Barndoor Island
 

Any forum members able to provide access to Barndoor?

Sure, what do you need?

Hi Coolbreeze:

One of our writers is doing a story about the name of the island and I am looking for ways to photograph the island in some way.

One option is to get out on the island and shoot so I was looking for transportation and access with someone who knows their way around the island.

Thanks.

Send me a private message to give me the details and I'll see if I can get a family member to give you some help. My parents are within a half hour drive from Alton (I am in Pa) and may be able to help.

Just warn your writer in advance that there are a group of wild cows on the island, all survivors from back in the farming days. These cows don't like to have their picture taken or to be bothered. They have been known to chase people through the woods.

Just call good neighbor, Mitt Romney and no doubt, he'll be happy to tow you through the Barn Doors on a water ski, tow rope. Back and forth, through the Barn Doors, on some oldy wood water skis, should not be too difficult what with all the beautifull nice, high water, out there. :)

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...20barndoor.jpg
Between the Barn Doors

Barndoor Island
 

Guess someone left the barn door open! :laugh: That is pretty cool, unless you are the one being chased! Do you have any pictures of the wild cows and about how many are roaming the island?

Barndoor Island Whopper
 

Excerpt from the politically incorrect with odd grammar, Winnipesaukee Whoppers by Elizabeth Crawford Wilkin, Illustrated by Lloyde Coe:

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo..._Wwhoppers.jpg

Big and Little Barn Door Islands lie southeast of Wolfeboro, and the real natives of the town will tell you that they are so-called because when approaching them from a certain angle (just which angle is rather a vague point) one can see - if it's not too dark or too misty, and not too sparklly or too glary - a huge barn door which actually is on the mainland beyond, but appears to hold the two islands together by it's great hinges.

This is undoubtedly perfectly correct, but here is another version which dates back more than a hundred years.

One morning when the oak leaves were about the size of a weasel's ear, an all but-but-naked Injin ran in great haste and excitement down the one street of the village of Smith's Bridge, which is now called Wolfeboro.

From a leather thong tied about his middle clattered pompion shells an and an assortment of gourds, while in one hand he balanced a canoe paddle, and with the other he swung a useful-looking tomahawk.

He was shouting something sort of guttural-like as he galloped down the rough street, but no one paid a great deal of attention to what he was saying. It sounded like "Barn Door" to the few who did hear, but what would an Injin (who wouldn’t have anything to put inside a barn anyhow) want with a barn door? All that the village folk wanted was to get out of his way; they weren’t accustomed to Injins, and certainly not an Injin swinging a tomahawk.

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo..._Island_WW.jpg

By the time he reached then end of the street every house was closed, and there was only one man in sight.

This man was “Ez” Hopkins, and he was sitting on a stool slivering with a jackknife on an Indian birch splintbroom. He wasn’t as young as he’d one been, nor as thin. The neighbors said of him that “he was fatter’n a settled minister.” He has a beard as big as the broom he was slivering, and he used to say that all he had to do was to stay behind that beard and he was “as safe as in God’s pocket.”

Anyhow he never even looked up when he heard this Injin yelling, so maybe he didn’t know that the stranger had a tomahawk.

The Injin stopped short when he saw Ez and squatted down beside him as though they were old friends, but still went on shouting about his barn door. Finally EX looked down at him, and saw that the Red Man was really in distress, and was trying to tell him something in a language he couldn’t understand, and which he didn’t think was any Injin talk either. He wondered if it might be French. Lots of Injins from the north, he’d heard tell, spoke a smatter’n of French, along with a few English words, mixed up with their own talk.

After a while Ez put aside his birch broom and, puffing from his great weight, led the Injin up the rise which is now Wolfeboro Falls. The day before eZ had seen a half-Yankee half-Frenchie traveling trader with his tin trunk go up that way. He knew that the trader figgered about a half a day to a farmhouse with a meal, and sometimes a bed, thrown in, so he couldn’t be far off. Maybe the Injin was garbling some kind of French that this trader could make out.

They found him with his pins and ribbons and furbelows strewn over the kitchen floor of a farmhouse with all the women in the place gathered around him, but he was a good-natured fellow, and seemed even to welcome the interruption.

He made out with some diffuclty that the Injin was a Mohawk, and was trying to get back to his own people. He had been taken north by the French, and it was while with them that he had learned what French he knew. When he had escaped from them, according to his story, he had been “loaned” a canoe, some food, and a bar of gold to aid him on his long journey south.

He had been many moons on the way, and had been forced to discard a number of canoes, and to “accept the loan” of others owning to the long carries. However he had managed to keep with him his bar of gold and some food until early that morning when, in a sudden squall, the canoe had been sunk between the two islands off Smith’s Bridge.

