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How Mount Mitten Got Its Name

New Hampshire’s White Mountains carry many household names. But tucked among the familiar sounding Jefferson Notch and Mount Dartmouth is the oddly named Mount Mitten. You might think it’s so named because it’s shaped like a mitten. But you’d be wrong.

Mount Mitten’s name is intertwined with the very earliest history of American colonists’ exploration and development of the White Mountains. It was named by two pioneers, Timothy Nash and Benjamin Sawyer.

In the White Mountains, New Hampshire, by William Louis Sonntag

The Sawyer and Nash names appear on many geographic features in Northern New Hampshire, Sawyer’s Rock, Nash Stream, Sawyer Pond, and the settlement they established, Nash & Sawyer Location.

But Mount Mitten got its name because Nash, hunting in the area, lost a mitten there. And why was that mitten so significant? Because in losing it he became a very wealthy man.

Nash was hunting in the mountains in 1771, tracking a moose, when he got disoriented. To get his bearings he climbed high up in a tree. In the process, he lost his mitten. But up in that tree he also caught sight of Crawford Notch, the passage that would allow for easier access to northern lands in Coos County.

The notch was known to settlers, since Indians had spoken of it. But no one could find it until Nash.

Mount Mitten

The young pioneer traveled to Portsmouth for a meeting with royal Governor John Wentworth. The governor was skeptical, but he made a deal with Nash. If the young man could get a horse through the forest from Lancaster, N.H. Wentworth would give him a large parcel of land at the top of the notch.

Nash and his friend Benjamin Sawyer accepted the challenge. They obtained a horse in Lancaster and brought him to the governor, but not without some difficulty. At some points the horse had to be loaded into a sling and lowered over boulders as the pair made their way through Crawford Notch.

Nevertheless, the governor kept his deal and gave Nash his land. But he included a provision that he construct a road through the north and bring families to live in the area. Nash did just that. And because of his good fortune he gave Mount Mitten, the 3058-foot peak in the Dartmouth Range, its name.

Thanks to The History of the White Mountains by Lucy Crawford, Henry Wheelock Ripley. This story updated in 2022.

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Six New England Ghost Towns

Though people typically think of ghost towns as belonging to the Old West, New England actually has plenty. Villages that once supported schools and post offices disappeared, leaving only cellar holes and maybe an abandoned building or two.

The Great 1938 Hurricane created several ghost towns along the coast. War, recession and lousy farmland created other ghost towns. A highway and a reservoir produced more.

Below, we describe six of the most interesting New England ghost towns to explore. In 2017, we added a list of several others in each state. If you know of other ghost towns, please mention them in the comment section.

The Gay City Ghost Town

Split rock formation in Gay City State Park.

Gay City in Hebron, Conn., was anything but. The village survived for 80 years until drunkenness, feuds, business failures and murder turned it into a ghost town.

Elijah Andrus founded Gay City as a community of Hartford religious zealots in 1796 . It attracted about 25 families, mostly from the Gay family.

Religious leaders served rum to all male members of the community during religious services, either to lure worshipers or as part of the sect’s religious practice. The result: drunken brawls. A group of the settlement’s first families packed up and left. Andrus abandoned his followers in 1800. John Gay became president of the community.

In 1804 the settlement earned the name Factory Hollow when it built a woolen mill along the Blackledge River. The mill burned down in 1830, triggering another exodus. A paper mill briefly revitalized the town.

Many of Gay City’s remaining young men died in the Civil War. Then the paper mill burned, and the town pretty much disappeared. But not before lurid tales of murder circulated.

Just before the Civil War, a popular old jewelry peddler disappeared, perhaps murdered by a village charcoal burner. A human skeleton, believed to be the peddler’s remains, were found in a charcoal pit.

When a teenage boy was late for work at a blacksmith forge one day, his boss made sure he would never be late again. He murdered the boy with a butcher knife. No one was ever convicted of either murder.

Gay City’s former existence is suggested by stone foundations, several grass-filled cellar holes and a few tombstones. Since 1944 it’s been a state park, Gay City State Park, with 10 miles of walking trails through forest and swamp, a small beach and swimming area.

