Just This Side of Wild | Washington, Mountains, White, Through

YOU are here: Home

MWV, NH

Just This Side of Wild

Latest News

Just This Side of Wild

Written by Editor-in-Chief

Wednesday, 28 February 2007

Mount Washington Valley, NH

Heading up New Hampshire’s Route 16, I breathe relief as I finally get past the chain stores and ubiquitous coffee franchises. Streaming by the 15-foot tall Yankee Smokehouse pig, I nod familiarly at the near-complete carved totems and muse over which of the weathervanes sold nearby would best express the individuality of my roof ridge. Although the names on the billboards have changed and the businesses and homes have increased along the route, the ride seems remarkably similar to the ones I remember from childhood when we all piled into my parents’ Chrysler and headed for a summer-filled day at Six Gun City or Ruggles Mine.

North Conway History

     Commercial gives way to natural as stonewalls and trees become the predominant sights. Finally, I curve round the bend by Chocorua Lake and I’m transported even farther back–to a time I never lived, the age when members of the Hudson River School sojourned in the White Mountains, painting its natural beauty in hopes of igniting in viewers a vision of paradise. I see the scene through their eyes.
   Along with the Adirondacks, Niagara Falls and the Delaware Water Gap, the Mount Washington Valley inspired the beginnings of what has come to be called the Tourism Industry. But until just prior to the American Revolution, the Valley, as well as the rest of inland New Hampshire and Maine and much of Vermont, really was the frontier. Inhabited by the native Abenaki people, the area was viewed by French Canada and British New England as a no-man’s-land between the rival colonies and so remained unsettled by Europeans until after the British victory in the French and Indian War of the 1760s.
   As you drive through northern New England, you’ll notice that most of the towns were incorporated in the 1770s or later. Pioneers from southern New England and recent Scots-Irish immigrants began pouring into the region after the French and Indian War, but despite the rapid settlement of much of New Hampshire, the White Mountains retained a sense of wilderness well into the nineteenth century. Contemporary attractions like Six Gun City and Fort Splash Water Park, Clark’s Trading Post and Ruggles Mine still echo the area’s identification with a more rough and tumble time.

North Conway Senic Railroad

   British colonist Darby Field is said to have been the first “tourist” in the region. In 1642, the Exeter, New Hampshire man journeyed through the White Mountains with two native Abenakis. When they reached Agiocochook–“place where the Great Spirit dwells,” now named Mount Washington, Field’s companions, reluctant to disturb the Great Spirit, refused to accompany him to the top. Although his summit experiences are unrecorded, I do wonder if there is a relationship between them, his later insanity, and his premature death seven years later at the young age of 39.

   If Darby Field was the first White Mountain tourist, he was also the last for almost 200 years. Ironically, it was the tragic death of nine members of a pioneer family in 1826 that drew national attention and visitors to the area.
   Through the 18th century, the mountains of the Presidential Range were still terra incognita; the pass through the mountains which came to be known as Crawford Notch was simply considered a native legend. However, in 1771 a hunter named Timothy Nash discovered the notch and soon afterwards, Abel Crawford and his family set up innkeeping, giving their name to the highway through the Whites. Although Abel and his son Ethan blazed the first trail up Mount Washington in 1819, they did not see much increase to their business until tragedy struck the Willeys, another family of Notch innkeepers. In June 1826, after a long period of rains, the Willey family was buried by an avalanche. Ironically, fearful that a mudslide would bury their house, they and their guest had sought refuge in another building on the site. It was that refuge that was swept away, while their home was left untouched.

Echo Lake, North Conway, NH

   Macabre news travels fast and soon the attention of the entire country was on the White Mountains. The allure of tragedy and the untamed wilderness drew artists, writers and naturalists to the region. Benjamin Champney and other members of the Hudson River school of landscape painting often sojourned in North Conway and surrounding towns, sketching pages that would become winter’s work in studio.
   The affluent patrons of these artists and writers wanted to experience the wilderness themselves, and so the golden age of White Mountain tourism began. At first, access to the region via stagecoach was slow and laborious, but by the early 1850s, the railroad arrived, stimulating a construction boom on Mt. Washington and in the surrounding area. The Tip Top House, which was built at the summit in 1853, still stands and is the oldest mountaintop hostelry in the world. More buildings were built on the summit, forming a community called the “City Among the Clouds;” unfortunately, most of it was destroyed by fire in 1908. By the late 1850s and early 1860s, the Cog Railway and the Carriage Road to the top of Mt. Washington were completed, and the era of Grand Hotels commenced.
   The Mt. Washington Valley region, and the Conways particularly, have remained at the forefront of tourism trends throughout the years. The popularity of downhill skiing was enhanced when Austrian Hannes Schneider, the creator of the first instructional ski method, joined Cranmore Mountain as the head of its ski school in 1938. Crowds of winter enthusiasts arrived on special ski trains that ran regularly to the North Conway Railroad Station through the ‘50s, when construction of the Interstate Highway System began to bring motorists who enjoyed taking day trips. Outlet shopping magnates in the ‘80s and ‘90s capitalized on this and made North Conway one of the first destinations for outlet shopping, leading to job and population growth, a more year-round economy, a much larger tax base and a subsequent increase in public services.
   The ‘60s and ‘70s brought the Back to Nature Movement. It revitalized the Mount Washington Valley as people with respect for the land and rural traditions brought new energy to the region. Inspired by writers like Thoreau, artists, craftspeople, organic farmers and young entrepreneurs reversed the population hemorrhage occurring since the Industrial Revolution and transformed the local economy. Galleries, craft studios and interesting restaurants turned declining villages into travel destinations. The changes in quality of life have, in turn, brought increases in second and retirement home ownership with a subsequent infusion of new cash into the economy year-round.

North Conway Trains

Abel Crawford may have introduced tourism to the White Mountains, and the Willey family deaths morbidly fueled its growth, but, ultimately, it’s not the money that brings people to the Mount Washington Valley and it’s not the money that makes them stay. As it was for the earliest tourists, today’s visitors and dwellers are drawn to the Valley for the natural beauty, the inherent challenge of living on the fringe of wilderness, and the chance to develop one’s spirit. Leatherworker Mike Bajger states it simply. Conway is just a small town that gives everyone “a chance to live in a beautiful place and make a living doing what you love.”