Step Back in Time in Sandwich Notch

You'll find Sandwich Notch a fascinating place to explore in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, an area where you can recapture the aura of the Granite State’s early days. As you wander along the hilly, winding dirt road through the notch connecting the regions around the villages of Sandwich and Waterville Valley, you seem far from civilization and can glimpse the unspoiled natural beauty of the state.

You can hike part of the way and take other trails branching off this road. Or if you’re more adventuresome, place cars at each end of Sandwich Notch Road and walk the full length…approximately nine miles.

Two books you might want to read before you travel this mountain road are “The Road Through Sandwich Notch” by Elizabeth Yates (relating her hike along this route and her explanation of its history) and the “Appalachian Mountain Club White Mountain Guide” with hiking guidelines and a bit of the road’s background.

Road Once Heavily Traveled

Although Sandwich Notch now seems isolated (there is only one old house left standing at the western end of the road), it once was a busy place. More than 300 families lived along its length in the early and middle 1800s. A thriving settlement existed, and the heavily traveled road (for those days) was maintained.

Sandwich Notch Road once was an important commercial roadway over which carts and wagons passed in summer (once “mud season” was over) and sleds in winter. During this era, farmers in northern New Hampshire and Vermont brought their produce across the mountain road to markets in the coastal cities of Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Portland, Maine.

Settled in the 1700s

The town of Sandwich was settled in 1765. By 1795 the pioneers had established a widely used cart track through the Notch. Eventually a tax of two cents an acre on all town of Sandwich lands was levied to pay for construction of a road across the Notch to the township of Thornton, near Waterville Valley.

Then settlement of the Notch began in earnest. Land was cleared and eventually 30 to 40 homes built. Three schools, a sawmill, gristmill, and tavern were erected. A minister held church services at Pulpit Rock or in his house.

The farms were fertile in this area and gardens produced well. Cattle and sheep grazed in the pastures. The land along the road wasn’t a forest, as it is today, but cleared and open, crisscrossed by stone walls, the remnants of which you see today.

Over this road, farmers drove cattle from the hill country to the seacoast markets, creating a sight bringing children to the roadside to view the event. Farmers, who needed money for goods other than what they grew on their farms, drove their ox carts across the Notch road as they brought their goods to market.

Settlers Left the Notch

By the mid-1850s, the climax of life in the Notch was reached. Population began declining after the Civil War as the young people looked elsewhere to earn a living in the mills of Massachusetts and on the lands of the Mid-West.

As the remaining settlers grew older, they began to cut down on the amount of land they farmed. Gradually the forest encroached upon the farms. The schools were no longer needed, and the saw mills and taverns ceased to exist.

One House Remains

Only one house remains from those built many years ago. The original structure went up in 1826; this later became the wood shed of the larger house erected by Alpheus Munsey Hall in 1877. Moses Hall lived there for most of his 84 years before his death in 1930.

Take time to explore the Sandwich Notch Road and the adjoining hiking trails. Discover the enchantment of the White Mountains and their history. Other abandoned “ghost” settlements can be found in these mountains as well.

©Mary Emma Allen