Other Connecticut Ghost Towns

Johnsonville Village started out as a thriving mill town and became a tourist attraction after the mill shut down and its inhabitants left. In 2017, the Philippine church Iglesia ni Cristo bought Johnsonville Village.

The 1938 hurricane wiped out Little Danbury, a collection of rustic beach cottages on Long Island Sound in southeast Fairfield.

Rumors of ghost activity plague Dudleytown, an 18th-century village in Cornwall abandoned in the 19th century. Philanthropists maintain the land as a private land trust.

People call Bara-Hack ‘the Village of Voices,’ because they hear voices in the place where the Pomfret village was abandoned in the 1890s.

Perkins, Maine

The ferry to Perkins

Perkins, Maine, abandoned in the 1940s, lies between Richmond and Dresden. It includes Swan Island, Little Swan Island and some tidal flats within the Kennebec River.

Perkins once had nearly 100 residents. They built ships, farmed and harvested ice. Wealthy summer people discovered the island and built summer homes there. Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the China trader, was its most famous resident. He paid to have the town incorporated, and so the town took its name from him.

By 1918 the population dwindled to 61, and the town was disincorporated. The Great Depression and pollution in the Kennebec River delivered the final blows. No one lived there by 2000.

Preservationists are trying to preserve 13 the buildings in Perkins, some of which date to the 1750s. The town is protected as the Steve Powell Wildlife Management Area.

Other Maine Ghost Towns

Flagstaff got its name from the flagstaff Benedict Arnold planted on the Arnold Expedition to Quebec. A dam on the Dead River submerged the town in 1950.

Riceville in East Hancock grew up around a tannery, then died after the tannery burned.

Ligonia Village was once a neighborhood in South Portland. Today it’s a ghost neighborhood comprised of oil tanks and a cemetery on the spur from Main Street to Route 295 or Veteran’s Bridge.

Whitewash Village, Mass.

Monomoy Lighthouse

A Cape Cod ghost town disappeared for the usual reason coastal villages disappear: A hurricane blew it away.

Whitewash Village on Monomoy Island off Chatham was established in 1710 with a tavern for sailors. The town took its name from whitewashed rocks, traces of which people could still see in 1864.

The town grew to about 200 people, who fished in the deep natural harbor. They packed and dried cod and mackerel for markets in Boston and New York, and they sold lobster to mainlanders.

The town at its height had a school, for 16 students, cottages, storage sheds perfumed with fish oil and the Monomoy House, a lodging house and hotel.

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine described Whitewash Village in 1864. “Around the light-house are two or three cottages, and still a mile beyond stands “Whitewash Village,” composed of the Monomoy House (a weather-beaten, barracky, amphibious structure, fishermen and coasters’ fitting-store on the first floor, lodging-house and excursionists’ inn on the second.”

Harpers called the Monomoy House ‘amphibious’ because the sea came part way up the front stairs during certain winter tides. “The inmates go a visiting in boats,” reported the magazine. Sometimes the boys had to wade to school, carrying the girls.

“In fact, the little territory dotted by Monomoy village is a battle-ground between sand on the one side, and wind and water on the other,” wrote Harper’s.

Sometime in the 19th century, Monomoy Village lost the battle to the wind and water.The only evidence of it that remains is Monomoy Lighthouse.

Other Massachusetts Ghost Towns

The War of 1812 created Dogtown, located between Rockport and Gloucester on Cape Ann. People moved inland to avoid attack and then moved back to the coast, leaving Dogtown a ‘wilderness of pirates and witches.’ A millionaire named Roger Babson hired unemployed stonecutters to carve inspirational sayings into Dogtown’s boulders.

Catamount in Colrain once had a schoolhouse said to be the first to fly the American Flag. Catamount is now a state forest.

You need diving gear to find four ghost towns in Worcester County: the Quabbin Reservoir submerged Dana, Enfield, Greenwich and Prescott starting in 1938.

A New Hampshire Logging Town

Lincoln, NH, sister to Zealand

Once overgrown logging camps, inhabitants left the White Mountain ghost towns after they stripped the mountains bare of trees.

But follow Route 302 through Crawford Notch, you’ll come upon what used to be the village of Zealand. From 1875 to 1885, Zealand had a post office, a school and 80 to 250 men who lived there to cut trees for timber baron J.E. Henry of Lincoln.

