DIXVILLE NOTCH – Steve Barba was a long-haired grad student working the summer as a bartender at the Balsams, when a world-famous burger broker arrived at the historic White Mountains resort to make a special introduction.
It was August 1968, a month after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago had erupted in chaos, but Ray Kroc – who just a few years earlier had purchased the rights to a blossoming fast-food chain from Manchester natives Dick and Mac McDonald – was determined to nominate a new “candidate” for President.
In Dixville Notch and the castle-like Balsams, he’d found the perfect setting. Just eight years before, Dixville had won the right to call itself the first-in-the-nation polling place for Presidential elections. For about one hour every four years, this tiny mountain community would become the center of the political universe, as the town’s two dozen or so registered voters descended on the Balsams at exactly midnight on election day to cast their ballots (the very first election in 1960 went to Richard Nixon 9-0).
More than 700 delegates from 44 countries descended on the Mount Washington Resort in July 1944 to save the world’s financial system from collapsing after WWII. (Photo: David Lazar; photo courtesy of the Mount Washington Resort).
The symbolism wasn’t lost on Kroc. Nor was New Hampshire’s significance as the home state of the McDonald brothers as he chose the location for that year’s regional managers’ convention.
“He spared no expense staging the event like a political rally,” Barba recalls. “He was a showman. There were flags and straw hats and placards, vests and political regalia. It was something to see.”
Barba, who’d go on to manage the Balsams for more than 30 years, recalls Kroc chatting him up at the bar, taking a look at his long hair, and asking if he could round up some friends to pose as pretend-protesters to crash the convention and ultimately be escorted out by a security guard. Barba would happily play the role.
That summer’s regional managers’ convention will be remembered for Kroc’s introducing a new organizational president for the McDonald’s chain, but more importantly for using the Balsams’ one-of-a-kind location to officially launch another national “candidate” – one whose name was “Big Mac” and promised a pickle in every bite.
The Balsams in secluded Dixville Notch has hosted the first-in-the-nation vote in every Presidential election since 1960. Richard Nixon would win that first contest 9-0. Town clerk Rick Erwin, who collects the balllots at exactly midnight each election day, compares the experience to walking into the Boston Garden. (Photo: David Lazar)
A waist-expanding international icon was born that summer in Dixville Notch. For the Balsams, it was another colorful story to add to an already storied legacy. For New Hampshire, it was another example of one of its famed grand hotels playing host to world history.
“New Hampshire is a state that has always been scenically attractive and secluded,” says Bryant Tolles, Professor Emeritus of History and Art History at the University of Delaware and author of numerous books on New England’s grand resorts. “But it’s also had the advantage of being well-located and reachable from major areas like Boston and New York. Because of this, people over history have looked at this state as a place both to escape and… to hold some very major events.”
And, on many occasions, to change the world.
From the earliest days of rail travel, New Hampshire’s hotels and resorts have been among its most enduring and eye-catching attractions. From the ocean views and salt air of the Seacoast to the cool, back-to-nature seclusion of the Lakes Region and the North Country and Great North Woods, the promise of privacy, pristine landscapes, and accessibility drew tens of thousands each summer seeking safe haven from the pressures, heat and public exposure of city life. Between 1870 and 1920, historians have estimated that upwards of 400 hotels went up around the Granite State, with some 28 grand resorts (each full-service and holding between 175 and 225 rooms) in the White Mountains alone – the largest concentration of resort hotels in New England. Most were aided by a lumber industry that built and owned many of the state’s rail lines and offered convenient routes of access. And by a client roster that routinely read like a Who’s Who of national leaders, entertainers, athletes and business tycoons.
These hotels came to be as historic as they were prolific. From the mountain getaway of Bethlehem, where a cluster of grand resorts hosted families with names like Roosevelt and Kennedy, served as a sort of second Catskills for Hasidic Jewish families, and helped launch musical careers like Harry Belafonte’s… to North Conway’s Eastern Slope Inn which helped usher in the arrival of North American downhill skiing in the 1930s, the hotel tradition in New Hampshire spans time and geography. It was from owner Walter James Dunfey’s office at Manchester’s Carpenter Hotel that a young John F. Kennedy launched his 1960 Presidential campaign… while the Balsams – long a palatial retreat for writers, politicians and celebrities; a place even floated as a possible United Nations location in the 1940s and where Standard Oil once kept duplicates of all its documents in case New York was ever attacked – has hosted nearly every president or presidential wannabe since winning first-in-the-nation status in 1960.
To cross the threshold into the Balsams’ famed ballot room, with its wood-paneled walls bearing the photos of victorious “visitors” almost like medals, is to enter a museum-like space, at once hallowed and – typical to New Hampshire – unpretentious.
“Walking into that room every four years is what’s what it’s like, I imagine, for a Boston Celtic to walk into the Garden and see all of those banners hanging up there in the rafters,” says Dixville Notch town clerk Rick Erwin, who also plays drums in the Balsams’ dining room band – an ensemble that once included John Phillip Sousa. “There’s a great deal of history and tradition here, and we take it very seriously. It is sort of a microcosm of the American way.”
The Balsams remains one of just four Granite State grand resorts still standing and carrying on the proud tradition – the vast majority having long ago fallen prey either to Mother Nature (most were built entirely of wood, with lax fire regulations) or tough economics. Bretton Woods’ Mount Washington Resort, Whitefield’s Mountain View Grand, and New Castle’s Wentworth by the Sea round out the list of stately structures still in operation. All were built to resemble majestic ocean liners on land, with their opulent common areas, lavish gardens, grand dining halls and ballrooms, promenade decks, and emphasis on personal service. And thanks to ongoing restoration and renovation, all remain Gilded Age jewels distinct in both setting and experience.
