The Squam Lakes region in New Hampshire has the distinction of being one of the first watershed-wide listings on The National Register of Historic Places in the USA – and for good reasons. First, the listing complements Squam’s ongoing conservation efforts to identify, protect, and preserve the historic and cultural resources that are an integral part of the Squam landscape including farmsteads, fields, and stonewalls, as well as rustic camps that define its human landscape. Preserving these cultural resources is another means to conserve the watershed, minimize development, and insure that the traditions of Squam are passed along to future generations.

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​The beauty, inspiration, and spiritual renewal qualities of the land and lakes was immediately obvious to the first adventuresome visitors who followed existing tribal paths around the lake to discover unspoiled vistas, great places to fish, and the isolated quiet sounds of only nature. Even today, first visitors seem amazed that Squam has been able to retain the same impact of place for the past four-hundred years.
 
To know why Squam Lake is so special is to understand its cultural history, especially the economic impact of two parallel migrations. Between 1850 and 1900, there were several cultural movements at work in America that greatly affected the economic structure of New England. As the Industrial Revolution was taking hold its once thriving agricultural base was moving west along with the population to New York and Ohio and being replaced with manufacturing jobs that created a demand for workers in New England cities. This significant movement from country farms to city factories created better opportunities for the children of farmers to gain personal prosperity but also left a void in the succession of generations to manage the farms. As a result, farmers were forced to sell their farmsteads and at relatively low prices.
 
Growth of the textile mills and the sheep farms that supplied them with wool employed thousands of workers that caused a migration of new residents to settle in New Hampshire, and the growth of tourism brought new and repeat visitors to Squam in steadily increasing numbers to experience this place of natural “paradise.”
 
Growth of the textile industry started in the early 1800s when the global center of textile manufacturing was Manchester, England. Ironically, by the 1860s, that distinction had shifted to Manchester, New Hampshire, where the Amoskeag Cotton & Woolen Manufacturing Company became the largest textile facility in the world. The primary reason for growth was a rapidly increasing supply of raw materials available in the United States. The number of sheep grew from 22,000,000 in 1850 to 40,000,000 in 1900. Cotton also increased from 2,850,000 bales in 1850 to 12,000,000 in 1900.
 
Amoskeag mills alone employed 17,000 workers and paid good wages especially compared to other available jobs most typically doing farm work. It seemed as if the sons and daughters of farmers in northern New Hampshire must have tired of “picking rocks” out of the fields every spring, and so in search of a better and more prosperous life, they abandoned the family farm and went to work in the mills of Manchester. With no one to either work the land or aspire to take over the family farm, owners had few options but to sell their land.
 
Other movements were also affected by the severe decline of farming. The community educational systems had generally coincided with the planting and harvest cycles so that teaching was practically conducted in the winter so that children were available to work in the fields during the summer and early fall months. As states became more populated, eventually the educational system was formalized to run from September to the end of May leaving the summer months for kid’s vacation. It was this dilemma of what to do with the kids that spawned the public camp movement and it all started first on Squam Lake. As tourism also developed, hotels were built on what was once farmland, and several of them promoted amenities especially for their typically well-to-do guests.
 
An interesting example were health cures believed to be the effects of clean, fresh air in a beautiful and peaceful environment. In the 19th century, hay fever was known as an “aristocratic” disease because it was almost exclusively associated with the elite. By the 1860s, “hay fever” and “hay asthma” had become widely accepted terms in the medical community, and a “trip to the mountains” was prescribed by doctors to get fresh, hay fever-free air.

 

Travel to Squam

It was a long, hard journey to travel to remote regions of New Hampshire, especially as far north as the White Mountains. At first, these wilderness destinations were accessed by horse drawn stagecoaches, but by the mid-1800s travel improved with the expansion of the railroad.

 

In 1849 the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad came to Holderness Village. (Note that this section of Holderness seceded in 1868 to become the Town of Ashland.) The first train station built in Holderness was used for both passenger and freight traffic, and in 1869 the railroad built a separate passenger-only station to accommodate the growing number of tourists. In 1891 the station was extensively remodeled to impress the more sophisticated tastes of its then current passengers.
 
In the early 1800s an efficient network of turnpikes and toll roads were built in New Hampshire that could accommodate a lighter and faster carriage. By 1826 Stephen Abbott and Lewis Downing of Concord were building some of the finest carriages in the world, the most famous of which was the Abbott and Downing Company “Concord Coach.” But travelers desired a more convenient and comfortable way to get from Boston to this burgeoning vacation destination and that led to a rapid expansion of the railroads. In 1840, the Boston and Maine railroad extended their line to Exeter, and by 1850 destinations included Nashua, Manchester, Dover, and Portsmouth. Within the cities, horse-drawn streetcars were used to transport travelers to their town and city destinations but by the 1890s they were replaced by electrified trolley cars.
 
For even more remote destinations, the first automobiles had a rough time driving over roads intended for four-legged animals. But as the number of autos rapidly increased, methods of road-building improved so that more New Hampshire destinations could more easily and rapidly conquered.