A Sunday Drive

Saturday's shenanigans up in Lincoln suggested sleeping in, but Alicia had to get up for work so I ended up with a reasonably early start. Seal was still cranked pretty far up when I started the engine so I took the opportunity to blast the practically perfect pop song en route to the gym; we were off to a good start. 100 free throws and some upper-body lifts later, the sun had come out and I had my sights set on the beach.

I cut across Somersworth noting the great road names (Cecile St, Rita St, the ridiculous Congress St / Alicia St 4-way) and wondering how Indigo Hill got its name and why Old Indigo Hill Rd is so far south of the current model. Cruised past the recently-visited Somersworth Riverwalk (a few pretty spots, but short) and the wastewater treatment plant and into Maine. I had a hair to try traversing Love Brook Rd from its NW end, with the four-sign intersection at its endpoint and the ridiculous Berwick Rd / Town Rd setup as additional attractions, but worried about mud. Not remembering which side of New Dam Road all of this was on, I left things to fate by turning right and was in downtown South Berwick before I knew it.

Well, it had two years since my last visit to Dennett Rd, I was curious to see what (if any) memorial was up for Camden Hughes, and it seemed like enough time had passed since the tragedy. Scooting up Rt 4, I was thrilled to see a new sign for a business with Lovers Brook in its name, although I didn't catch the full sign text. In my view, if you've got a chance to connect to a name like that, you gotta take it, although Alicia believes the name to actually be rather mundane.

(As an aside, the name of the brook and the dirt road that crosses it seem to be out of sync; I suspect that the -rs ending is correct. Google Maps is off-base and lame with "Old Blackberry Hill Rd".) The brook isn't very impressive as it crosses under the railroad tracks and Route 4, but it gets a bit more formidable before flowing into the Great Works.

Anyway, Dennett Rd came soon. It has an awkward reverse-curve (or something) relationship with Route 4. Dad has told me that it's probably part of a former alignment of Route 4 that was replaced with a smoother-curving version. My Delorme Atlas shows the other half of the old alignment as a road as well, and a North Berwick tax map actually gives it a name - Allen Rd.

Note that the unlabeled portion of the loop is the beginning of Dennett Rd. You can see a hint of the power line / gas line Right of Way - yes, the same one as three posts ago - and I left my car there in front of these signs.

I took it as evidence that this area was also seeing an unusual amount of activity in conjunction with the Power Reliability Program.

First, I walked up the pipeline / power line right of way in search of indications that a train (the PS&P) once ran through there. There was passage over a nearby brook (later confirmed to be Hussey Brook) but it was too huge and grass-grown to be called a bridge - maybe the brook ran through a culvert?

There were a fairly long row of stones like this one in a row on one side. I don't know what they were for. To define the edge of a bridge, maybe - there was a marginal drop-off behind them but I didn't sense that they were on an edge. Fearing ticks (I forgot to bring anything but my gym shorts and swimsuit), I didn't venture far into the tall grass of the ROW.

Back at the car, I exchanged expressionless glances with a guy on a scooter and looked for signs of the other half of the old alignment. There wasn't much resembling a road, but a short, narrow path led to this.

That's today's Route 4 in the background of the second picture.

In my unprofessional opinion, the pile of wreckage didn't seem like it could have once been a bridge on the main drag, the Portland Road. But, I don't have any ideas on what else it could have been. Interesting, the Google Maps Satellite view shows something that looks like a still-standing bridge.

Sorry about the inconsistency of image sizes; at least they now link to larger-sized images, at least.

Later, back at the homestead, I was searching for ways to confirm that the "Allen Rd" / Dennett Rd combination was in fact an old Rt 4 alignment. Fortunately, the 1941 map of Wells that was a "you'll be leaving here soon" Christmas present several years ago also showed this corner of North / South Berwick.

Route 4 is labeled. Near the "B.M." intersection in the lower left, it intersects with Dennett Rd and almost the PS&P! It's labeled B&M since Eastern had long since gone belly-up and the B&M had taken over the line. We see that the old alignment did track today's "Allen Rd" and end of Dennett Rd, that the gas line right of way continued to follow the old PS&P alignment this far, and that Dennett Rd really does chop off a lot of distance if you're headed to the Wells / Ogunquit area. Too bad it's a dirt track and barely passable for much of its length today.

Also, the dashed line that runs between Rt 4 and Dennett Rd is shown on the North Berwick map as Gould's Bridge Rd (Rt 4 end) and Company Woods Rd (Dennett Rd end). Google Maps does not show a bridge over the Great Works River on Gould's Bridge Rd, but the name is an obvious suggestion that there once was one. Something for another day. After crossing Dennett Rd, the dashed line on the full map goes all the way to Thurrell Rd but today it just runs to a few houses before disappearing completely.

Anyway, I left the car and hoofed it up the road a ways. I reached my planned turn-around point of the Company Woods Rd 4-way and thought there was nothing to see before noticing the memorial site off to one side.

A baffling, sad incident, to be sure, that provoked some interesting reactions.

The walk back went by faster, despite having to studiously avoid eye contact with more drivers than I would have liked, and I headed for Ogunquit. North Berwick, like South Berwick, wound up with main roads a short distance away from where its railroads intersected but unlike South Berwick, its "downtown" was built around the railroads. Today, now that there is no railroad station, the town suffers from the lack of a clearly identifiable downtown. The Main St area by the train tracks has more of a "downtown" feel, but is on neither of the town's two state highways and is not on the road to anything except Ogunquit.

Just over the modern B&M tracks, I saw a sign for Eastern Ave - highly suspicious! I swerved down it but didn't get too far before it was gated. Looks like there's a wastewater treatment plant beyond the gate. The map confirmed my suspicions - Eastern Ave runs on the former route of the Eastern Railroad!

That's it for points of interest, but it was a nice rest of the day. I learned via mom she was bringing my grandmother (90 years old) up from Mass. for her annual two months in that side of the family's old family summer house in Ogunquit. The house has been falling apart for years, but it withstood another winter and through August will house my grandmother and three European summer workers, including one we've known for several years.

I spread newspaper under the bird cage and fiddled with the ancient radio until it was once again blasting WBach - the birds love it and my grandmother doesn't like to wear her hearing aid. Later, Mom and I walked the Marginal Way and it was like one of those movie scenes where they quickly pan from some deserted scene to a crowded city street. Tourist season...well, it's not all that bad, really, at least for one day. A trip to Newington for groceries and softball gear and the Spaulding over The Bridge completed the loop back to Dover.