Early Mills The site shown in this photo was once a Saw Mill which was operational at least as early as the 1860's. We visit it on one of the Lake Morey Inn and Silver Maple Inn routes.
Among the first things Settlers needed were grist mills (for grain) and saw mills (for lumber).
The grist mills made the grain for the settlers and livestock to eat; the saw mill produced lumber for homes and barns. 
The first livestock consisted of oxen; horses came later.
These sites were the former homes of early settlers and have loose stone foundations. They have survived because stone can move with the winter freeze's and summer thaws that would crack more rigid modern foundations like concrete.
The cellar holes were often used to store vegetables over the winter. Called Root Cellars, they would keep a steady temperature of about 40°, winter or summer.
One of the essentials of an early homestead was a constant supply of clean drinking water. August is drought season, so it was often the season for
digging wells, and water witching.
It was assumed that if you could find water in August, you could find water there year 'round. Using a Divining Rod (a curved stick with a "t'' on one end): Dowsing or Water Witching, was a common practice in well digging. Dowsers, as they were called, would use the divining rod to `point' to a water source in the same way as a metal detector is used to find coins on the beach today. Divining rods were made from Hazel, Willow, Apple, Beech, or Cherry.
The hand pump and the hand crank were not available to the earliest settlers in the Upper Valley (remember old hand pumps?). These pumps also required a drilled well which hadn't been invented at the time.
The first method of getting the water out of the dug well was called the Well sweep. It was a simple device using a small tree of about 35 feet long, to form a long counterweight to the weight of the filled water bucket. This helped thirsty homesteaders get clean water.
Commerce was often based on the ability to move goods on roads.
Early roads did not have the civil engineering that many of our modern highways have. The four stone bridges that we cross on one of the tours represent the tremendous effort that went into building stable roads in the middle of the 1800s.
Like the early foundation sites, they are built of loose stone, and have survived well over a century of use.