Back 80 Cellar Hole Traditional Geocache
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
(regular)
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A modest hike to the Back 80 trail brings you to this interesting feature
This cache was initially placed in 2008 by faculty of the Lurgio Middle School for use as part of the academic curriculum during the annual 8th grade Cardigan trip. The log indicates that several other schools and families have discovered the cache. This listing makes it official. Enjoy.
Donald Hall's poem "New Hampshire" begins with these lines:
"A bear sleeps in the cellar hole, where pine needles heap over the granite doorstep. ......... "
The defeat of the French and Algonquin tribes by the British signaled the end of the French and Indian war, and a rapid expansion of British colonial settlements up the Connecticut and Merrimack rivers soon followed. This area was first settled in 1769. Log homes were built, the land was cleared by ax for agricultural fields and pastures. Rocks were removed from fields to make stone walls and foundations. These farms were self sufficient, and life was hard work from dawn until sunset.
Between 1810 and 1840 most of the forest had been cleared (by some estimates as much as 75% of the landscape was open agricultural land), and the majority of the region’s stone walls were built to keep sheep in their pastures. But this was short-lived; by 1840 the area was being abandoned due to overgrazing, erosion and migration West.
Today, some 200 years later, the pastures have been reclaimed by the forest. Cellar holes are a reminder of the families who worked, farmed, thrived, and struggled here. Their stone walls, wells, and foundations offer a glimpse into a fascinating past and a dramatically changed landscape.
For a brief podcast on the construction of New England stone walls, read or listen to this episode of NHPR’s “Something Wild” (visit link)
Sources:
New Hampshire Dept Natural Resources
Gazetteer of Grafton County, N.H., 1709-1886 by Hamilton Child,
Syracuse, N.Y.: H. Child, June 1886
Reading the Forested Landscape, by Tom Wessels. The Countryman Press, Woodstock, VT 1997
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Puvzarl