| UNH College Woods |
SCENIC SEACOAST WALKS
Durham, NH
The ever expanding UNH campus appears to threaten this popular hiking and biking. The 60-acre Natural Area at the heart of the 250 forest Is not yet permanently protected. The land was given to the University in 1891 and is used by students and locals in all seasons.
Name: College Woods
Address: Durham, NH
Resources: Walking trail only, no interpretation.
Rules: Dawn to dusk, four seasons. Bicycles allowed. No swimming, fishing, boating or skating on reservoir waters.
Parking: Yes, limited at a number of locations along the trail.
Dogs: On leash.
Directions: Arsenault Memorial Entrance down Mill Road or enter on Waterworks Rd. behind Field House fields, near Train bridge below Pettee Hall.
Web site: Campus Woods at UNH Dept of Natural Resources
Woods are woods, and if you like walking in them, you’ll like this university tree farm. It feels, in spots, like the pine tree trail that slopes down to the Salmon Falls river in South Berwick. In other spots it reminds us of the Bellamy River walk in Dover along a sluggish, slightly tangy waterway. But College woods, like the University of NH itself, is bigger, and longer and deeper than most others. From the "Arsenault" Memorial entranceway, we wandered for two hours in 85-degree summer weather and saw only three other couples, all of whom were riding on fat-tire bicycles. Traffic is light when school is out of session, most beautiful in the fall, and beautiful after the first snowfall of winter.
We saw only a chunk of the 250-acre site and never did find the main entrance sign shown on the College Woods web page. We never found the arboretum or the planetarium or the Boulder Field. But we’ll go back. Timber from this forest was used to build some of the first buildings at the University. Morrill Hall, for example, includes wooden timbers chopped down here in 1903. Today the expanding universe has cut up to the edge of the woods and, behind the field house, is littered with high tension poles and downright ugly. Preserving these woods, in the face of progress, becomes even more important. OUTSIDE LINK: College Woods Coalition CONTINUE COLLEGE WOODS Walking Trail Photos copyright (c) SeacoastNH.com/ J. Dennis Robinson
We found the criss-crossing largely unmarked paths confusing to navigate. The College Woods map, available online, is surprisingly hard to use, considering it comes from a university. It is difficult to measure distances or tell one path from another, so the walker relies on bridges and dams and key manmade features to guess at where you are. Generally the path is smooth and wide, but there are steep and soggy places even in midsummer. If you forget the bug spray in summer and spring, turn back immediatley. Your life isn’t worth a nickel in there.
University of NH Forest Walk (continued) 