After swimming ashore the Red Man had run down the village street to warm up, and to try to find someone who would lend him a canoe (as he couldn’t see one around to “lend” to himself). He wanted to get back his Barre d’or (Bar of Gold), but everyone except Monsieur La Barbe had run from him when he tried to tell them about it.

Ez sort of like the idea of being called Monsieur The Bearded One, and so he decided to take the Injin in his rowboat to find this Barre d’or.

That day and every day for months afterward they rowed up and down the channel between the two islands, and the Injin dived time and again at the place he’d marked while EZ rested and puffed. Every day, no matter what the weather, they could be seen from Smith’s Bridge until finally the Injin died of lung fever, and old Ez of exhaustion, but the Barre d’or was never found.

However as long as Yankees live on the shores of Lake Winnipiseogee the two little islands southeast of Wolfeboro will always be known as The Barn Door Islands, and some place in the narrow channel between them, deep down amongst the rocks and sand and waving lake weed, lies a bar of gold big enough to make a poor man rich.

Maybe if you squared up with that barn door and its great hinges on the mainland…with the shores of the two little islands…on just the right day…

We Can Help
 

LRS,

I sent you a PM on this with contact information. We are in "the barn" on Barndoor. We still display the original cow name signs in their original location, and have some other relics from the barn's original use that were kindly left behind by the previous owner. We also have a letter from a woman that lived on the island when the barn was operational that discussed what life was like back then, and a few photos that show the oxen pulling the hay over the ice, etc.

The barn was built by Charlie Roberts (of Robert's Cove lineage) from timber harvested on site, for Ralph Carpenter (the school in Wolfeboro bears his name), so lots of local history to dig up - could be an interesting island story and we'd be happy to help you pull it together if we can.

Wild Cows?
 

Ok, I'll be the gullible one. Wild cows on the island? Who milks them? They have to be milked, unless they are all bulls.

Okay, Cows on Barndoor - Are You Pulling My Leg?
 

Rattlesnake Guy thought I was the gullible one believing there are wild cows on the island. :laugh: Why couldn't there be? There are wild boars, horses and sheep running around in various locations all over the United States. As for the milking, their offspring would take care of that.

On Barndoor tells me that she has photos of cattle on the island from the old days. Maybe their spirit lives on. The lake is full of lore, why not?

And by the way RGAL, you and RGUY may be next on my list of an island story to tell in LRS...

Lots of Bores and Lots of Bull on the Island
 

In an evolutionary feat that would make Darwin proud, the Barndoor "spirit" cows that we need produce rum not milk...

Rum from Spirit Cows
 

Spirit Cows milked for their rum! Guess that's why they call liquor "spirits." And me thinking that the cows had simply swam off to Cow Island.:liplick:

Actually there are both, Cows and Bulls. The herd is thinned in the winter months. The Island Association hires a company from Derry to come in and round up the herd. They leave of twenty or so animals at the suggestion of the state biologist. The animals that are removed are the more aggressive and older animals and they go to auction. The money raised by the sale of the animals at the auction goes to different charities benefiting the lakes region.
The bulls that are left are protective of the cows and have horns and will hurt you. They will bite chase and stomp you if they get angry and it doesn't take much to get them mad. I have witnessed people running in complete panic, screaming in terror trying to out of the fire roads on the island with the herd chasing them right into the lake. The animals just stand there and snort and snarl and make cow sounds until they feel you are no longer a threat.
I was chased back in 1998 and swear it was one of the scariest moments ever. I had to change my shorts. The bull was hiding behind a group of large boulders in the "quarry" area of the island, I surprised him and the foot race was on... I ran to a point where I almost threw up. Now I stay a good distance of those long haired bovines.

Mad Cow & bull disease
 

This thread is priceless! I remember on my uncle's farm being "helped" out of the herding area between the fence post and the milk barn by a bull named Bradford. Gawd, I love remembering my childhood! What a terrific time I had. Terrified then, but what a memory now!

Moo?
 

I have spent countless hours studying these unieque bovines, here is what I have found. They are not really cows at all. They are a rare breed of giant cat fish found only in lake Winnipesaukee, and Aloah ( the largest of the 9 Hawiian islands ) . Sometime after Nov. 13th they shead there cow skin and return to the lakes deepest spots where they ride out the cold winter the months. Once the water temp rises past 68 F their GILLS are transformed into UTTERS ,and other cow parts and they return to B. D. island. They are only hostel because it hurts changing from cow to fish to cow ETC. The bulls stay the same all the time,they are always just bulls, and theyer kind of stupid. Anyway there is a whole lot more,but thats it in a NUT shell.

Appears to be more Bull than just cows roaming 'round here.:rolleye2:

Here we go again
 

I will not udder any more bull on this subject.You guys are really milking this one.Now lets mooove on to greener pastures without cowtailing.

So, with just a swish of your tale you want to moove off this utterly ridiculus subject ay?

Where would a Cowhide?

they like to hide behind the little barndoor.