American writers and painters also flocked to see the spectacular landscape. They taught Americans to value, and even treasure, the forested White Mountains. Word spread of deep valleys, high mountains, and broad open intervals hidden deep in the White Mountains. It inspired a romantic response in the many tourists. In 1832, Nathaniel Hawthorne observed that the mountains: “are majestic, and even awful, when contemplated in a proper mood, yet, by their breadth of base and the long ridges which support them, give the idea of immense bulk rather than of towering height. Mount Washington, indeed, looked near to heaven: he was white with snow a mile downward, and had caught the only cloud that was sailing through the atmosphere to veil his head.” The land had become landscape.

• The Weeks Act of 1911
• Tourists & Travelers
• Word Gets Out
• The Farmers Left; The Hotels Came
• Private Hands
• Arrival of the Loggers
• Need for Management
• Departure of the Forests
• Logging Photos
• The Tourists Continue to Arrive
• Educated Tramps and ‘Culchowed’ Pedestrians
• Tourist Photos
• The Path of Destruction
• AMC and Hiking Photos
• Suffering the Consequences
• Scarred Landscapes
• Proposals for Public Purchase
• Advocating for the Forests
• A Spokesman for the Trees
• Spreading the Message
• Progress Toward the Weeks Act
• Yet the Destruction Continued
• The Final Push
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”
• Return to Exhibition Info