The Mad River is a 17.9-mile-long (28.8 km) river located in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in the United States. It is a tributary of the Pemigewasset River, part of the Merrimack River watershed.
The Mad River begins at the Greeley Ponds in Mad River Notch, a gap between Mount Osceola to the west and Mount Kancamagus to the east, in the township of Livermore, New Hampshire. The river descends to the south, followed by the Greeley Pond Trail, to the town of Waterville Valley, where the West Branch enters.
After winding through the Waterville Valley Resort community, the Mad River proceeds southwest over continuous boulder-strewn rapids into a corner of the town of Thornton, eventually settling out in Campton Pond in the town of Campton. Passing over a small hydroelectric dam at Campton Upper Village, the river descends over some small waterfalls and enters the floodplain of the Pemigewasset River, which it joins near Interstate 93.
For most of the river's length below Waterville Valley, it is paralleled by New Hampshire Route 49.
Famous quotes containing the words mad and/or river:
“The green trees when I saw them first through one of the gates transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my heart to leap, and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.”
—Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)