Talk:Upper Ammonoosuc River

The Whites

     The northern White Mountains include the basin of the Upper Ammy; i am modifying accordingly the wording that contrasts it with the Ammy.
--Jerzy•t 17:57 & 19:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

     Thanks to KG for a responsive edit, along the lines i first considered (tho my number is around 30½ miles, per DeLorme Atlas, 42E3 and 48A1). But at length it dawned on me that "upper" is not a synonym for "northern", but for "upstream-mouthed", so i instead made a (rougher) estimate of 40 miles as the length of the CT that separates them. Hmm, too many straight legs to count, traced onto [the relevant Google route with the new "Distance Measurement Tool", yield 57.2 miles, but that URL won't save you retracing it you want to check it.
--Jerzy•t 06:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I have the NH GRANIT stream network layer and added up the stream segments between the two rivers: 59.5 miles. Pretty good estimating! I put the 20 mile figure back in as well, because that is the approximate air distance that separates them for most of the Upper Ammo's course (their sources are actually about 14 miles apart).--Ken Gallager (talk) 13:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

     I was hoping for someone to offer such a tool. Huh! I expected to be high rather than low. Perhaps the explanation is that they follow something like the thalweg -- whereas i felt free to use a virtual canoe trip, following any straight line course that didn't actually cross onto dry land, and suffer only from not using enuf straight lines.
     Your logic sounds excellent, in the context of including both. I don't think i stopped to think whether you'd actually said mouth to mouth, or i'd just gotten fixated on the mouths by the time i measured.
     Thanks!
--Jerzy•t 20:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Fort

     We have

Fort Wentworth was built in 1755 at the junction of the Upper Ammonoosuc and the Connecticut Rivers (now in the village of Groveton).

but Groveton is unincorporated and thus has no formal borders. Per GoogleMaps, the mouth lies in the midst of fields, forest, and meanders of the rivers, about a mile from the compact built-up residential and business area. The nearest road (as opposed to presumed farm lanes) is about .2 mile away, and has the flavor (per first-hand observation) a straggle of rural homes and businesses among the farms and forests, along the road to the next village (Northumberland village) rather than of people who would say they live "in the village".
     We need at least to know whether the ruins of the fort lie in the area identifiable as the village -- identifiable by people having not just side-fence neighbors but also back-fence ones (or, for those at the edge of town, at least across-the-street nbrs who have back-fence ones) -- or on the other hand, whether the rivers have shifted to carry the mouth away from a site in the village that used to have both the mouth and the fort. We may in fact need to say "near" rather than "at".
--Jerzy•t 19:40, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

"Near" works for me, so I made the change. I don't know if you live in that area, Jerzy, but is my impression (as a southern New Hampshirite) correct that a lot of people say they live in "Groveton" based on their mailing address, even if they don't live in the compact village area?--Ken Gallager (talk) 13:11, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

     I could only speculate. It might be worth seeing if Wikipedia:WikiProject U.S. counties or Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places have grappled with what encyclopedic terminology is in various encyclopedic contexts.
     Groveton might arguably be a very special case:

1. It's the largest community (49% of the popn) in a town ...
2. ... that bears a different name (Northumberland) which is also the name of the aforesaid small village (a single .8 mile street, with a few apparent alleys off it, that is apparently (and tellingly?) named "Old Village Road".
3. It appears that its PO serves the whole town, plus the town of Stark, NH.

     My view, barring existing guidelines, is that "at" or "in" is unencyclopedically vague when its object is an entity larger than a building, other than a well-defined intersection, and lacking legally defined boundaries. (CDP boundaries, in contrast, are descriptive ones for statistical purposes, and probably subject to change at least every ten years, probably according to subjective decisions. Post office designations change when POs close, or routes grow dramatically. Southport in Fairfield, CT is known for people who buy homes there -- apparently based on which post office will serve them -- and claim the realtor deceived them when they find out about some other criterion.)
--Jerzy•t 02:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)