One of the things that makes Odiorne Point such a nifty place to walk around is that I know rather a lot about the park’s history. Although it is today the only stretch of undeveloped coastline in New Hampshire, it has a long history of human use and development. This is not the “untouched forests” sort of undeveloped.
For those who like to see spatial relationships of locations, follow along on the park map
This is the Odiorne family farmhouse. (On the map, it’s the cluster of buildings on the marsh side of Rt 1A (which is Ocean Boulevard).) John Odiorne settled land out here in 1632. (That year is being pulled from memory, and may be off by a bit. It was the early-mid-1600s, though.) This is the third house to stand on that site, and most of the outbuildings are long gone. There’s a barn with a (rapidly disappearing) greenhouse attached. The most recent inhabitant was Ralph Brown, who lived there after World War 2, and left the house to the state. The house and its land is now part of the park, and NH Parks has an office there.
From the house, if you cut perpendicular to the road, towards the shore, you find this spot. The monument was placed where (the former) Columbus Road meets the water, and honors the first settlement in NH, which was right around here. In 1620, David Thomson anchored the Jonathon in Little Harbor (just north of Odiorne Point), and built a “Great House”. The Odiorne family tradition is that the Great House site is directly across from the farmhouse - a location that was used as a gravel pit when Ocean Boulevard was built through this area, making any sort of archaeological excavation impossible.
Standing at the monument (which was originally placed at the end of Columbus Road in 1890-something (99?), then moved to the family cemetery behind the Odiorne farmhouse, then moved back to its current location just this spring - all of the landscaping around it is new as well) and looking down Columbus Road, which was lined with stone walls and trees. (For those looking at the map, Columbus Road is the path closest to the pond, connecting Ocean Boulevard with the shore.) Columbus Road was built in the mid to late 1800s, when spending summers at the seashore was becoming fashionable, and so people wanted easier access to the water here in northern Rye.
Also from the era of summers at the seashore, the Hotel Wentworth. These days, it’s operated by Mariott and called the Wentworth-by-the-Sea. Built in the 1870s or so, it was closed and more-or-less abandoned in the 1980s, and was restored and re-opened in 2003. It’s not actually in Odiorne, but is just north of the park, on the other side of Little Harbor.
There was a hotel of the same style, slightly smaller, built at the northern tip of Odiorne Point, called Sagamore House. It only operated for two seasons before burning to the ground, and was never rebuilt.
The thing I have the hardest time with is remembering that, although today Odiorne Point is almost all young forest, 100 years ago it was cleared. First for farming, then as fancy homes and lawns. Even 50 years ago, it was mostly cleared. For this reason, there’s a lot of quick-growing staghorn sumac at Odiorne. This plant is a “weed tree”, one of the first species to move in as cleared land returns to forest. It’s harmless (there is a poison sumac, but this is not it) and the branches have this fabulous fuzzy texture. (Thus the name.)
Later: The twentieth century, and how this land transitioned from private property to state park.
