Ask someone where Penacook begins and ends, and you might as well be asking if the chicken or the egg came first. No one seems to know.
If you need an example, visit penacook.org. Click on the “Present” tab, then on “Defining the boundaries of Penacook.”
You'll see five maps taking a stab at drawing Penacook's boundaries: There's a street map, a tax map of Wards 1 and 2, a portion of the 03303 zip code map, part of the Merrimack Valley School district map and, our favorite, a rendering of all the previously mentioned maps onto one super (confusing) map. The latter document resembles something a kindergartener might draw for Mommy and Daddy's fridge. There's purple, pink, orange, yellow and turquoise splashed all over it – each color representing someone's idea of Penacook. “Is this a map?” you may ask yourself, “or a drawing of a unicorn?”
We're not saying that Penacook is as mythical as a one-horned horse. Everyone can agree that Penacook exists. But where exactly it starts and ends is another story entirely.
The Concordians and Penacookians we asked agreed that the Thirty Pines Market at 9 Village St. is in Penacook. Yet, walk next door to that plaza that houses Fisherville Pharmacy, 219 Fisherville Road, and it starts to get a bit hazy.
The pharmacy's owner, Steve Kavadias, understood our confusion. He explained that according to the post office, the pharmacy is located in Penacook. Yet, take a look at the tax map, and it's in Concord.
This particular strip of businesses – or, as we like to call it, Concord's Bermuda Triangle – is the perfect example of why Penacook's boundaries are so gosh-darn confusing. If the post office and the county aren't on the same page, how can the rest of us possibly be?
Looking for further insight, we consulted David Arthur Brown's “History of Penacook, N.H.,” written in 1902. He wrote:
“The village is located partly in the city of Concord and partly in the town of Boscawen. . . . With the Contoocook river as a central line, the village limits extend about one mile along the west bank of the Merrimack river, and about one and half miles westward from the Merrimack to the upper falls of the Contoocook river at the Borough; making about one and one half square miles of territory.”
Finally, we were starting to get somewhere. We praised Brown for hitting the road with his trusty ruler to figure this out for us. Until we came across this:
“The village is pided by the boundary line of Concord and Boscawen, which runs from the Merrimack River in the same general direction as the Contoocook River, and quite near it, but it does not follow the curves of the river.”
Huh?
“Quite a controversy over the location of this boundary line arose in 1836 when the Contoocook mill was built, both towns desiring to have the new mill in their own territory.”
Oh boy.
Brown goes on to describe this for two pages (and no, double spacing did not exist in those days).
Apparently, Concord thought that the line was “beginning at the middle of the mouth of the Contoocook river where it empties itself into the Merrimack, where it joins the Penny cook plantation thence running west 15 degrees south adjoining on the Penny cook line four miles to a white pine tree marked Penny cook corner bounds.” The Boscawen people thought otherwise and the rest, well, just gives us a headache.
We propose that someone, somewhere, decides once and for all where the Penacook lies. Is the post office right or is the Merrimack Valley School district? Is it Google maps or the tax maps?
We would suggest that Penacook revolts and becomes entirely separate from Concord, but we really don't want that. For starters, we really like the vegetarian subs at Chiefs Place. Second, we don't want to see Penacook get slapped with higher taxes.
According to the 2009 tax rates, Penacook residents paid $24.01 per $1,000 in assessed value, whereas Concordians pay $21.87. Penacook doesn't have the commercial property to offset the costs, so the village currently benefits from its relationship with Concord. Yes, Penacook's taxes may be higher than Concord's, but things could be worse.
Who knows, maybe Penacookians don't want to be part of Concord anyway. If that's the case, just be sure to let us big city slickers down easy. We hear “It's not you, it's me” works wonders.
