Stream Meets Street

Stream Meets Street. The Main Street Culvert - Bethlehem New Hampshire. , Under your feet there is a stream that has always flowed here. In the 18^th century settlers from the seacoast traveling into the north country followed a path that crossed this stream. When a group of them decided to stay in this place, that path became the main street of their new town. Over the years the stream and the street have found ways to coexist. This is their story., A STEADFAST STREAM , Several small streams flow downhill off Mt. Agassiz northward to the Ammonoosuc River. The largest is Barrett Brook, which is under the street. In the beginning, the low spot where the stream met the street was a muddy place that had to be crossed with care. By the early 1800s a small culvert carried the water under the street., The stream found a greater purpose in the early 1900s when the town used its water to form a pond they called Sunset Lake; then after the hurricane of 1938 they rebuilt the pond as a swimming pool., PATH TO THE MOUNTAINS , The street was on the route through the White Mountains connecting the seacoast and the Connecticut River Valley that eventually became part of the New Hampshire turnpike system in the early 1800s. In the 1780s, settlers from Massachusetts came up the upper Connecticut River and chose this area. In 1799 they incorporated a new town, Bethlehem, and the street became known as Bethlehem Street., At that time, the street was simply an irregular dirt path worn by the horses and carts over the uneven ground; but the farms and houses on the sides of the street kept their yards in a straight even line marked by fences and stone walls, and so the town took shape. These farmhouses were later replaced by summer cottages and hotels as the first tourists arrived by stagecoach and the street began to change., The growth of Bethlehem as a summer tourist destination relied on creating new infrastructure. In 1875 the hotel and business owners formed the Bethlehem Improvement Association. At the end of the 1870s the street was leveled and graded. The town filled in the dip in the road and the older culvert was replaced. They built wooden sidewalks and installed kerosene streetlights in 1887 that were lit during the summer months and in 1896 they installed electric lights. The street was transformed into a tree-lined boulevard., The street of the early 1900s was a smooth gravel road with concrete sidewalks. In the 1920s automobiles replaced the horse-drawn coaches, and the street was widened and paved. The street was now part of New Hampshire's western trunk line highway and the first east-west transcontinental highway, the precursor of US 302. In the 1930s, the Town painted crosswalks and lanes on the asphalt pavement and paved parking spaces lined the granite curbs. The street had a new name, Main Street., THE STONE CULVERT , When the roadway was leveled and graded in the 1870s, a new deep stone box culvert was built under the street. That culvert is still there below the street. It consists of three different parts. The original stone box culvert under the roadway is 66 long. Its stone walls are mortared random rubble boulders and fieldstones., The original stone box culvert has an interior clearance of seven feet. Highway plans from 1920 show that the old culvert was retained when the road was rebuilt. The stone culvert was extended at the inlet (south) with a 33'-long concrete box. The outlet (north) was lengthened with a 68' corrugated steel pipe and fill was added on top to create a parking area north of the road for the adjacent 1940s restaurant, now the post office., [Illustration captions, clockwise from far left center, read] , . 1870s LOOKING WEST , . 1883 LOOKING SOUTHEAST [Birdseye view] , . EARLY 1870s LOOKING EAST , . 1890s LOOKING WEST , . EARLY 1900s LOOKING EAST , . EARLY 1900s LOOKING EAST , . 1920s LOOKING EAST , . 2015 LOOKING NORTH [stone culvert] , . 2015 LOOKING SOUTH [stone culvert] , . 1950s LOOKING NORTH [now Post Office] , . 1920s LOOKING EAST , . 1950s [Playground and pool] , . 1920s [Lake]