Squam Lake

Squam has worn several names. Early settlers recorded it as Casumpa and Kusumpy; in the early 1800s it took the Abenaki-derived Asquam, meaning "water," which the early 20th century shortened to Squam. Whatever it was called, its clear water and 67 islands made it a place people protected almost as soon as they found it.

Squam's biggest claim on American culture came early: the summer camp was more or less invented here. In 1881, Dartmouth student Ernest Balch founded Camp Chocorua on what is now Church Island, widely credited as America's first resident boys' summer camp. The camp lasted only until the late 1880s, but the movement it started swept the country. Its island is now home to the open-air Chocorua Island Chapel, and Rockywold-Deephaven Camps, founded in 1897 and 1901, still run on the Holderness shore much as they did over a century ago, icebox and all.

The lake's wildness is no accident. The Squam Lakes Association, founded in 1904, is one of the oldest lake protection groups in the region, and generations of owners have chosen conservation easements over development. That is why the shoreline you see from a kayak today looks remarkably like the one in the photographs from 1900.

Then, for one summer in 1980, Hollywood came. On Golden Pond was filmed on Squam, in and around Holderness, and the 1981 release won Academy Awards for Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. The movie made the lake famous for being unspoiled, and the lake has taken that as an assignment ever since.