by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, September 25, 2024.
The unnamed hurricane that hit New England in September 1938, left the town of Exeter in shambles. Front Street was blocked by fallen trees, the electricity was out for two days, and telephone service was suspended longer. The Exeter News-Letter, in an article titled “Our Woes,” noted, “remarkable were the escapes of persons and buildings from falling trees. It seemed as if the destroying angel that drove the wind felt commiseration at the last moment and diverted the blast from the path of greatest destruction. It was a freakish gale, following open courses and river valleys that ran in its direction striking here with crushing force, and skipping there, a hurricane that had missed its way.” Although Exeter escaped the full force of the wind, the late afternoon storm was frightening. 41-year-old Betty Kreger, waiting for her husband to arrive home, hastily scrawled in her diary, “Our pines began falling across the driveway – street. Tried to get Bob. No tel. No lights. Kept hearing trees fall in the woods.” When morning dawned, there were so many trees down on her street that she noted “crowds here to see our trees.”
No one in Exeter was injured during the storm, but the downed trees were hazardous. Streets were quickly cleared to allow traffic to flow; however, the woodlands of town were not. Sarah Shea Smith, in her book, “They Sawed up a Storm,” wrote, “Much of the timber was a tangled mess that proved dangerous for even the most experienced woodsmen. In 1938, crosscut saws and axes were still the most common tools used to harvest timber. The broken-off, uprooted, and mangled trees were processed by hand and moved by horse, mule, or oxen. Tractors were used in only a few instances.” The wind-felled trees could cause two very serious problems: rotting wood provided a home to insect infestations, and dried dead timber would increase fire risk in the springtime. Exeter’s Oaklands area has had fire problems for decades – the hurricane debris would only exacerbate the issue. Added to these potential problems was the economic hit the owners of woodlots might face. A huge surge in available lumber would drive prices down.
Salvaging the timber over time seemed the best solution statewide. For some heavily wooded locations, holding ponds were seen as a strategy. Downed timber was hauled to a pond, debarked, and rolled into the water for future use. The water would prevent the logs from infestation or drying. Most of Exeter’s damaged trees were processed into lumber. The Portsmouth Herald reported – just a few days after the hurricane – “If there is a permanent sawmill or a good portable mill in the community the farmers work out an arrangement whereby the salvage logs could be hauled to the mill, sawed, and then lumber stuck in a yard to be sold over a period of the next year.” Although some of the felled trees locally were hauled to Folsom’s Pond in West Epping, most was processed in town.
New Hampshire Governor, Francis Murphy, created an emergency council that reported, in early November, “its original estimates of storm damage to the extend of $24,000,000 had been reduced to about half that amount, largely because of the progress made and planned in salvaging the tremendous amount of fallen timber following the hurricane.” If there was any golden lining to the storm, at least lumber was valuable.
Rockingham County set up salvage committees in each town – Exeter’s chair was George W. Gooch. By December, the state reported it had safe storage for 87,000,000 feet in 12 ponds and one dry storage area.
Exeter had only one permanent sawmill in 1938 – at Colcord Pond just off the Brentwood Road. In the spring of 1939, when sawing the hurricane lumber really began to take off, Colcord mill was seeing more activity than it had in decades. Ernest Templeton wrote of it, “The mill, or its predecessors, has probably been operated at this site throughout most of the history of the town.” Templeton also reported that sawmills had sprung up all over the region. “Portable mills have been located on land of the Phillips Exeter Academy in the Gilman woods, on the Fish farm in Kensington and upon Marshall S. Chase’s farm in Stratham, and have converted much of the blown-down timber into boards.”
This came as good news to Edward Rinfret, who lived at Hall Place and ran a small market garden business on land that today encompasses Jady Hill. Rinfret was known throughout the area for his produce and for his flashy saddle horse. He rode in local parades while he was dressed as a cowboy. Following the two big 1938 parades celebrating the 300thanniversaries of the towns of Exeter and Hampton, Rinfret sold the horse and invested in a chicken coop and laying hens. Sadly, the coop burned over the winter, killing most of the hens before he could make a profit. Many of the trees on his land had come down in the storm. However, he was able to pick up work working at one of the many portable sawmills. The photographs, taken by a family member, have become one of clearest records of local hurricane timber salvage. New Hampshire’s efforts to save the downed timber became a model for the nation. Those trees stored in holding ponds were milled into lumber that was used to build shipping crates for the war effort.
Image: Edward Rinfret working at a portable sawmill in the spring of 1939. Local sawmills were overwhelmed with timber downed during the hurricane that swept through New England in September, 1938.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org