Exploring Mad Tom’s Notch

I don’t know about all of you but when I go through the Gazetteer and I read the different road names, I look for things like this. Mad Tom’s Notch… Come on, you all are wondering, aren’t you? First…

• Who is this Tom?
• and why the heck is he mad?
• Was he angry?
• Or was he as mad as the hatter in Alice in Wonderland?

Before I get you all excited by these interesting questions. I did find Mad Tom’s Notch But I never found out WHY was he mad? Was it anger management issues or did he wear strange hats on his head?

We never did find this out for sure. BUT! As we drove along we did find a tombstone on the side of the road that may give us a clue.

The tombstone said Johnnie M. Son of J.T. & J. Howard was crushed by a load of lumber here, Sept 27th, 1887 aged 13 years. Now whether this has anything to do with Tom being mad, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a sad postscript to a life that sometimes ends too soon.

Finding Mad Tom’s Notch Rd.

Margaret K. pointed out that my directions were confusing so let’s make it better. Route 11 travels through the hills between Londonderry VT and Manchester VT. When you get to the town of Peru you will pull off and jump on Main St. We hadn’t had lunch so we stopped at at Hapgood’s general store (let me know if it’s still there). We were happy that we didn’t need our passports, because mine was at home…

Now when you leave don’t hit the gas because you’ll miss Hapgood Pond Rd. Turn onto Hapgood Pond Rd and follow this North. When you get to where it splits, stay to the left on North Rd.

Follow that for 4,000 ft and then turn left onto Mad Tom’s Notch Rd. Follow the road till you have to turn around. When you come back down try going straight at North Rd, onto National Forest Hwy (don’t get fooled, it WILL be a dirt road). This takes you into the Hapgood Pond Picnic Area. I didn’t know this was there until I was looking at it in Google Maps so we didn’t go explore it… It could be pretty!

The route up…

Getting ourselves onto Mad Tom’s Notch Road was pretty easy, and the pavement soon gave way to a dirt road, and just so you know I was in a Grand Marquis sedan with 4 doors, not 4X4. So when I tell you whatever you are driving is ok, you can bet that you have little to worry about.

Let me temper that by saying you can follow the Notch Road up to the top, but near the top, it gets a bit rough. I wasn’t sure how much farther the road went, but I was getting nervous.

We arrived at a dirt parking lot and I was glad to turn around because it looked like the road turned into the Appalachian Trail, I bolded those letters for a reason. The AT is the trail that goes from Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.

My car was not going any further, so I turned it around and you should be safe going this far if you don’t try to take your car on the AT as well.

So we headed back down in the late afternoon sunshine and just enjoyed the bright colors. We ended up on NF21 and that will be a story for another day when I have time to write it up.

We had dinner in Manchester, a beautiful college town, down Route 11 to the west (on Route 7) and made plans to visit the home of Todd Lincoln (Hildene) the next day. But! I already wrote an article on that so click here for my story about the road to Hildene.

Jeff Foliage Folger

Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage

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