When the Wild River Wilderness in the White Mountain National Forest was designated in 2006, wilderness management policy called for removal of all man-made structures. The Blue Brook Shelter, one of three shelters located in the Wild River Wilderness, was deemed as having historic value, so it was designated for removal and reconstruction at the Wild River Campground. Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) and US Forest Service (USFS) trail volunteer Caroleen “Mac” McKenzie-Dudley’s grandfather, Alva Richardson, had helped build this structure in the 1930’s when he was a forest guard for the U.S. Forest Service. He and his wife Mildred lived in a guard station near the Wild River; their first baby, Betty (Mac’s mother), was born at the station and dubbed the White Mountain National Forest Baby in media reports soon after her birth.*
After Mac started volunteering for the US Forest Service, adopting some of the trails her grandfather built in the White Mountain National Forest, she became one of the lead volunteers helping with the Blue Brook Shelter removal and reconstruction. Learn more about the history of Mac’s family and her continuation of the family legacy as she became a USFS Trail Adopter to steward trails her grandfather had built in the 1920’s and 1930’s in “Life Along the Wild River: A Family Legacy” (Northern Woodlands, Summer 2021).
“It takes a lot to deal with something that’s historic - I did the labeling and the nomenclature with pictures and drawings to allow them to rebuild the shelter in the Wild River campground,” said Mac. “Before we took all the logs down, they were all labeled, then we took it all apart. All the rubble, including the old metal roof, was going to be trashed – somebody had put a metal roof on this historic structure in the 1960s, so that was no longer natural, and had to be trashed."
The Forest Service had several different projects going on at the same time that the Blue Brook Shelter was to be removed. These projects included removal of another shelter in the Wild River Wilderness, the Spruce Brook Shelter, and a shelter outside the wilderness, the Bald Face Shelter. The Fire Warden's cabin and grounds at the Kearsarge fire tower were to be renovated as a historic site. The Spruce Brook Shelter did not hold historic value, so it was simply dismantled and the debris was either burned or removed by helicopter into a field near the Wild River Campground for removal by truck.
“It took a few days to complete these projects with a different group working at each site. The helicopter went to each site several times to either deliver materials or to pick stuff up. For the Blue Brook Shelter, the logs were hoisted from the original shelter site and then dropped right in the site where the shelter was being rebuilt – each log was roughly 300 lbs or more,” recalled Mac.
At the old shelter sites in the Wild River Wilderness, the USFS backcountry rangers revegetated the areas and made tent pads deeper into the woods so they were out of sight from the trails and furthur away from the brooks that are water sources for hikers and campers. The Blue Brook shelter was the only shelter of several removed from the White Mountain wilderness areas that was saved. It is now located at Wild River Campground at Site 11.
*From Mildred Richardson’s memoir Where the Wild River Flows: A U.S. Forest Guards Work and Family Life in the White Mountain National Forest 1926 to 1937 (wherethewildriverflows.com).