The relentless Henry was the region’s largest lumber operator, working from 1881 to his death in 1912

His men worked 11-hour days regulated by 47 posted rules, 28 of which concerned the proper care of horses. Mr. Henry paid each of his men in person while carrying a gun on his hip, and he brooked no arguments.

Henry wanted to leave Zealand, sell the mountain it sat on and move to nearby Lincoln. A hotel company planned to build the Mount Washington Hotel facing Henry’s mountain. Henry offered to sell the mountain for a price too high for the hotel company.

Henry threatened to put up charcoal kilns and burn every tree in sight. He sent in a crew of men to start cutting trees and hauling bricks. The hotel company, fearing a burned-over mountain would spoil their venture, paid the timber baron his price.

From 1886-1903 fires destroyed the town and the valley. Very little evidence of the village remains among the trails and campgrounds, which include Sugarloaf.

Other New Hampshire Ghost Towns

Johnson grew up around a sawmill and Little Canada around a mill and a kiln in Lincoln, another town that grew up from J.E. Henry’s logging operations. Residents abandoned Johnson and Little Canada, but Lincoln survives.

Another logging ghost town, Livermore, lies about 16 miles west of North Conway off U.S. Route 302.

Jonathan Warner and some others founded the town of Kilkenny in 1774 in northenmost Coos County. Named after Kilkenny, Ireland, no one lived there as of the 2010 census.

Hanton City, R.I.

Hanton City along Route 116 in Smithfield, R.I., started as a colonial settlement also known as the Lost City.

Its overgrown remains consist of several stone foundations, a defunct dam, scattered stone walls and a burial site with three readable names: Alfred, Eliza and Emor Smith.

There’s little else to show a town once existed there, save for Hanton City Trail in Smithfield and Hanton Road in North Smithfield.

Some say a small band of runaways from slavery built Hanton City after choosing to live in the wilds of Smithfield.

Others say the town quarantined people with a communicable disease.

Still others believe Loyalists founded Hanton City during the American Revolution. The patriots exiled several Tories to Smithfield and Glocester in 1776; perhaps they went to Hanton City. Or perhaps a group of Loyalists decided to form an enclave of like-minded people.

Whatever the reason, the land is now owned by the Dow Chemical Company.

Another Rhode Island Ghost Town

The Hurricane of 1938 turned the beach community of Napatree Point into a wildlife preserve.

Lewiston, Vt.

The village of Lewiston, Vt., ca 1870

Lewiston was a thriving village in Norwich, Vt., with mills and a railroad station across from Hanover, N.H.

For many years coal was shipped to Dartmouth along the railroad, until the college switched to heating oil in the 1920s. By 1930, Lewiston’s mills had all closed and commercial activity moved to White River Junction.

Settlers came to Lewiston in 1765 and named it after Dr. Joseph Lewis, who arrived two years later. In 1950, construction of the Wilder Dam flooded the village’s low-lying farms. In 1967, bulldozers turned Lewiston into a ghost town when they leveled it to make way for a feeder road to Interstate 91.

The railroad and the station survive, unused. Dr. Joseph Lewis’s house is now a pottery studio owned by Dartmouth College. A small road off McKenna Road, Lewiston Hill Road, comprises what was once the village center.

Other Vermont Ghost Towns

Bigfoot supposedly roams Glastonbery Mountain, once home to the logging town of Glastonbery. People mysteriously disappeared on the mountain and Glastonbery turned into a ghost town.

Joseph Ricker founded the farming community of Ricker Basin between Bolton and Waterbury in the 18th century. The steep, rocky soil made farming difficult, and farmers eventually abandoned Ricker Basin.

Photos: Monomoy Lighthouse By Zachary Cava, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Northeast Region via Wikipedia; Hanton City CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1552179; Lewiston, Vt., courtesy the Rauner Special Collections Library.

This story about ghost towns was updated in 2021.

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The Little Canadas of New England

Dozens of Little Canadas have contributed a significant but often ignored part of the character and history of New England since the 19^th century.

Young millworkers from Manchester’s Little Canada, 1909. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

They’ve given us magnificent churches, Catholic hospitals and sports heroes like Springfield’s Leo Durocher and Woonsocket’s Nap LaJoie. They’ve produced writers like Annie Proulx, who comes from Norwich, Conn., and chefs like Emeril LaGasse, a native of Fall River.

