The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 260

20 NH THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE JULY 26, 1992 Only memories remain of a community called Johnson FT 4. A. fr i JOHNSON Continued from Page NH 1 "We lived up in the Elbow Pond area on a Johnson logging job," Chase said. "My father, mother and three small boys in the winter of 1912. I'm probably the only man living that ever rode that railroad." His father, Chase said, was a big man about 6 feet 4 inches and more than 200 pounds, "in working condition, no surplus fat" and well known in the area.

"He was a lumberjack most of his life," Chase said. "Without a doubt the best lumberjack in the valley. He was the strongest in the valley I don't think he was a fighting man -but in what he could lift and how hard he could work. He could cut more than anybody. He was just a good, strong worker.

He could get a job anywhere. He knew how to lumber." Railroad lines and steam engines helped open up the New Hampshire woods to loggers, who even then faced protestors and had people calling them wood butchers for their clear-cutting of the land. i Francis Belcher, former executive director of the Appalachian Mountain Club, writes about the logging communities in his book, "Logging Railroads of the White Before the railroads came in, it was too difficult to get the lumber to market. The river log drives that made lumbering go in Maine and on the Androscoggin and Connecticut rivers, weren't feasible south of Mount Washington. "Originally they tried floating logs down the river to Lowell," Belcher said.

"But the rivers don't get enbugh water. They were just too bony." Then came the railroads. Johnson, which lasted only about a decade, was short-lived. Liver-more, at the base of Crawford Notch, was the longest lasting and a bit different "Livermore was a community of its own, an official community," Belcher said recently from his home in Randolph. "It started as a logging operation in 1876 and finally ended up in the 1940s, and the New Hampshire Legislature said goodbye to it in 1951." Livermore's population went from 160 in 1890 to 64 in 1910 and four in 1940 before the state revoked its incorporation.

Lincoln itself became a mill town when James Everell Henry moved his crew down from the Zealand section of Carroll where the Zealand Falls Campground is now shortly woods boss, "Billy the Bear" Boyle. "If they were in town after that they had to pay the poll tax. The last day in March they hit the trains and headed for Canada. That $1 per head tax was more than they could bear." The Johnson details and dates are sketchy. The Gordon Pond Railroad that serviced Johnson's business ran 1907-1916, according to Belcher.

By then Johnson, having cleaned the area of softwood for his mill, had moved on. "He was after building lumber," Clark said. "Spruce. The saying was 'Johnson was hell on He took every spruce tree that showed its face and was of sawable size." Johnson, the community, soon withered. Meanwhile, the population of Lincoln which is not named for the president leveled off and stayed in the range until 1950.

"Just enough to keep the mill going in three shifts," said Oran Hudson. Hudson, a barber for 45 years, moved to Lincoln in 1920 and is now 98. The Johnson schoolhouse was moved south in the early '20s and Clark lives in it, directly across from the trading post that has been in his family since the '20s and where he has been doing live bear shows for more than 40 years. Some of the other Johnson buildings were moved to Woodstock, but most have been redone through the years. Even the old cellar holes that for years remained off Bog Road have been filled in.

Up Route 112 toward Warren and across from the Lost River Valley Campground, there is a pond that was used by another mill. And an abandoned railroad bed runs from that area back toward what was Johnson. The Johnson Mill Pond, were it still dammed up on Bog Brook, would likely flood the area that now is the Beacon Motel on Route 3. There are footings from the old mill on his property, said Ray O'Rourke. And, he said, there are some "deadmen" not the bodies of those who fell to this treacherous business, but boulders with eye bolts that held cable and were used to help load and unload trains.

They are the only small signs in an area dominated by automobiles, restaurants, motels and attractions such as the Indian Head Resort and Whale's Tale Water Park and Fantasy Farm of the small community that lay claim to this spot nearly a century ago. 'J 'V GLOBE STAFF PHOTO MARK WILSON Eighty-two-year-old Howard Chase (left) and Oran Hudson, 98, hold an old postcard showing Main Street in the community of Johnson. before the turn of the century. The population of Lincoln, including Johnson, and with Henry-related influx, grew from 65 in 1880 to 110 in 1890. By 1900 it was 541 and 1910 1,278, according to figures from the Office of State Planning.

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