Center Harbor, NH

Center Harbor was first settled in 1765 by Ebenezer Chamberlain, joined in 1767 by Colonel Joseph Senter, and was set off from New Hampton and incorporated in December 1797. Even the town embraces two stories about its name: it honors the Senter family (early records say "Senter Harbor"), and it happens to sit centered between the Meredith and Moultonborough harbors. Both are probably true.

For a village this small, it holds a remarkable piece of American history. On August 3, 1852, the first Harvard versus Yale boat race was rowed on Winnipesaukee just off Center Harbor. It was the first intercollegiate sporting event in the United States, bankrolled by the Boston, Concord and Montreal Railroad as a promotion. Harvard's Oneida beat Yale's Shawmut by about two lengths, and the trophy oars were presented by Franklin Pierce, who was elected President later that same year.

In the steamboat era Center Harbor was the lake's northern gateway. Travelers arrived aboard the Lady of the Lake and the Mount Washington, then boarded stagecoaches north to Conway and the White Mountains. The Senter House hotel, opened in the 1840s, slept around 150 guests and ran coaches between the steamboat landing and the trains at Meredith. It burned in 1887 and was rebuilt even grander the following year.

The hotels are gone, but the pattern they set held: Center Harbor has been a summer village for more than 170 years, perched between Winnipesaukee and Squam with a town beach, a bandstand, and a working sense of its own past.