Forest Journal for NH Sunday News
August 19, 2007
The Other Side of Sunapee: From Trees to Skis
“My grandfather had bought his land in New Hampshire from local farmers in the last decade of the nineteenth century, at a time when many farms were being abandoned. The Lake Sunapee area was not a resort…”
– Naturalist John Hay from A Beginner’s Faith in Things Unseen
While “Sunapee” is now synonymous with a ski area and its namesake lake, the history of Mount Sunapee in the early years of the twentieth century includes a rich legacy of logging, forest conservation, hiking and early alpine skiing. Much of the local history is now nearly-forgotten. I recently guided a public hike up the Andrew Brook Trail in Newbury. The hike participants visited fragments of old growth forest and enjoyed stunning 40-mile views from White Ledge overlooking Lake Solitude.
Andrew Brook Trail is located on the east side of Mount Sunapee, a less well-known “other side” of the mountain. In rainy seasons the hiking path could more accurately be described as the Andrew Trail Brook. Lake Solitude is the virtual cradle of all Forest Society’s statewide conservation efforts and was once the epicenter of local hiking and skiing before becoming ground zero for a devastating chain of natural disasters that followed.
For those who can still remember the cartoon pet boy Sherman and his dog genius Mr. Peabody's "way-back" time machine to discover the real story behind historical events, let’s return to the 1890’s…
In the 1893 edition of an early tourism publication entitled “Summer Rest,” Professor John D. Quackenbos took up the cause of “New Hampshire Farms for Summer Homes” – an ingenious campaign which led to the creation of “Old Home Days” and the precursor to modern second home real estate guides found in our lakes regions to today. Quackenbos wrote: “This Sunapee region is one of several isolated pine and balsam grown sections, in which the tourist, when driven from the denuded White mountain district, may still find the rest and health which evergreen forests confer. Let the lovers of New Hampshire air and scenery here purchase summer homes.” Eighteen later in 1911, the new affluent residents of the Sunapee region where aghast to discover the scourge of the White Mountains - dreaded clear-cut logging by local lumber speculators – had begun to climb the steep slopes of Mount Sunapee. Philip W. Ayers, the first forester for the fledgling Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests wrote that while “Nearly the whole of Sunapee Mountain has been more or less cut-over for spruce timber… fortunately the dense cover of hardwoods has never been seriously broken... On the steep places, where logging is difficult both spruce and hardwoods are still standing in their primeval condition. These steep places are also most prominent in the view from the lake. The long sky-line has not been severely injured.”
With generous financial support from summer people, The Society purchased a 260-acre tract owned by International Paper Company extending east from the summit along a ridge to Lake Solitude and a second 400-acre tract then-owned by the Emerson Paper Company (with timber rights already conveyed to the Draper Manufacturing Company in Newport) on the lower, middle part of the mountain facing the lake. This first-ever Forest Society land protection campaign raised the princely sum of $7000 to purchase 660 acres including primeval forest and remaining areas of hardwood that had been culled of spruce timber on the steeper slopes. The campaign was waged in order to preserve the scenic beauty of the mountain.
By 1915, the Sunapee Branch of the Forest Society published the “Manual of Mount Sunapee” detailing geological, cultural and natural features of the peak. In time, the fledgling Forest Society raised additional funds to improve and expand its Sunapee Reservation. Logging slash was cleared, springs were cleaned and hiking trails were established to Lake Solitude where a rough log shelter and fireplace for camping were constructed at the base of White Ledge at the edge of the lake. By 1934, the Forest Society owned nearly 1200 acres on Mount Sunapee. A 1935 Manchester Union feature described the formation of The Newport Ski Club which established rough ski trails, built a cabin on the South Peak overlooking the lake and operated a ski school in a cottage located near the existing trailhead for the Newbury Trail below the bald ledge called the “Eagles Nest.”
The great September 1938 hurricane devastated the Sunapee region. Much of the mature timber on the mountain was blown-down. Naturalist John Hay, who spent his childhood summers on the lake, wrote that the Great Hurricane of ‘38 “hit our lakeside area head on. All those cathedral pines and others pluming by the lake shore for a hundred years or more went down like so many matchsticks. My father, who loved trees, came up from New York where he worked to view the damage, sat down by the road, and cried.” John Hay’s father, Clarence, was an ardent supporter and early leader of the Sunapee Branch of the Forest Society. A July 1939 map of Mount Sunapee shows a wide swath where 50 to 100% of the spruce and hardwood timber on the slopes of Sunapee was destroyed. The post-hurricane map identifies reliable brooks for water supplies for power pumps and smaller streams suitable for filling backpack pumps and suggests locations for fire trails and fire breaks for fighting potential future fires. As World War II took most able-bodied men overseas, the early hiking trails and ski trails disappeared beneath rotting remains of hurricane debris.
Sixty years ago – the afternoon of Sunday, October 19, 1947 - lightning stuck the drought stricken, tinder dry forest near White Ledge above Lake Solitude. The forest on Sunapee had been recovering for nine years after the hurricane but ample dry fuel remained on the mountain during one of the worst droughts in New England history. The Sunapee fire was first reported sometime after 3 a.m. on October 21 by a bus driver on the morning Concord to Claremont run along Rte. 103 in South Newbury. Over the next nine days more than 500 men fought a wild, inferno; a wind-driven blaze that burned eight miles south along Sunapee Ridge downslope to within two miles of the village of Goshen on the west side of Sunapee. Rain on October 30 ended a month-long drought when fires blackened more than 20,000 acres of woodlands in New Hampshire – the worst forest fire month in the history of records kept by the State Forestry Department. The following year in 1948, the Forest Society transferred its Sunapee Forest Reservation to the State of New Hampshire which hoped to develop a modern ski area including a gondola and wide groomed slopes.
Remarkably, fragments of old growth forest remain near the hiking trails which access Lake Solitude. The remote “East Bowl” area outside the ski area and below the final mile of the 49-mile long Greenway Trail connecting Mt. Monadnock to the summit of Mount Sunapee includes old growth yellow birch and spruce that would have blown-down in 1938 or burned-over in 1947 had it been the will of the wind.
The recent hike helped celebrate the successful completion of a Forest Society campaign to purchase a conservation easement which permanently protects an 1,100 acre tract of working forestland recently purchased by Northwoodlands, a local forest management company that already owns adjacent Sunapee timberlands. While it may seem ironic in light of Sunapee’s history that timber interests are helping to protect the open space that hosts a critical link in the Andrew Brook Trail, it is no surprise that the Town of Newbury and local residents in the Sunapee Region were generous in their support for continuing a hundred-year legacy of land conservation on Mount Sunapee - private efforts by local residents for the greater public good.
While much has changed on the slopes overlooking Lake Sunapee in the past century, the rich forest history of the “other side of Sunapee” has changed the fortunes but not the profile of that iconic peak!
Naturalist Dave Anderson is director of education for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. He may be reached via e-mail at danderson@forestsociety.org or through the Forest Society’s web-site: www.forestsociety.org