Detective Work Returns Historic Milepost to the Rail Trail

Ed Hiller (right) helps a volunteer FNRT work crew return a "lost" milepost to its original position alongside the Northern Rail Trail in Lebanon. Photo: Larry Chase — Ed Hiller (right) helps a volunteer FNRT work crew return a “lost” milepost to its original position alongside the Northern Rail Trail in Lebanon. Photo: Larry Chase

Once gone missing but now recovered, re-positioned, and restored, a 1,500-pound granite mileage marker stands again beside the Northern Rail Trail in Lebanon, where it informs trail users (and in another day, railroad crews) of the distances from its location to White River Junction to the north and Boston to the south.

It’s one of 69 mileposts that once lined the rail bed between Concord and White River Junction. Of that number, only 30 remain in place.

But the number continues to grow, thanks to a collaboration between the Friends of the Northern Rail Trail (FNRT) groups in Merrimack and Grafton counties. It’s just one part of a decade-long trail-building and maintenance effort that will create (after a final 2.4-mile stretch to be finished this August) a 58-mile, year-round public hiking, biking and snowmobiling facility stretching from Boscawen to Lebanon. It’s New Hampshire’s longest rail trail.

The Lebanon milepost had been located in another part of town, where it displayed the street number of the home of Guy and Dorothy Plume. When advised of its historical significance, the Plumes generously donated it to the FNRT groups. In gratitude, FNRT provided them with a modern granite post.

Movement of the marker to its new location over five miles away was a three-hour project arranged by Dick Mackay of Hanover, chair of the Grafton County FNRT and carried out by a work crew and equipment donated by the D. R. Key Corporation of Lebanon.

Locating the milepost and restoring its graphics to the original specifications and dimensions were the work of Ed Hiller of Andover, a member of FNRT in Merrimack County, using historical information supplied by the Boston and Maine Historical Society in Lowell, Massachusetts. (This marked Ed’s 24th milepost restoration.) His was a three-day, six-hour project, not including travel to and from the site.

With the restoration of the marker to its original position, the 58-mile rail trail between Boscawen and Lebanon now lacks 27 mileposts. The New Hampshire Department of Transportation is providing 14 similar mileposts, reclaimed from other rail beds. The FNRT groups are working out the details to bring them to the Lebanon area for restoration and replanting along the Northern Rail Trail in Grafton County.

The two FNRT groups are eager to learn the location of additional markers that might be in use today for other purposes or have simply been moved, misplaced, and forgotten. The markers are eight feet tall, about one foot square in cross-section, and have two smooth 24-inch faces at the top where the numbers were painted.

Persons having information about the missing markers should contact Dick Mackay at 643-2758. “We don’t care where they are or how they got there,” says Dick. “For historical accuracy, we’d just like to have them back and doing the job they were created for. ” The FNRT groups will offer a substitute granite post in return, he said.