The Lakes Region of New Hampshire: A Visual History

by John D. Bardwell, Ronald P. Bergeron

A large glacial lake formed when the Lake Wisconsin glacier began to lower in interior New Hampshire 13,000 to 12.700 years before the present. There was a long period of ice stagnation, which led to the formation of the lake system as we know it today. The Paleo Indians were the first to move in this territory and may have been the first people to fish at the Weirs during their seasonal migrations in search of food...Near the middle of the seventeenth century, a surveying party marked the northern boundary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony on Endicott Rock at the edge of the Weirs Channel, and European colonists began to move into the Winnipesaukee region....The big lake has approximately seventy two square miles of water surface, has 274 habitable islands and its greatest depth is 187 feet....the spelling of the lake's name has le3d to many variations. It was finally determined in the General Court in 1931 that the legal spelling would be Winnipesaukee. This Indian word can be translated to mean the Smile of the Great Spirit or beautiful Water in a High Place...profusely illustrated with map endpapers that show many of the islands in the lake.

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1988