Published in 1949, Franconia Notch Reservation—White Mountains, New Hampshire, invites readers on a lively tour through one of New Hampshire’s most celebrated landscapes. Written in the conversational style of a letter to a friend, the letter-booklet recounts a visit to Franconia Notch’s iconic attractions, including the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway, the Old Man of the Mountain, Echo Lake, Profile Lake, and the Flume Gorge. Along the way, readers encounter colorful local stories—from Aunt Jess Guernsey’s discovery of the Flume to firsthand accounts of the devastating 1948 landslide on Mount Lafayette. Equal parts travel guide, promotional piece, and snapshot of postwar tourism in the White Mountains, it captures a time when Franconia Notch was emerging as one of New England’s premier destinations for sightseeing, recreation, and outdoor adventure.

Published in 1828, Martin Field’s “Notice of the Profile Mountain in New Hampshire” is among the earliest known published descriptions of the natural rock formation that would later become famous as the Old Man of the Mountain. Writing after a visit to Franconia in 1827, Field describes the Profile as a “rare phenomenon,” noting how the human likeness appears strikingly clear when viewed from the north yet vanishes almost immediately when seen from another angle. His brief account also provides an early description of the surrounding landscape, including Mount Lafayette, Franconia Notch, and the dense forests that covered the mountainsides. Written decades before railroads, grand hotels, and organized tourism transformed the region, the article offers a fascinating glimpse into how early nineteenth-century travelers and naturalists viewed one of New Hampshire’s most iconic landmarks.

In October 1981, The Christian Science Monitor explored a heated controversy brewing over the skies above the White Mountains, where two Air National Guard units proposed a Military Operating Area (MOA) for high-speed, low-altitude training flights—a plan that struck deep into the region’s identity as a place of quiet recreation and scenic beauty. What thrilled pilots as valuable preparation for possible combat scenarios alarmed hikers, campers, and local residents, who argued that sudden, engine-throbbing fighter sorties—sometimes as low as 100 feet above ground—could disrupt the natural experience and even threaten wildlife habitats. With voices from community advocates and public officials opposing the proposal and urging the Air Force to consider alternatives, the story captures a moment when local quality of life, tourism, and environmental stewardship clashed with military training needs over one of New Hampshire’s most cherished landscapes.

Published in The Yale Literary Magazine in November 1861, Howard Kingsbury’s “A Summer Experience” offers a vivid, first-hand account of the Yale Glee Club’s time in New Hampshire’s White Mountains at the height of the region’s 19th-century tourism era. Kingsbury writes of their stay at the Profile House, then one of the most celebrated grand hotels in the mountains, and of excursions into the surrounding landscape, including a visit to John Merrill at the Pool at the Flume. Blending personal reflection with careful observation, the essay captures the rhythms of travel, hospitality, and natural wonder that defined the New England experience for generations of summer visitors—and provides a rare glimpse of places and people that shaped the history of our region.

In her 1959 LIFE magazine article “Life in Washington,” Rachel Adams—wife of Lincoln native and former New Hampshire governor Sherman Adams—offered a rare, personal glimpse into the rhythms of political life from the perspective of a woman who carried the White Mountains with her into the nation’s capital. Writing at the height of her husband’s influence in the Eisenhower administration, she wove reflections on Washington’s social landscape with the steady values of her New England upbringing, shaped by the mill town of Lincoln and the rugged quiet of the Upper Pemigewasset Valley. Her piece is more than a Washington diary; it is a reminder that our region’s stories travel—sometimes all the way to the White House—carried by the people who call this place home.

By Jim Hamilton (Spring 1992, The Resuscitator) NOTE: If you’d like to start at the beginning, head on over to Bearding the Old Man—Part One Collecting information about the 1955 bearding of the Old Man of the Mountains led us to David “Stretch” Hays, trailmaster of the AMC trail crew that summer who had mentioned […]

Tucked along a bend of the Pemigewasset River, Woodstock, New Hampshire is a town that has been rewritten more than once—first as Fairfield, then as Peeling, and finally as the mountain village we know today. Its story is one of reinvention shaped by stubborn granite, fast water, and the long reach of the logging era that once swept through the White Mountains. From the early settlers who tried to coax a living from thin hillside soils, to the rivermen guiding vast log drives down to Lowell, to the boardinghouses and grand hotels that welcomed summer travelers off the Boston & Maine trains, Woodstock grew in fits and starts, pulling itself down from the hilltop and toward the river that ultimately defined it. In the shadow of Mount Cilley, where cellar holes of old Peeling sleep beneath second-growth trees, you can still trace the outlines of a town that has lived many lives—and continues to negotiate its place between wilderness and the world beyond it.

Little is known about the first attempt to beard the Old Man of the Mountain because there are no known photographs or newspaper reports to document the event and the principal players included the celebrated son of the other “Old Man”—Joe Dodge—who would not have taken kindly to knowing that son Brookie “Hirum” went AWOL from Lakes of the Clouds to pull off the daring stunt. It’s interesting that the secret was so well kept that, years later, a second bearding party knew that Hirum and an accomplice had attempted to attach a tree to the Old Man’s chin, but were probably unsuccessful. After all, if a tree falls in a forest with nobody around to hear it, does it actually make a sound?