Alton, NH

Alton began as New Durham Gore, settled around 1770 by farmers working the uplands above the bay. It was incorporated in 1796 and named for Alton, a market town in Hampshire, England, though the residents had originally petitioned for the name "Roxbury." For its first half century it was a quiet farming town at the foot of the lake.

The railroad changed everything. In 1851 the Cocheco Railroad completed its line from Dover to Alton Bay, making this the rail-to-steamboat transfer point for the entire lake. Passengers stepped off the train and onto steamers bound for Wolfeboro, Center Harbor, and the Weirs. The lake's most famous boat was born here: the original 187-foot side-wheeler Mount Washington was launched at Alton Bay in 1872 and ran for 67 years, carrying more than 60,000 passengers a season at her peak. The old station still stands as a community center, and B&M Railroad Park remembers the line.

The railroad brought another Alton institution. In 1863 an Adventist group held its first camp meeting at the bay, conveniently right at the end of the tracks. Incorporated as the Alton Bay Camp Meeting Association in 1876, it grew into a village of tidy cottages that continues today as the Alton Bay Christian Conference Center.

Alton's knack for arrivals never went away. Each winter the bay hosts the ice runway, the only plowed runway on ice in the lower 48 registered with the FAA, where small planes land on the frozen lake, and each summer the bandstand, the pier, and Mount Major's trailhead keep the southern end of the lake busy.