While each has gained an international following, two in particular have been the improbable center of the world at one point in their histories, credited with helping to end one world war and preventing another one from ever starting.
This July marks the 65th anniversary of the Bretton Woods International Monetary Conference at the Mount Washington Resort, a nearly month-long series of negotiations that many credit with saving the global financial system after WWII from complete collapse. In the months leading up to D-Day in 1944, Roosevelt and Churchill fully recognized the flaws in the Treaty of Versailles that had closed WWI – a treaty that despite ending the conflict had plunged Germany into further bankruptcy, prompting it to print money, which led to hyperinflation, economic depression and the rise to power of a young Adolph Hitler.
Chosen by Roosevelt, partially at the urging of his friend NH Senator Charles Tobey, the Mount Washington Resort – Joseph Stickney’s turn-of-the-century masterpiece, with its breathtaking backdrop and trademark scarlet towers built to resemble the funnels of a steamship – offered something few venues could: a setting that offered both privacy and accessibility by train for the conference’s 730 delegates, most of whom were sailing into Boston or Portsmouth. It also offered a staff of some 750-800 to tend to every need, electricity (Thomas Edison had toasted the resort at its 1902 opening), a bowling alley, indoor swimming pool, polo grounds, a 9-hole golf course, the best clay tennis courts on the east coast, and even an onsite stockbroker.
In August 1905, Wentworth By The Sea became the center of the wold, the neutral site chosen by President Theodore Roosevelt to resolve the Russo- Japanese War. Diplomats from Russia—pictured on Wentworth’s front portico—and Japan would negotiate for a month, reaching an improbable agreement at the 11th hour. The meeting would lead to a Nobel Peace Prize for Roosevelt. (Photo: David Lazar; Photo courtesy of Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum/Portsmouth Athenaeum)
The only problem: at the time the hotel was chosen in spring of 1944, it was a complete shambles, having recently switched owners and fallen into disrepair. Over the course of two months, the federal government sent in hundreds of workers to bring in new furniture and slap a fresh coat of white paint on virtually every surface, creating an atmosphere that was more upscale barracks than luxury retreat for the talks. Led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Britain’s Lord John Maynard Keynes, the Bretton Woods conference accomplished four goals: it stabilized the price of gold at $35 per ounce, set the dollar as the world’s reserve currency (replacing the British sterling), and established the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as lending institutions for postwar reconstruction.
Today, perhaps the most enduring reminder of the Bretton Woods talks can be found in the hotel’s ornate Gold Room, where the signing table still remains, unadorned and unmoved. Several decades after the conference, a German counsel would famously visit the Mount Washington Resort, look into the Gold Room and weep, “This is the place that saved Europe.”
“Here you had a situation where this hotel that was in disrepair was bought one month before a massive conference where the eyes of the world would be on New Hampshire,” says historian and UNH hospitality professor Carl Lindblade. “And they got her done, and hosted a landmark event. It’s a wonderful story and just so typical of New Hampshire’s can-do attitude.”
While perhaps not as dramatic as the Gold Room, a lone magnolia tree on the front lawn of Wentworth by the Sea stands as maybe that resort’s most lasting memento for its role ending a conflict some have labeled World War Zero – the Russo-Japanese War. Nearly 40 years before Bretton Woods, another President Roosevelt had chosen Wentworth – the posh seaside retreat made popular by long-time owner Frank Jones – as a neutral setting to negotiate a truce after hundreds of thousands had died on land and at sea fighting for influence over Korea and China.
In August 1905, the entire city of Portsmouth, selected for its naval yard, strong immigrant population, and relative seclusion, proudly lined the streets to greet Japanese and Russian delegates with a lavish parade, their hometown thrust onto the world stage. Over the next month, delegates would travel by boat from Wentworth (which had donated the space at no cost) to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for tense talks over territory, rail lines, and fishing rights.
When discussions, however, broke down over the issue of postwar reparations and the concession of the Sakhalin Islands to Japan, some feared both sides would abandon the table. Roosevelt – who’d spent the entire conference in New York, so as not to meddle – urged delegates to press on and focus on other points. Residents throughout Portsmouth, who’d intently followed the story in the local newspaper, were equally invested in the conference’s success. Their solution: to keep both sides from leaving by treating delegates over the next several days to a series of personal tours, cocktail hours and dinner parties in their own homes, all designed to defuse tension and showcase life and freedom in America. It apparently worked. To this day, many believe it was the extended stay that led Japanese chief diplomat Baron Jutaro Komura and Russian diplomat Sergius Witte to break away one afternoon for a private walk through Wentworth’s lush rose garden – a walk that helped break the impasse and enabled both sides to reach agreement.
Across from that garden stands the magnolia tree – now more than a century old – believed to be a gift of gratitude from the Japanese government. For his part, President Roosevelt would go on to receive a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for orchestrating the talks. It’s an honor locals like to say is also shared by their hometown and their extraordinary hotel.
“New Hampshire, itself, has always been a politically astute culture, a place where individuals can have a great deal of influence in the political process,” says Wentworth spokeswoman and historian Stephanie Seacord. “The Portsmouth Peace Treaty really drove home the point that anyone can make a difference if they choose to. And the people of New Hampshire did, by attending the parades, and hosting the dinner parties and making these delegates truly feel at ease.”
More than a century later, folks of all backgrounds continue to clamor to New Hampshire’s hotels and resorts for that same feeling of ease – a sense of grandeur, history, and hospitality has shown no sign of fading.
