Lamprey River

About

Lamprey Wild and Scenic, Designated Nov 12, 1996. USGS gauge 01073500 anchors any read of the Lamprey, averaging 292 cubic feet per second, with an optimal paddling window of 150 to 450 CFS. Rated Class I–III, the river runs 24 miles across Rockingham and Strafford counties before emptying into Great Bay, the tidal estuary of the Piscataqua River system. What the flow sustains is what the Squamscot understood centuries ago: the Lamprey remains a corridor of remarkable migratory life, carrying high numbers of anadromous fish — alewife, American shad, and sea lamprey — upstream from the bay each spring.

The human record here runs deep. The Squamscot people knew the waterway as "Pascassooke" long before European arrival, using the river as a primary travel corridor, hunting ground, and gathering place. They were displaced around 1672 as settlers pressed in nearby. In the broader region, the 1800s-era treaties, the 1830 Indian Removal Act, and the 1840s–1890s allotment era established the cession framework that reshaped Indigenous land tenure.

From the 1830s through the 1920s, the Lamprey watershed was logged to feed the 1850–1910s regional timber industry and the 1860–1910s railroad expansion. Local sawmills, logging drives, and downstream lumber operations were the major operators. The 1910 exhaustion of the old-growth stands, the 1915 start of state forestry conservation, and the 1930s establishment of state forests together ended large-scale logging in the basin.

Hydrological study followed the timber. The 1870s–1890s USGS survey, the 1880s–1910s establishment of USGS gauging stations, and the 1910s–1930s state geological survey streamflow assessments were the first comprehensive hydrological studies of the river. Later, the 1950s–1970s state water pollution control studies and the 1972–2000 Clean Water Act assessments confronted more than a century of logging, agricultural, and industrial impacts, work that continues today through TMDL and restoration programs.

The designation itself capped 15 years of local advocacy. On November 12, 1996, the Lamprey earned National Wild and Scenic status — the first river in New Hampshire's coastal watershed to do so — with 11.5 miles in Lee, Durham, and part of Newmarket classified as "Recreational." The designation was expanded on May 2, 2000, with additional segments in Lee and Durham. Modern stewardship carries it forward: since 2010, the New Hampshire DNR and local watershed partnerships have pursued streambank stabilization (2015–2024), native fish restocking (2017–2024), nutrient reduction (2018–2024), and water-quality improvements (2020–2024). Paddlers today can string together named runs from Mary Blair Park down past Wadleigh Falls and Packers Falls to Piscassic Park, following the same artery that has linked New Hampshire's Seacoast towns to the Atlantic tides for centuries.