Denmark Mountain Hikers

Denmark Mountain Hikers

Our next hike on October 10 is to Zealand Falls. Here is Allen’s writeup for our last visit to Zealand in October of 2023

= Moderate – Zealand Falls (2,700 ft.), Zealand Notch, NH – 5.6 mile RT, 650 ft. elevation gain, RT hiking 3.5 hrs. RT driving 3.0 hrs.

The name “Zealand”

The area was initially called “New Zealand” on Henry Francis Walling’s Map of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. However Charles H. Hitchcock’s 1878 Geologic map of New Hampshire and Environs called it simply “Zealand” and by 1890 the “New” had pretty much disappeared from common usage. The name “Zealand” is the Anglicized form of the Danish place name “ Sjælland”, the largest island in Denmark, where Copenhagen is located. “Zeeland” was also originally an area of the Netherlands.

Logging and Fires in Zealand Notch

The Zealand Notch area was not always as spectacular as it is now. According to C. Francis Belcher’s Logging Railroads of the White Mountains and Bill Gove’s J. E. Henry’s Logging Railroads, logging began in the Zealand Valley in 1881. The logging town of Zealand was created out of the wilderness near the confluence of the Zealand River and the Ammonoosuc River, where Zealand Road meets Route 302 today. In addition to the logging town, Henry had six logging camps spread along the valley, employing 250 loggers each winter. In 1884 the Zealand Valley Railroad began hauling logs from the 10,000-acre forest holdings of J. E. Henry. Eventually the railroad extended 11 miles into the Zealand Notch area.

Henry began logging the spruce in a selective manner, cutting only the larger trees and leaving the remainder. Most logging in the day was done by clear cutting, and after a large fire in the summer of 1886 that burned a large amount of standing timber, Henry changed from selective cutting to clear cutting. Clear cutting created huge amounts of downed tree tops and limbs, a tinderbox of fuel just waiting for a spark. The wood-fueled logging railroad locomotives spewed sparks from their stacks, and probably caused the 1886 fire, and many other, smaller ones. By the early 1890s most of the easily reached commercial timber in the Zealand Valley had been cut and removed, and in 1892 Henry moved his logging operations to Lincoln. Another fire in 1897 destroyed the Zealand saw mill and several buildings in the town, and by 1900 the area had been denuded of commercial trees. In 1903 a major forest fire swept the area, and logging was finished in the valley. Not too long thereafter, the land was purchased by the US Government and became part of the White Mountain National Forest.

Zealand Notch Today

Since then the burn scars have healed and the forest has regrown, creating a wonderful place to hike and enjoy nature. The hike to the falls is 2.8 miles and most of it is fairly flat, following an old railroad bed through groves of mature spruce and past beaver ponds framed with red and orange leaves. There is only one steep spot at the end of the trail as it climbs up the slope beside the falls to the Zealand Falls AMC Hut, and that is only about 0.2 miles long.

Whitewall Brook gushes down the smooth, steep granite slopes of Zealand Mountain before plunging 25 feet at Zealand Falls. The Zealand Falls AMC Hut is situated on the side of Zealand Mountain adjacent to the falls, both a romantic and practical location. The views from the Hut of Whitewall Mountain and Zealand Notch on the boundary of the Pemigewasset Wilderness take my breath away every time I see it. If you choose to spend the night at the hut, you will be lulled to sleep by the sound of the rushing water down the mountainside and over the falls. The falling waters power a small hydroelectric plant to provide electric lights at the hut – the only AMC hut so equipped.