Paradise Lost

Weirs Beach has enjoyed summer inhabitants since 8,000 BC, when Native Americans would fish on its shores, constructing baskets called weirs that trapped the shad as they migrated to the Merrimack River. By 10,000 BC, one tribe stayed year-round and claimed the area around the Weirs as their own. The legend of how the lake got its name involves a wedding. Apparently a Native American Chief, Wonaton, had a daughter, Mineola (like the orange!) who was in love with a chief from an enemy tribe. Wonaton was angry and tried to kill Adiwando, but Mineola shielded him from her father’s wrath. Mineola and Adiwando were married, and after the wedding, for some reason the tribe decided to travel by canoe to the middle of the lake. It had been a cloudy, overcast day, but at that time the sun emerged, and Wonaton saw that as a good omen, naming the lake Winnipesaukee, or “Smile of the Great Spirit.”

The train was the best thing to ever happen to Weirs Beach. The first tourists to the area started arriving in 1848, mostly due to the convenience of several trains moving through the area on the way to the White Mountains and Canada. At one point in the late 1800s, four trains stopped in the Weirs from Boston each day. The time between 1848 and 1910 is considered by many to be the heyday of the Weirs, when it was an upscale vacation resort. Gorgeous, elaborate hotels lined the seashore, and the Weirs Boardwalk was built, with a music hall pavilion called “Winnepesaukee Gardens”(which still stands today, as an arcade) restaurants, tea houses, and shops. It’s truly hard to imagine that the place that now sells $1 earrings, dreamcatchers, and boasts of motorcycle weekend as the premier event of the year was once one of the most upscale and elegant tourist destinations in New England, but it’s true.

The first steamship for tourists was the Lady of the Lake, which was launched in 1852. It essentially acted as a ferry, bringing tourists to the different ports around the lake, such as Wolfeboro and Center Harbor. It soon had competition: the original Mount Washington, launched on July 4, 1872. The Mount was faster, bigger, and more beautiful than the Lady of the Lake, and soon eclipsed the competition. In its prime, it transported as many as 60,000 tourists to various destinations around the lake. Cool fact: The Lady of the Lake served from 1897-99 as a floating hotel for workers building Kimball Castle in Gilford (see my previous post: “Castles Made of Sand”). Yes, that’s the haunted castle. In 1899 the owners sunk the Lady of the Lake in Glendale Cove, where it remains today.

The invention of the automobile changed everything, and not in a good way. Although tourists were still flocking to the area, many were not using the railroad, or the ferries, with as much frequency. In 1924, a fire burned down the largest of the luxury hotels (another, the Lakeview House, still stands, but it contains a sort of mini-mall with a pizza place and ice cream shop) and many other landmarks. The original Mount Washington also burned down in yet another fire in 1939. The Great Depression didn't help, either, and the "Golden Age" of the Weirs was over.

There wasn’t really a swimming beach at the Weirs until the 1950s, when it was re-imagined as an affordable family tourist destination; before that time, the shoreline was rocky and not amenable to swimming or sunbathing. A new Mount Washington was constructed in the 1940s, this one a longer, faster ship made of steel (the same one where the wedding will be held, but it has been refurbished and updated since then). When my parents were young, the Weirs was much more of a family spot than the teenage wasteland it was when I was in junior high and high school. Families still visit, but bike week is still a major attraction, as well the Loudon racetrack, so now you’re probably more bound to see people in their 40s and 50s acting like teenagers than you would actual adolescents, whose parents don't let them run free anymore (do they?). But the location is still beautiful, and when you’re there it really feels like summer vacation.