That Quirky Place, New Hampshire : From Frugality to Crafts, a State Preserves Its Traditions

CORNISH, N.H. — The people of New Hampshire are frugal and proud of it. Take Cornish, population 1,400.

At the last annual town meeting residents voted to spend $10,000 to paint the Town Hall.

Before the meeting was over they had second thoughts and decided to do the work themselves, saving $10,000.

“So, 82 volunteers gave the Town Hall two coats of paint one weekend. That’s what you call community spirit. I know. I was one of them,” said Bob Maslan, 67.

There are no large urban centers in this triangular-shaped New England state. Manchester with a population of 95,000 is the biggest city, followed by Nashua, 73,000, and Concord, the capital, with 30,000.

New Hampshire, instead, is sprinkled with small towns, many with several names. That, too, is a New Hampshire peculiarity.

If you look for Cornish on a New Hampshire map, for example, you won’t find it. But you will find Cornish Mills, Cornish Center, 12A Cornish, South Cornish, Cornish City and Cornish Flat.

All in One Community

All those names make up one little town with one Town Hall and three elected selectmen. For the outsider visiting here, however, it would seem they were separate and distinct communities.

The different names pertain to geographic areas--Cornish Mills (where mills were years ago), Cornish Flat (the flattest part of town) or 12A Cornish (that part of town along Highway 12A).

“It’s crazy, but we’re accustomed to it and doesn’t seem strange at all to us,” said Martha Zan, 41, clerk at the 12% Solution Country Store in 12A Cornish. “In this town we not only have six names but three different ZIP codes as well.”

Asked how the store got the name 12% Solution, Zan explained: “That’s crazy, too. The owner was retired. His wife wanted to get him out of the house. Her solution was to buy the store and send him down here to run it. The 12% comes from wine sold in the store having 12% alcohol content.”

In New Hampshire, center sections of many small towns are specially designated, such as Cornish Center, Wolfeboro Center and Roxbury Center. Other towns, like Center Barnstead, Center Havehill and Center Tuftonburo, reverse the designation.

Then there’s Sandwich, population 900, poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s favorite spot--all of it, North Sandwich, East Sandwich, Center Sandwich, West Sandwich and Sandwich Notch.

Known to followers of folk art and home-crafted items, Center Sandwich was home to Sandwich Home Industries, founded in 1926 by Mary Coolidge for the preservation and promotion of traditional New Hampshire crafts.

From that evolved the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen with nine crafts centers showcasing and selling the works of local potters, weavers, woodworkers, silver smiths, lamp shade makers, glass blowers and other artisans ages 10 to 85.

Ask any poet about Franconia, population 700. Robert Frost lived here in a humble white clapboard house in this wooded area. His mail box marked R. FROST still stands.

Behind the house is a half-mile trail marked with Frost’s poetry. Among other poetry affixed to the trees are “Evening in a Sugar Orchard” and “Goodby and Keep Cold.” He also wrote a poem about a woodpile and “Mending Wall.” They, too, are on the trail. It was here that Frost wrote “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening,” “Quest of the Purple Fringed” and many other popular works.

The Robert Frost Place, home to poets-in-residence each summer, is owned by the town of Franconia. The simply furnished home is also the site of an annual poetry festival in August.

State highway signs here are marked with route numbers on the profile of a man’s face. That profile is a symbol of New Hampshire, the Old Man of the Mountain, also known as the Great Stone Face and the Profile.

The natural rock formation of the Old Man of the Mountain is in Franconia Notch, a few miles from Robert Frost Place. It towers 1,200 feet above Profile Lake. The granite face is 40 feet from chin to forehead and 25 feet wide.

The Old Man of the Mountain is held in place by chains to prevent erosion. No climbing is permitted on the granite outcropping.

As mountains go, 6,288-foot Mt. Washington isn’t much. But it’s the highest peak in the Northeast and all summer traffic is bumper to bumper on the half-gravel, half-paved, 8-mile toll road ($10) to the top. It first opened to the public in 1861.

Others reach the summit on the 6-mile, coal-fired, steam-powered cog railway ($25 round trip), completed in 1869. Climate atop the boulder-strewn peak is Arctic-like. The highest wind ever recorded on Earth--231 m.p.h.--was clocked here in 1934.

Average yearly temperature on the mountain is 26.7 degrees and the ground is permanently frozen. Wind exceeds hurricane force, more than 75 m.p.h, an average of 104 days a year. The average wind velocity is 35 m.p.h.

There is also a touch of Mexico in New Hampshire: Jose Clemente Orozco’s famed 3,000-square-foot mural, “Epic of American Civilization,” at Dartmouth College in Hanover. The northernmost of Ivy League schools, Dartmouth was founded in 1769 under the authority of King George III.

Orozco, one of the most important muralists of the 20th Century, spent two years, 1932-34, creating his masterpiece. His bold frescoes depict the strengths and failings of humanity, encompassing the artist’s passionate idealism and personal pessimism.