Browse Items (5850 total)

New Hampshire scenery : a dictionary of nineteenth-century artists of New Hampshire mountain landscapes

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

The White Mountains : place and perceptions

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

Looking out for our forests

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

Railway to the moon

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

The grand resort hotels of the White Mountains : a vanishing architectural legacy

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

Summer cottages in the White Mountains : the architecture of leisure and recreation, 1870 to 1930

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

Among the white hills : the life and times of Guy L. Shorey

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

The story of Mount Washington

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Collection: Books and Pamphlets

Late 1760s Bethel lot and range plan

Bethel Ex #1.jpg

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Arranged in a grid-like pattern, this "lot and range" plan of the late 1760s clearly shows the narrow forty-acre parcels of fertile "intervale" land near the Androscoggin River, which were much sought-after by Bethel's early settlers. Of this plan,…

Honest Corner

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The commercial heart of nineteenth century Bethel was "Honest Corner," at the junction of Broad, Church, and Main streets in Bethel Hill village. Several structures shown in this circa 1885 photograph are still standing today.

Engraving of Bethel mountain scenery

Bethel Ex #3.jpg

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The town of Bethel is surrounded by some of northern New England's most dramatic mountain scenery, as evidenced by this engraving from the Guide Book of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad, published in 1853. Such artistic renderings greatly…

Reverend Daniel Gould Portrait

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A graduate of Harvard, and perhaps the most learned man of Bethel in his day, the Reverend Daniel Gould was "of a rather worldly disposition, bringing the first chaise to Bethel, and wearing cocked hat, silk gown, and knee breeches around the town.…

Flat Road schoolhouse

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Modest, one-room district schoolhouses were at one time valuable centers of learning throughout small New England towns like Bethel. These forerunners of today's modern educational facilities provided a solid education under often less-than-ideal…

Second Gould Academy building

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Students and teachers gather in front of the second Gould Academy building about 1890. Three such structures have occupied this same Church Street lot, including today's Hanscom Hall, a striking Colonial Revival edifice that opened in 1934.

Second Gould Academy building classroom

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This late nineteenth century image provides a glimpse of the interior of Gould Academy's 1881 building. Spacious and well lighted, the school's classrooms (and attic gymnasium) nevertheless contained wooden support columns that students and faculty…

Middle Intervale Meetinghouse

Bethel Ex #9.jpg

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Bethel's oldest surviving religious structure, the Middle Intervale Meetinghouse was begun in 1816 and extensively remodeled in 1857. Once the site of early Bethel town meetings, as well as Methodist and Baptist church services, the building has…

Constitution and Records of the Female Cent Society of Bethel, West Parish

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One of the most important elements of town life in early Bethel was the church, and before 1820 Congregationalism remained the dominant religion, despite inroads made by the local Baptists and Methodists. The "Female Cent Society" of the West Parish…

Telstar Regional High School

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Gould Academy's transformation from the town's high school into a private boarding school in 1968 marked the end of a significant era in Bethel's history. That same fall, the newly completed "Telstar Regional High School" opened on a Route 26 site a…

Bethel 1880 map

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Bethel's system of roads extended into every district of the town by the time this 1880 map was published in the Atlas of Oxford County, Maine. In 1843 a two-thousand acre area of Bethel (upper right hand corner of map) lying north of the…

Bartlett/Bean Ferry

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A half-dozen primitive but picturesque river ferries positioned along a fifteen-mile stretch of the Androscoggin once provided safe transport for Bethel's citizens. Shown here is the Bartlett/Bean ferry, which operated (utilizing the waterway's…

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Bethel Hill-Mayville covered bridge

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To prepare the way for a permanent and dependable crossing over the broad and often unpredictable waters of the Androscoggin River, a toll bridge company was organized by town vote in 1861. It was not until 1869, however, that this huge three-span,…

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Bethel railroad station

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The arrival of the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad in Bethel took place on March 10, 1851. First proposed in 1844 by Andover native John Alfred Poor as a way of boosting Portland's dwindling mercantile trade and providing a winter link to the sea…

Swift-Wiley Block and Charles Davis stage

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The Swift-Wiley Block on Main Street, with the Charles Davis stage in the foreground, circa 1896. Transporting "baggage, express, and mail matter," as well as passengers, this open coach (with canvas curtains that could be dropped during stormy…

Allen's depot at West Bethel

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The end of passenger and mail service on the Grand Trunk Railway in this region in 1960 caused the abandonment of many small stations along the line. The conversion to more efficient diesel locomotives also drastically reduced railroad employment…

Bennett's Garage

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The twentieth century brought major developments to Bethel, beginning with the arrival of the first automobile in 1901. The popularity of the "horseless carriage" eventually transformed Bethel from a place of numerous shops where a wide range of…