If you're talking about the pages in a forum, rather than the pages in a thread, you can see the URL for the first summary page of the forum is:
http://www.quiltingboard.com/s-1-1.htm
You can change that second "1" to any page you like.
Change it to page 20 and hit "Enter" and go to messages from a few days ago.
Change it to page 500 and hit "Enter" and go to messages from April of last year.