Location: Trailhead & Parking on Jewell Street,
South Hampton. Approximately 0.4 miles from Town Hall. Parking on the
right hand side of Jewell Street as you head towards Amesbury. If you
cross the river and/or hit Whitehall Road you’ve gone too far.
More about the Property: The Powwow River
Woodlands feature a lovely 7.3-acre forest with shoreline along the Powwow
River. Benches are
located on the river bank. The 0.2-mile
trail makes a short loop from the parking area on Jewell Street to the river
and back. Paddlers can walk their canoes or kayaks on the path to
launch their boats and enjoy a tour of the
slow moving, meandering river. Downriver, it becomes Lake Gardner, a
popular kayaking and swimming destination for local residents.
Upstream, the river turns south into
Massachusetts where it flows through the 370-acre Woodsom Farm, then
passes through dense hardwood
thickets and an Atlantic white cedar swamp as
it turns north back into New Hampshire. This stretch of the river can only be
traversed during high water by
canoe or kayak. The river once served as a
power source for successive Jewell Family members beginning in 1687 when Thomas
Jewell settled here. At one time, a grist mill,
fulling mill, bog iron
works and more than one sawmill
were located nearby in the historic Jewell Town District. Sisters
Priscilla Coffin and Susan True inherited the land from their mother and
donated it to the Southeast Land
Trust (SELT) to honor their parents Jack & Priscilla Coffin. The Town of
South Hampton provided funding from the Conservation Fund to pay the
transaction costs and the long-term
management of this land and holds
deed restrictions ensuring it remains open space. The Woodlands are
located within a relatively large, unfragmented block of land here in South
Hampton including Cowdin State Forest, the 35-acre Halberstadt conservation
easement and land owned by the Howfirma Trust, as well as extensive conserved
lands in Amesbury that include the Woodsom Farm, the Capp/Halberstadt
Greenbelt, and public water supply properties. The land is owned and managed by
the Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire, subject to restrictions held by the
Town of South Hampton.
