The White Mountains in Pictures

In 1959 my parents decided it was time to move away from Long Island and find a more rural place to bring up the kids. New England was nearby and one day my mother was asked where she wanted to go. She replied New Hampshire. Since then she has decided that was Divine intervention because up to that point she didn’t know where she wanted to go.

That summer we spent travelling about in the mountains of NH looking for a new home. It wasn’t long before we decided on a little town north of the Notch, Franconia. Franconia was founded in 1764 by Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth and named because the landscape was similar to the Franconian Jura, in Bavaria. Franconia sits on top of an iron ore deposit and during the 18^th and 19^th centuries they were producing pig iron and bar iron for iron tools and implements. The “Old Iron Furnace” still exists. Franconia is nestled in the White Mountain of New Hampshire, surrounded by forests and little towns.

Mount Washington is the tallest mountain east of the Mississippi and is just a few miles away. Mt .Washington is home to some of the worst weather in the world. You can take the “Cog Railway” or the auto road to the top of Mt. Washington and there you will find buildings that are surrounded by boulders and literally chained to the ground to prevent the roofs from blowing away. Mt Washington has recorded sustained winds of over 200 Mph. and that’s not a tornado or a hurricane.

At the ripe old age of 9, I was not in favor of the move; I didn’t want to leave my friends and Grandparents behind for a new and strange place. My vote didn’t count for much and soon we were packing for the move. It didn’t take long and soon I was comfortable with our new home, in a few years I would consider New Hampshire my home and almost forget about New York. The rest is history.

Franconia Notch is quite a well known place, the state government controls the skiing on Canon Mountain and the various attractions in the Notch, and as a result there is little development. Unlike much of the country you can’t buy a time share condo in the Notch and you won’t find a bar or a convenience store at the foot of the mountain. You will find hiking trails, ski slopes, the Aerial Tramway and the Flume. Up until May 3, 2003 you could see the Old Man of The Mountains. In May 2003 the Old Man slid right off the mountain, after thousands of years hanging off Canon he is no more but they are putting up memorials. The Old Man was a series of 5 granite ledges that formed the profile of a face.

Daniel Webster, a New Hampshire native, wrote: "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

Nathaniel Hawthorne used the Old Man as his inspiration for his short story “The Great Stone Face”.

Robert Frost was a resident of Franconia from 1915 to 1920 and he published three widely acclaimed books while he was living there. Reading Frost's poems will give you a good feeling for the place, and Franconia hasn’t lost its connection to the past. Since 1977 a poet has been given a residency each summer at the Frost Place . Not many towns have their own resident poet!

Bette Davis had a home in nearby Sugar Hill and currently Bode Miller, the Olympic skier lives there.

When I was about 12 years old we had a warm spell during the winter and the snow coming down was very wet and heavy. Well we were using a snow thrower to clear the walks around the business and the wet snow built up in the output chute and fell on the ground well packed into rectangular bricks. My friends and I had a wonderful time building snow forts and lobbing snowballs at each other that month.

When you turn on a faucet in Franconia you get running ice water regardless of the time of the year. The local water supply is fed by melt water off the mountains and it never really warms up. If you look at the pictures of Echo Lake, notice that the beach is used far more than the lake; it’s just too damned cold to go in the water.

Northern New Hampshire is charming and when you get the chance it’s definitely worth the trip.

I've been collecting photos of New Hampshire for a long time, most of the photos shown are from my own camera however, if I have something posted that is yours please let me know and I will remove it or give you credit.