Mount Osceola and Mad River Notch
The peak with two summits at the northern end of the valley to your right is Mt Osceola (4,340 feet) with its East Peak (4,156 feet) to the right. The mountain was named for the internationally-known leader of the Seminoles in Florida.
When Waterville’s first hotel opened in 1860, Nathaniel Greeley had created a bridle path to the Mt. Osceola summit. Hiking or riding to the summit was a major attraction for summer visitors. Edward Everett Hale, the Boston preacher and author, declared that the view from the summit was “the finest key to the mountains I know.”
The Greeley Ponds, named for Nathaniel Greeley, are a popular hiking destination in Mad River Notch to the east of Mt. Osceola. They are the source of the Mad River, which runs adjacent to Rt. 49 along much of its descent to the Pemigewasset River. A number of settlers operated sawmills along the Mad River and its tributaries from the 1820s through the early 1900s to supplement their farming income.
Large scale logging of old growth spruce began in the 1880s. Logging peaked in the early 1900's with the wood being used as pulp for paper manufacturing. Until about 1931. Until about 1931, four-foot-long pulp wood logs were driven down the Mad River to Campton using upstream driving dams to release surges of water in the spring.
The threat of a logging railroad through Mad River Notch into Waterville in 1926 led to efforts resulting in the purchase of the woodlands for the White Mountain National Forest in 1928. A preserve of old growth forest had been set aside in the notch earlier, but much of it was destroyed by the hurricane of 1938. In 1964 an 810-acre tract surrounding both ponds was designated the Greeley Ponds Scenic Area by the Forest Service.
