Vibe-Winter-2425 - Flipbook - Page 77
A SENSE of PLACE
at GREAT GLEN TRAILS
30 Years of Community at the
Base of Mount Washington
By Meghan Moody Schwartz
T
his winter, Great Glen Trails Outdoor Center (GGT) celebrates 30 years of operations in the heart of Pinkham
Notch, New Hampshire. Located at the base of the Mt.
Washington Auto Road, this human-powered recreation hub
offers summer and winter activities and events for families,
friends, and groups of all ages.
When I first conceptualized this anniversary article, I assumed that my role was to simply reshare a historic timeline.
Instead, with each story, my own feelings of connection to this
“place” where I work and recreate became overwhelming. I
was caught off guard by the new tier of identity that overcame
me. Why did these memories make me feel more whole?
The answer is simple—it’s from a sense of place. Over the
past three decades, GGT has cultivated a profound sense of
connection and community in a beautiful place for visitors,
locals, and staff alike. Each and every person who visits,
either for a long or short period of time, has their own story,
memory, and micro-history that reflects in the collective spirit
of the land itself.
CONNECTION TO HISTORY
They say we stand on the shoulders of giants, and the rich
history of Great Glen is interwoven with its older sister companies: the Glen House Hotel, first opened in the early 1850s
as a converted farmhouse; and the legendary 163-year-old
Mt. Washington Auto Road.
Visitors to the “Glen” were greeted with the same beautiful views of the Great Gulf and the northern Presidential
Range that we look upon today. The site of the first Glen
House was similarly situated to the Glen House of today.
While there are no longer tennis courts, croquet, or violin ensembles, the draw of the location brought well-heeled guests
from near and far. And these gentlefolk were primed for
adventure! Imagine the fortitude of climbing aboard a Mount
Washington stagecoach tethered to six horses to bring you to
the summit of the mountain—an excursion that could take
four to six hours into the beast of weather Mount Washington
is so well known for. Travelers, mostly from Boston or New
York, would stay for weeks at a time due to the sheer effort it
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