In New England, lumber and pulp mills traditionally received wood from logs cut in winter and floated downstream during spring floods, but J.E. Henry built a railroad that allowed timber to reach the mills the same day it was cut and enabled lumber or paper to reach market within a week. This land had not been harvested before the 1880s because the rivers were too swift and rocky to carry logs downstream, but the arrival of railroads changed that and opened the White Mountains to large-scale logging. Henry’s son and partner George Henry said, “There’s no secret about this business of ours. We own the land and the timber and we’re making every dollar out of it we can.” Public criticism of Henry’s logging methods, typical for the time, eventually helped bring about the creation of the National Forest and the conservation and renewal of land his company had damaged. From 1893 to 1948, the East Branch & Lincoln and Hancock Branch railroads carried more than 600 million board feet of lumber out of these mountains, and the East Branch & Lincoln Railroad bed later became part of the Kancamagus Scenic Byway to the hairpin turn at Hancock Overlook before the road was completed to Conway in 1948.

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Larry Gertner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Larry Gertner

North Woodstock, New Hampshire · USA