Tuftonboro, NH

Tuftonboro holds a distinction no other New Hampshire town can claim: it was granted in 1750 to a single owner, John Tufton Mason, the heir to the vast Masonian land claim that once covered much of the province. Every other town went to a list of grantees; Tuftonboro went to one man, and it carries his middle name. Settlement came slowly, around 1780, and the town was incorporated on December 17, 1795.

The town grew as a scatter of villages rather than one center: Tuftonboro Corner, Center Tuftonboro, Melvin Village, and Mirror Lake. How Melvin Village got its name is a genuine local mystery. One tradition says early settlers found the name "Melvin" carved into a tree; another traces it to two Melvin brothers who passed through with Captain Lovewell's company in the early 1700s. Nobody has ever settled it, and that suits the town fine.

This was Abenaki country long before any grant. Several old Abenaki trails crossed the town, and the Abenaki Tower off Route 109 near Melvin Village, first dedicated in 1924, still marks their junction with a climb and a sweeping view of the lake.

Tuftonboro never got a railroad or an industrial center, and that is exactly why it looks the way it does. It stayed a town of farms, small mills, and summer places. YMCA Camp Belknap moved here in 1907 and is one of the oldest continuously operating summer camps in the country, and the coves of Winter Harbor and Melvin Bay filled with the quiet cottages and estates that still define the town's character.