Corbin Park (also known as the Blue Mountain Forest and Game Preserve) is a private

game reserve A game reserve (also known as a game park) is a large area of land where wild animals are hunted in a controlled way for sport. If hunting is prohibited, a game reserve may be considered a nature reserve; however, the focus of a game reserve ...

New Hampshire New Hampshire ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec t ...

. It contains land in

Croydon Croydon is a large town in South London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a Districts of England, local government district of Greater London; it is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater Lond ...

, Cornish, Plainfield, and

Grantham Grantham () is a market town and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England, situated on the banks of the River Witham and bounded to the west by the A1 road (Great Britain), A1 road. It lies south of Lincoln, England ...

. It occupies somewhere between of land and was started in 1889 by businessman

Austin Corbin Austin Corbin (July 11, 1827 – June 4, 1896) was a 19th-century American banking and railroad entrepreneur. He consolidated the rail lines on Long Island, bringing them under the profitable umbrella of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR). He was ...

. The park is known today for its secrecy.

History

Austin Corbin founded the park in 1889 by buying up a large number of parcels of land in western New Hampshire. The nonprofit Blue Mountain Association was created in 1891 to manage the park. After Corbin died in 1896, his son Austin Jr. took over management of the Association and the park, and held the role until his own death in 1938. In 1944 ownership of the park was transferred to a group of wealthy hunters. In 1949, the New Hampshire legislature passed a law holding the park responsible for escaped pigs. The park has been subject to multiple lawsuits from the 1950s to the 1990s. In 2020, NH state representative Renny Cushing filed legislation to require a special safari hunting license to take exotic game from the park. It was not passed.

Geography

Croydon Peak, the highest mountain in Sullivan County at of elevation, is located within the park boundary. It is not accessible to hikers. Croydon Peak is also the location of Sullivan County's only

fire tower A fire lookout tower, fire tower, or lookout tower is a tower that provides housing and protection for a person known as a " fire lookout", whose duty it is to search for wildfires in the wilderness. It is a small building, usually on the summit ...

, but, as the mountain as a whole is inaccessible to the public, the fire tower is also inaccessible to the public.

Flora and fauna

Corbin Park is home to bison, deer, elk, pheasants, and wild hogs. Some of these animals have been known to escape on several occasions, such as when the

1938 New England hurricane The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great Long Island - New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike the United States. The storm formed near th ...

knocked down much of the park fence, or when the gates were left open in 1953 for firefighting purposes. A wild boar that had escaped from Corbin Park was struck and killed on

Interstate 89 Interstate 89 (I-89) is an Interstate Highway in the New England region of the United States traveling from Bow, New Hampshire, to the Canada–United States border between Highgate Springs, Vermont, and Saint-Armand, Quebec. As with all ...

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

in 2017.

Notable hunters

Many famous people have been known to hunt at or otherwise visit the park, including

Teddy Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York politics, including serving as ...

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, serving from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. He was the first U.S. president to serve nonconsecutive terms and the first Hist ...

Herbert Hoover Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was the 31st president of the United States, serving from 1929 to 1933. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium and ...

Rudyard Kipling Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English journalist, novelist, poet, and short-story writer. He was born in British Raj, British India, which inspired much ...

Joe DiMaggio Joseph Paul DiMaggio (; born Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio, ; November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999), nicknamed "Joltin' Joe", "the Yankee Clipper" and "Joe D.", was an American professional baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career ...

, William Ruger, Sr., and his son, William Junior.

References

External links

Brian Meyette's Corbin Park page"Austin Corbin, the 'Part-Hog, Part-Shark' Robber Baron of New Hampshire"
from the New England Historical Society
Corbin's "Animal Garden"
article archived from Eastman Living {{Coord, 43, 27, 11, N, 72, 13, 24, W, region:US-NH_type:forest, display=title Game reserves Hunting lodges in the United States Cornish, New Hampshire Plainfield, New Hampshire 1880s establishments in New Hampshire