Holderness, NH

Holderness was first granted in 1751, but the French and Indian War kept settlers away, so it was rechartered as New Holderness in 1761, named for Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness, a British Secretary of State. The first settlers arrived in 1763, and the "New" was dropped in 1816. Samuel Livermore, New Hampshire's attorney general and later a US Senator, moved to his Holderness lands in 1775 and became the town's dominant figure; Trinity Church, raised on his land in 1797, still stands with the Livermore family in its churchyard.

The industrial village on the Squam River split off as the town of Ashland in 1868, leaving Holderness the lake. That turned out to be the better inheritance. By 1890 Holderness was an established summer resort: tourists left the train at Ashland and took steamers up the river to hillside hotels like the Asquam House on Shepard Hill, whose summer colony is now a National Register historic district. Holderness School, the Episcopal prep school, opened on the old Livermore homestead in 1879.

Squam's wild character was defended early and deliberately, by the Squam Lakes Association from 1904 onward, and the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, founded in 1966, opened its trails in 1969 and has taught generations of kids what a loon actually sounds like up close.

Then Hollywood confirmed what locals knew. In the summer of 1980, On Golden Pond was filmed on Squam Lake, and the 1981 release won Academy Awards for Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda. The town has spent the decades since politely declining to become famous, which is exactly why people love it.