Eastman Living Online Magazine

Text By Craig McArt

Sandwiched between routes 10 and I-89, Brookside Park occupies a narrow strip of land between Eastman’s two entrances. Beautiful Skinner Brook courses the length of it. The large sign at the parking area announces that the park was a gift to the Town of Grantham from Emil and Tony Hanslin. Emil was the developer of Eastman and Olde Farms, and along with his son Tony, the founder of Yankee Barn Homes, also in Grantham.

In 1984 they constructed a parking area with a picnic table off of Route 10 in an area that had been the site of house fires and a drowning. They also built a footbridge across the brook so people could walk to trails they laid out on the far side. The sign and the picnic table remain today, but the bridge was washed away long ago, and the trails were abandoned.

Recently, the Grantham Conservation Commission purchased an additional parcel of land to expand the park by 21 acres. The parcel had been the site for the Grantham Grange Fair in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This purchase inspired plans to improve the park by building a new bridge over Skinner Brook and renovating the trail system.

To protect the new bridge from meeting the same fate as the original one, it would need to be much higher. While the brook flows along rather serenely most of the year, it can become a raging torrent following melt-off in early spring. Constructing a higher bridge would mean having to make the span much longer, and making it longer would require some serious engineering. Fortunately, one of the conservation  commissioners, Richard (Rich) Kaszeta, volunteered his professional engineering expertise to plan the structure.

Rich’s bridge design would span the brook at a height of 6 feet above the streambed. To do that, it would require fabrication of three 38-foot long steel I-beams that would rest on concrete abutments. This was going to be expensive. Enter another commissioner, Laura Nagy, who procured funding for the project from the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation of Hanover to augment the Town of Grantham’s resources. Laura’s proposal advocated making the bridge and a portion of the trail handicapped-accessible in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and involving a crew from the state’s Student Conservation Association (SCA).

Fast forward to this past spring and summer, when things began to happen at the park. Commissioner Dave Wood led a group of volunteers in establishing trails and felling overshadowing pines to uncover an abandoned apple orchard. Rich Kaszeta created forms for the bridge abutments and organized a cement-mixing party to fill them. The I-beams arrived, and the SCA crew maneuvered them across the brook and onto the concrete abutments. Commission Chair Dick Hocker brought in his generator and set up an outdoor shop to saw and drill the wooden bridge components. Crews used Trex boards recycled from retired Eastman docks to deck the bridge, and volunteers showed up to handle the myriad of tasks required to put it all together. Finally, the SCA crew returned for two weeks to build an ADA-compliant trail on both sides of the bridge.

Dave Wood created signage throughout the park that explains various features in a very up-to-date way. Each sign includes a brief explanation of the feature along with a QR (quick response) code—a type of matrix barcode, which can be scanned with one’s smart phone for a more detailed description.

The volunteers who pitched in at every step were the key to success. Among the volunteers from Eastman were Spec Bowers, Susan Buchanan, Conner Chinn, Zoe Chinn, Linda and Gary Douville, Renée Gustafson, Steve Handley, Alex Hill, Dick Hocker, Peter Hope, Bob Katz, John Larrabee, Craig McArt, Laura Nagy, Rae Tober, Dave Wood, and Duncan Wood. They joined with others from the greater community—Rich Alexander, Ted Fantl, Matthew and Tatum Lynch, Brandon Mason, Dennis Ryan, and Craig Sandborn—in gaining appreciation for open space that offers recreational opportunities and preserves rural character in the Town of Grantham.

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Craig McArt is a member of the Grantham Open Space Committee and the Grantham Historical Society.

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