Lincoln’s mills prospered first with logs at the sawmill and later with the production of paper and pulp. Other mills in town produced bedsteads, women’s hardwood heel forms, and piano soundboards. The Henrys built a larger mill in 1902, and four years later opened their third for paper production. At its peak, some 350 people worked in Lincoln’s mills. After World War I, the Parker-Young Company bought out the Henrys’ timber operations, but losses followed when a 1927 flood damaged much of their property and the Great Depression brought even greater hardship. In the 1950s the millpond was drained to recover 1000 cords of wood, and old timber from very large trees sold at a high price; Henry Waldo recalled that some of the “sinkers” from the pond bottom were as bright as the day they were cut. In the early 1930s, Parker-Young sold 60,000 acres in Waterville Valley to the U.S. Government to become part of the White Mountain National Forest. The mills changed hands in 1946 and again in 1950, then ceased operations in 1979, ending 350 skilled mill jobs. A growing recreation-based industry softened the blow to the community, and land that had once been Lincoln Woods timberland became the Pemigewasset Wilderness, while Loon Mountain and Waterville Valley became four-season resorts on National Forest land.