, Reaching that Peak: 75 Years of the Dartmouth Outing Club (Hooke 1987).

In 1930, the DOC acquired the Black Mountain Cabin from the USFS. It was .7 miles from the Black summit and was already in very bad condition when the DOC got it, including "huge holes in the walls and a brook running beneath the floor." The DOC was hoping to garner more interest in the Benton range with this cabin and the Blueberry Mountain and Tunnel Ravine shelters.

The cabin was abandoned by the DOC in 1935 after much abuse by "tramps" and general bad condition. I could tell you about the next cabin in history, but then I'd have to kill you, as the spies say...

Thanks again, Hooke.

Spencer

 

[Jason Berard]

Thanks, guys!
I just picked up a copy of David's book from Amazon.
I met him at the dedication of the new Velvet Rocks shelter last fall......

I was wondering today why DOC didn't have a stronger presence in the Benton Range....but from what you say, Spencer, they tried, and it just didn't work out?

I'm hoping to do Blueberry/Jeffers/Hogsback as a loop from Page Rd. on Tuesday with a bushwack back to the trailhead to finish to day......

 

[Waumbek]

I was wondering today why DOC didn't have a stronger presence in the Benton Range......

The Benton range has been resisting colonizing efforts (cabins and such) for some time now. The earliest trips reports from the 1870s and 1880s sang its praises loudly and tried to interest hikers. Frank Carpenter 'whacked it in the late 1870s and wrote glowing reports; Henry Spalding soon after likened Black Mountain to Chocorua to familiarize it to the public and guessed the mountain would soon receive a more romantic, poetic name (like Chocorua). These efforts didn't take, and in a way it's fitting that the Bentons haven't been trampled to death. The original purchase of 7,000 acres via the Weeks Act in 1911 was in the Benton area, so it's really the heart or epicenter of the WMNF and appropriately left a bit on the wild(er) side.

 

[Jason Berard]

cool. thanks waumbek!

 

[RoySwkr]

DOC abandoned its trail and, presumably, cabin by 1940. The Long Pond Tr was formally abandoned sometime around 1955.

The Black Mtn Trail from N-S Road to the summit had a WMNF sign in the '70s when I hiked it although the S part had turned into a logging road. The trail to the col up Titus Brook still existed too. I didn't know about or look for the cabin ruins or trail to Long Pond.