Mount Shaw is a
mountain located in the towns of
Moultonborough
Moultonborough is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 4,918 at the 2020 census, up from 4,044 at the 2010 census. Moultonborough is bounded in large part by Lake Winnipesaukee in the southwest and to a lesse ...
and
Tuftonboro in
Carroll County,
New Hampshire, United States. It is part of the remains of an ancient volcanic
ring dike. With a summit elevation of , it is the highest of the
Ossipee Mountains
The Ossipee Mountains are a small mountain range in the New England state of New Hampshire, United States. The remains of an ancient volcanic ring dike,Hall, Anthony, ''Igneous Petrology,'' Longman, 1987 p.75 - 76 they lie north of Lake Winnipesa ...
.
The Ossipee ring-dike complex of central New Hampshire is a visible remnant of a 125 million year old
Cretaceous stratovolcano
A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava and tephra. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile with a summit crater and per ...
, a member of the later
White Mountain igneous province. The complex is circular as viewed on maps and has a diameter of . The ring-dike complex is easy to identify within web-browsed satellite images, with its southeast edge located about northwest of the town center of
Ossipee.
Although of only moderate elevation, the topographic isolation of the Ossipee Mountains gives Shaw of
prominence above the low ground separating it from the nearby
Sandwich Range, the southernmost peaks of the White Mountains, making it one of twelve peaks in New Hampshire with a prominence over .
Mount Shaw is located within the
Castle in the Clouds
Castle in the Clouds (or ''Lucknow'') is a 16-room mansion and mountaintop estate in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, opened seasonally to the public by the Castle Preservation Society. It overlooks Lake Winnipesaukee and the Ossipee Mountains fr ...
estate. Its north and southeast sides drain into the
Lovell and
Dan Hole rivers, thence into the
Ossipee River,
Saco River and the
Gulf of Maine. The southwest side drains into the
Melvin River which flows into
Lake Winnipesaukee, thence into the
Winnipesaukee River
The Winnipesaukee River is a river that connects Lake Winnipesaukee with the Pemigewasset and Merrimack rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire. The river is in the Lakes Region of central New Hampshire. The river's drainage area is approximately .
...
,
Merrimack River, and into the Gulf of Maine in
Massachusetts.
See also
*
List of mountains of New Hampshire
References
External links
*
"Mt. Shaw" FranklinSites.com Hiking Guide
Mountains of New Hampshire
Mountains of Carroll County, New Hampshire
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