People from the Little Canadas have toiled in textile and paper mills, defense factories and logging camps. They’ve sent politicians like Norm D’Amours from New Hampshire and Fernand St. Germain from Rhode Island to Congress.

Even today, New England’s Little Canadas celebrate midnight Mass at Christmas with pancakes afterward and serve poutine – French fries, gravy and cheese curds – in restaurants and social clubs.

Leo Durocher

Creating Little Canadas

By 1990, Massachusetts had the highest number of Franco-Americans in the United States, with 310,636 – and nearly half of all Franco-Americans in New England. New Hampshire ranked fifth, with 118,857, Connecticut sixth with 110,426 and Maine eighth with 110,209. French speakers comprise at least 14 percent of the residents of Coos County in New Hampshire and Androscoggin and Aroostook counties in Maine.

They didn’t all come at once. Some were expelled by the British in the Great Roundup of 1755. Some fled the fighting between the French and British in the Patriots Rebellion of 1837.

In the 19^th century, most French Canadians who left for New England’s Little Canadas were young adults fleeing poverty, unemployment and backbreaking toil on subsistence farms.

Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French-speaking Canadians left Québec to work in New England’s factories, mills, potato fields and logging camps. The mythical figure Paul Bunyan was a Franco-American ( ‘Bunyan’ is similar to the Québécois phrase “bon yenne!“).

By 1850, most Franco-Americans lived in Vermont, named from the French words vert mont, or green mountain. The state’s most famous Franco-American export was the wildly popular singer and actor, Rudy Vallee, born in Island Pond. Even today, 26 percent of the residents of Canaan, Vt., speak French.

Work

By 1860, another 18,000 Canadian immigrants moved to New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. This time, the economic boom after the Civil War attracted waves of French Canadians. They came to the huge textile mills in Lewiston, Maine, in Woonsocket, R.I., in Berlin and Manchester, N.H., and in Lowell, Worcester, Holyoke, New Bedford and Fall River, Mass. They were the only major ethnic group to arrive in the United States by train.

Wife and children of a poor French-Canadian potato farmer in the St. John Valley, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Wife and children of a poor Franco-American potato farmer in the St. John Valley, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

By 1875, Quebec started luring its young people back by offering them free land. As many as half returned. They were called Canucks and resented by the Irish, who had arrived earlier and viewed them as interlopers willing to work for lower wages and take their mill jobs, tedious though they might be.

By 1900 they were still clustered in crowded Little Canadas like Woonsocket and Biddeford, Maine, both 60 percent Franco-American. The densest Little Canadas, not surprisingly, are along the Maine-Canada border in the St. John Valley. There, 79 percent of Frenchville residents speak French.

20th-Century

In the first decade of the 20^th century, the population of Salem, Mass., was more than one-fifth Quebecois and their children. In South Salem’s Little Canada, children attended French schools like Sainte-Chrétienne. They built French churches like Église Sainte-Anne and they started French businesses like St. Pierre’s Garage, Ouellette Construction and Soucy Insurance.

St. Ann’s Church complex, Woonsocket.

Franco-Americans were almost all Roman Catholic, and strict ones at that. They believed that abandoning the French language meant abandoning their religion, and they clung to their language and customs longer than many other immigrant communities. They called it la survivance. Battles often erupted between French parishes and the Irish-dominated parishes over their desire to hire French-speaking priests.

Life in Little Canadas

Life in the Little Canadas revolved around the neighborhood parish and the home, where families were often large. By the 1920s, Little Canadas supported thriving French-language newspapers, Catholic schools, social clubs and fraternal organizations. They established Rivier College in Nashua and Assumption College in Worcester. They built the first Catholic hospital in Maine, St. Mary’s in Lewiston, and started the first credit union in the United States, also named St. Mary’s, in Manchester, N.H.

St. Ann Roman Catholic Church was built with nickels and dimes from Franco-American millworkers and painted with such magnificent frescoes it earned the nickname ‘the Sistine Chapel of Woonsocket.’

Manchester, N.H., had perhaps the most well-known of the Little Canadas on its west side, where Peyton Place author Grace Metalious and Revlon founder Charles Revson grew up. West Sider Rene Gagnon participated in the most celebrated flag raising in history, on Iwo Jima during World War II.

