Wolfeboro, NH

Wolfeboro was granted in 1759, at the height of the French and Indian War, and named for British General James Wolfe, who had just fallen victorious at Quebec. The land itself was hardly new to people: Route 109 through town follows part of a major Abenaki trail that ran from the seacoast up to the big lake. The first settlers arrived in 1768, and the town was incorporated in 1770.

What makes Wolfeboro "The Oldest Summer Resort in America" is John Wentworth, New Hampshire's last royal governor. Beginning in 1768 he built a vast summer plantation beside Smith Pond (now Lake Wentworth), with a house whose foundation measured 104 by 42 feet, possibly the largest in New England at the time. It was the first summer country estate in northern New England, which is to say: the first documented case of anyone "summering" here. The Revolution ended his stay in 1775, the mansion burned in 1820, and today the stone ruins are preserved as the Governor Wentworth Historic Site.

Through the 1800s Wolfeboro lived on farms, lumber, and the mills along the Smith River. Brewster Academy began in 1820 as the Wolfeborough and Tuftonborough Academy, then was renamed in 1887 after a half-million-dollar bequest from Boston banker John Brewster, who required that no student ever be turned away "on account of his or her age, sex, or color." The railroad arrived in 1872, a 12-mile branch from Sanbornville, the same year the original 187-foot paddle steamer Mount Washington launched on the lake. By 1880 the tracks ran right across Main Street to the town wharf so passengers could step from train to steamboat.

The resort era never really ended, it just changed clothes. Dr. Henry Forrest Libby opened his natural history museum, the first of its kind in New Hampshire, in 1912. The Wright Museum of World War II followed in 1994. The rail line closed in 1985 and became the Cotton Valley Trail, and the downtown that grew up around the wharf is still the walkable heart of the lake's eastern shore.