Portsmouth New Hampshire

On our way to Portsmouth we stopped to visit the Lowell National Historic Park in Lowell Massachusetts. In the early 1800’s Lowell was identified as an attractive industrial city for much the same reasons the DuPont’s selected the Brandywine Valley – water power for factories. In 1803, progressive industrial leaders had already completed the Middlesex Canal, linking the abundant water supplies of both the Merrimack and Charles Rivers to fuel the industrial development and provide necessary transportation within the city. By the end of the century, Lowell had established itself as the textile mill for the Nation, almost completely eliminating textile imports from English textile mills.

Lowell was at the apex of a number of movements in the US society, and the NPS has done a great job of touching on all of those movements. The sad news is that by the early 1960’s, off shoring of textile manufacturing wiped out the economy in Lowell and the last factory closed. The good news is that the buildings and infrastructure was still in place and some of it frozen in time for all to explore. The movements - the dawn of the modern industrial era in the US as well as the model for the manufacturing management systems still in use today – because men were deemed as needed in other endeavors, the Lowell factories provided some of the earliest full time job opportunities for women, with factory owners actually setting up company housing for the throngs of young women flocking to Lowell – eventually as Lowell’s success resulted in more textile mills, resulting in more supply, resulting in decreasing prices due to competition, pressures on employment resulted, with greater demands for production, longer work hours, and cuts in pay. Ultimately, all these pressures were at least part of the spawning of the labor movement, the Union movement, and the demonizing of corporate America.

We toured one of the many textile mills, that still looked like it did at the turn of the century – all the equipment still in place, running off a central belt drive just like the DuPont facilities – originally, at least, powered by water only. We got to visit one of the worker housing units refurbished as it looked at the turn of the century. We strolled along the many canals that provided both the water power and industrial transportation back in the day, and grabbed a nice lunch at an outdoor patio cafe. All in all, it was a look into the early industrialization of the US put together in a way really allowed you to feel like you were there at the time.

After Lowell, we rolled onto our next destination.Incorporated in 1653, Portsmouth in its heyday was a gem – even bigger than Boston. On the mouth of the Piscataqua River, it had direct access to the Atlantic shipping trade, but was a well-protected harbor. Its unique and advantageous location made it ideal for the first federal shipyard, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, established in 1800.

Our primary destination was Strawberry Banke Historic District. When Portsmouth was first settled, it was called Strawberry Banke, named for all the wild strawberries growing in the area. In the early days, directly behind the long docks where the tall ships would come into port and offload their cargo, there was a small narrow waterway known as Puddle Dock – deep enough at most times for barge traffic but not deep enough for sailing vessels. The Puddle Dock neighborhood is the earliest in New Hampshire settled by Europeans – ship captains and wealthy merchants built their homes along the waterway as they then had direct access to the shipping docks, and could easily transport goods and valuables between their homes/businesses and the shipping piers.

After Portsmouth shipping was no longer the dominant business in the late 1800’s, the area fell into economic blight. The beautiful old homes were converted into tenant housing and the area became more or less a slum. Around 1900, the city decided to eliminate the waterway and hauled in massive amounts of fill. Because the area was really not deemed as valuable enough for development, the homes here were never demolished to make way for progress, and most still stood when the city decided to renovate the Puddle Dock neighborhood and create the Historic District.

We toured the homes of sea captains and wealth merchants from the 1700’s. All the homes in the neighborhood are pre-revolutionary, with one dating back to 1695, the oldest in the Puddle Dock neighborhood. About half the homes were furnished with some actual furnishings owned by the original families and with period pieces where original furnishings were just not available. The other half of the homes were either restored by unfurnished so you could see what the impact of the early 1700’s architecture looked like, or on display in a pre-restoration state with some openings in the floors, walls and ceilings so you could see exactly how they were originally constructed. Local historic experts or docents in period costume were in nearly every building to either provide details or give you a flavor of what it would have been like to be here when it was an English colony.

Our last home visited was that of one of the leading merchants. The historian there had a period map of the neighborhood, and was able to give us an excellent perspective. While now the back of the merchant’s home is on a large grassy common area, in the 1700’s it was on Puddle Dock with a small pier off the back where he tied up his barges. He pointed out where the tall ships would dock – maybe a couple blocks away. We could see all the homes that surrounded this grassy common area and realized that was the waterway the city had filled around 1900 – before the revolution, homes surrounded the waterway the way they now surround the grassy common.

We walked up the street to the John Paul Jones Home. Captain John Paul Jones – the “I have not yet begun to fight” guy, didn’t own the home, but he lived here for a couple of years to supervise the building of the Ranger – the war ship he was to captain. The home was built in 1754, and while not his, contained a number of artifacts used by the famous captain. We also learned a great deal about John Paul Jones that we didn’t know – he was of Scottish birth, he was often crosswise with the political leaders of the time, but his naval success in attacking the British earned him acclaim and the nickname “Father of the American Navy”.

As in other places on the coast we have been lately, although our destination is in New Hampshire, Colectiva is actually sitting in Maine – York Harbor Maine to be exact. This is a great town with a gorgeous coastline – a large dramatic crescent on the Atlantic, flat sand in the middle sandwiched on both sides by dramatic dark glacial boulders – really pretty. The beach turned out to be dog friendly, so the Woman, the pooch and I got in three last beach walks which would have to hold us for a while until we can get back to an ocean again.

We managed three more small victories before we started our move inland to catch the fall colors – we are actually quite pleased with the splashes of color we see from time to time already, although the locals tell us it won’t be peak colors here on the coast until the end of October:

·         We headed out to Nubbles Lighthouse. On Nubbles Point just out from the town of York Harbor, it is a small lighthouse still in operation. We thought it was on the mainland because it looked that way from town, but when we got there we learned it was on a small island. We found Bob’s Lobster House, with huge plate glass windows looking out on the lighthouse and the cove, and enjoyed ourselves with a glass of vino and playing some Zar as we soaked in the view.

·         About a block from Colectiva was Lobster Cove – a restaurant specializing in lobster that advertised a $15 lobster dinner – I like the tail, but not all the other stuff, so I wasn’t thinking I was up to paying $35 for a Maine lobster dinner, but at this price? The views were nearly as good as at Bob’s, and the lobster was outstanding – it even came with a gorgeous ear of fresh corn on the cob, and a baked potato which the Woman scarfed. What a deal!

·         And since we were only about 20 miles away, we scooted up to Kennebunkport before we left. The town is cute and we walked around a bit – very busy – saw at least 4 tour buses parked. If you drive way down to the end of Ocean Avenue out to Walker Point, there is a small pull off were you get a bird’s eye view of the Bush family compound. We didn’t happen to see any of the Bush family roaming around the grounds, but it was fun to see nonetheless.

Talk to you soon!