Section 3 of 4
Then sold the lake
The Boston and Maine branch reached Meredith in 1848 and the town’s relationship to the water inverted. Warehouses along the bay gave way to hotels, steamers connected the rail-served wharf to the rest of the basin, and the season became the thing the town sold. The mills kept turning for decades; the capital went elsewhere.
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01
The branch that turned a mill town into a resort
Rail from the 1840s brought summer traffic, and the architecture changed street by street in response.
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02
The steamer that has worked the lake since the nineteenth century
A working vessel with a documented service history is the clearest thread through the lake's commercial life.
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03
Every hull on this lake spends half its life in a shed
A four-month season and a hard freeze decide the whole local boat trade.
