Squam Lakes Conservation Society recently mentioned us in a newsletter about the Dane Forest Parcel.

The Squam Lakes Conservation Society is a land conservation organization dedicated to the protection of the natural environment in the Squam Lakes Region of central New Hampshire for the benefit of all present and future residents and visitors. SLCS was formed in 1960 by long-time residents of the area and obtained 501(c)(3) status as a private, non-profit charitable organization in 1961.

To find out more visit these links:

www.squamlakes.com or,

The Lakes Region Conservative Trust
www.lrct.org

From the Center Harbor Historical Society’s history of the Town, we learn of the Sturtevant Farm, on what is now known as Dane Road/Route 25B.

On that property in the 1800s was a tavern, for the accommodation of travelers on the old Plymouth stage route, and later a summer boarding house. Notable people spent summers on the farm, including literary figures Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, and John Greenleaf Whittier.

Whittier, who lived from 1807 to 1892, was one of the most celebrated American poets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, recognized as the poet of everyday life in rural New England.   At one time, all New England school children learned his poems. Less known is that in the years leading up to the Civil War he was an ardent and active abolitionist.

Whittier spent seven summers at the Sturtevant Farm prior to 1889 and there composed some of his most beautiful poetry, including “The Wood Giant”, which recounts the search for majestic trees not lost to timbering and the discovery of an immense pine in a pasture at the farm. This tree, which came to be known as the “Whittier Pine”, was believed to have been about 400 years old when struck by lightning in the 1950s and was later taken down.

Whittier wrote:

At last to us a woodland path,
To open sunset leading,
Revealed the Anakim of pines
Our wildest wish exceeding.
Alone, the level sun before;
Below, the lake’s green islands;
Beyond, in misty distance dim,
The rugged Northern Highlands.
Dark Titan on his Sunset Hill
Of time and change defiant
How dwarfed the common woodland seemed,
Before the old-time giant!”