Jack Kerouac

The most famous Franco-American author, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac or Jack Kerouac, was born in Lowell’s Little Canada.

Tensions with the Irish continued into the 1920s, as well as with the Ku Klux Klan. Anti-Catholicism fueled the resurgence of the Klan in New England, especially Maine, and Franco-Americans stayed in their houses when the Klan roamed through Little Canadas looking for trouble.

By then, New England’s mills were in decline, and Quebec’s economy was booming. Franco-Americans began to drift back to Canada, emptying out some of New England’s Little Canadas. Finally, World War II ended their cultural isolation.

This story about New England’s Little Canadas was updated in 2022.

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Murder in the North Woods: Coos County’s Treacherous David Robbins

David Robbins was nobody’s idea of a good man. But he was a legend of the New Hampshire woods, made infamous by his own black-hearted deeds.

Robbins was a murderer, and 175 years ago he struck fear into the hearts of the people of Northern New Hampshire and Maine – few as they were.

In the fall of 1826, David Robbins, Abner Hinds of Milan and Hezekiah Cloutman ventured down along the Androscoggin River, which winds through Northern New Hampshire and Maine. They were trapping sable.

These were relatively early days for settlement in Coos County, N.H. Hinds was described as one of the wealthiest settlers in the area, well-liked and successful. Cloutman hailed from Rochester, N.H. He lived on his own in the North Country because his wife declined to join him. She preferred the comforts of civilization.

David Robbins

David Robbins, on the other hand, came from an established, if somewhat frightening, family. Originally from Beverly, Mass., one member of the family was long considered insane, and his neighbors up north would sometimes have to stay up nights watching for him out of fear that he would light fire to their property.

Robbins was a skilled hunter and trapper, but also the subject of unsavory rumors. One story holds that he had killed a child and used him as bait.

The three men proceeded along the Androscoggin River, deep into the north woods. There they laid out a line of traps 20 miles long and proceeded to have a successful summer.

As the first snow flew, Hezekiah Cloutman and Abner Hinds made one last trip to check their traps, leaving Robbins behind at their base camp to guard over the furs. When they returned, they would all proceed 60 miles back to civilization in Lancaster, N.H. But things didn’t go according to plan.

Dark Plans

When Cloutman and Hinds returned to the camp, they found it completely burned. Robbins had loaded up the furs and left them with no supplies in the freezing late autumn. Cloutman and Hinds, however, were tough characters in their own right and they didn’t perish in the woods. When they got back down to Lancaster, they sued Robbins and prevailed. Some accounts say Robbins owed them as much as $350 for what he had done.

In 1828, Robbins made a proposition. He would go trapping and hunting again with the men and use the proceeds of the trip to pay his debts. Abner Hinds took him up on the offer, and this time the two men headed into the woods accompanied by Hinds’ 15-year-old son. Hezekiah Cloutman did not join them. The journey met with early success. However, Robbins had darker plans this time.

The men had traveled roughly 50 miles up to Little Kennebago Lake in Maine when Robbins turned on Hinds and shot him. He then killed the boy with a hatchet. When the two bodies were found, it didn’t take long to put two and two together, and the local officials raised a party to go find Robbins, which wouldn’t be easy as he knew the woods well.

Arrest

But Sheriff Lewis Loomis was the man for the job. Described as strongly built and muscular, he had a reputation as a strongman. He would wrestle all comers at annual musters and fairs, and was undefeated. He recruited two men, Hezekiah Parsons, Jr., and Daniel G. Ellingwood to join him. (The town paid $15 for the work.)

They turned to Hezekiah Cloutman, who knew Robbins’ habits from their past trips, to assist as a guide. The men went in to the woods and for the next 30 days searched for Robbins. As autumn approached, they heard word that Robbins had surfaced at his home, but by the time they got there he had left. Then they heard he was travelling up the Magalloway River. They went after him, and the men found his belongings. They managed to get between Robbins and his rifle. Loomis jumped on Robbins’ back and the men tied up the prisoner.

Robbins fought furiously, and the men had to tie him in the floor of their boat as they returned via the river out of fear that he would try to tip the craft over and drown them all.

The arrest was celebrated and Robbins was locked in the jail in Lancaster to await trial. Robbins had friends and family that stood by him, however. They managed to slip him some tools, and he steadily picked away at the bars in his cell. As the day of his trial neared, one morning the jailer found the cell empty. Robbins had broken the bars out of his window and escaped.

Out of Jail

The jailer explained that Robbins had successfully hidden his work by hanging a blanket over the window, complaining of cold drafts. Few people believed the jailer wasn’t in on the escape.

No one else in the area ever saw David Robbins again, other than perhaps his confederates. People lived in fear of his returning for years. Some stories circulated that he had murdered someone in Canada and hanged there, but no official record turned up to support it.

His story was a popular tale for the newspapers of the era. It even appeared in fictionalized form in 1857’s Gaut Gurley: Or, The Trappers of Umbagog. A Tale of Border Life by David Thompson.

Tip of the hat for details of Robbins life goes to History of Coos County, New Hampshire. W. A. Fergusson & Co. This story was updated in 2021.

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The Berlin Millworkers Who Brought Skiing Fever to New Hampshire

Bode Miller might never have won all those Olympic medals had it not been for the Berlin millworkers who started New Hampshire’s craze for skiing.

Miller grew up in Franconia, 40 miles from Berlin and 150 years after the first Norwegian immigrants arrived to work in the sawmills and logging camps along the Androscoggin River.

Because of those Berlin millworkers and their passion for skiing, resort operators stock up on booze in November. Olympic hopefuls pack their goggles and skis to compete in selection events. And emergency rooms order extra X-ray films and crutches.

All because of the Scandinavian immigrants who actually liked winter.

Berlin Millworkers

Scandinavian immigrants started arriving in Berlin in droves in the 1840s to work on building railroads. Many settled permanently in the area, taking advantage of the jobs available in the mills. They viewed the hospitable winter climate as an added bonus.

Naturally, they brought one of their traditional sports to their new country. Skis at the time were used for both recreation and transportation, as they were often the best way to get around Berlin’s snowy streets.

A ski jumping competition in Norway

In 1872, the Berlin millworkers created the Berlin Mills Ski Club. Known as the Skilubben Club, it started with a small jump. Norwegian skiers joined to find competition. Club members spoke Norwegian during business meetings, and adopted the colors of the Norwegian and U.S. flags. Only Scandinavians living in Coos County qualified for club membership.

Before long, the club gained new members, both Scandinavian and non-Scandinavian. They all united in their love of strapping wooden slats on their feet, jumping down hills and trying to avoid trees.

Soon after its founding, the club changed its name to the Nansen Ski Club in honor of Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer. Nansen was a hero to many Norwegians because of his adventures around the world. Their faith in him was well-rewarded, as he would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938 for his work aiding refugees.

Fridtjof Nansen (l) visits Berlin, New Hampshire to meet Nansen Ski Club Members, including Alf Halvorson (r)

Olympic Skiing

Into the 1900s, the club continued to grow. It received a further boost when a young Scandinavian-American, Alf Halvorson, took the presidency at the age of 18. Halvorson, born in 1899, skied from the time he could walk, and he had a passion for winter sports.

He became a coach for the U.S. Olympic ski team, and a successful sports promoter, eventually managing the Hinsdale Raceway.

Ski fever then spread throughout New Hampshire. For farmers struggling during the Great Depression, putting up a tow rope and lodging weekend meant a little extra money.

The Nansen Ski Jump in Berlin

In 1937, thanks largely to the club’s efforts, skiers competed in the Olympic ski jumping trials in Berlin, as it had the tallest ski jump in the eastern United States.

In 1929, perhaps the greatest honor in the ski club’s history occurred when Nansen himself visited Berlin. The city rolled out the red carpet and held a parade in his honor.

The Nansen Ski Club remains in operation today. You can read about their history here.

Skiing in Hanover, N.H., in 1936. Photo courtesy National Archives.

The club also made one major improvement in the lives of non-skiers. In promoting the Berlin winter carnival to outsiders, the group persuaded the State of New Hampshire to plow the road through Pinkham Notch for the first time ever. The state has kept it clear each winter ever since.

Images: Nansen Ski Jump by Sirberlinnh – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56882483. This story was updated in 2022.

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