New Hampshire was the first colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and the first to establish its own government. It was that same spirit of independence and self reliance that led New Hampshirite Sherman Adams (left) - who started as a lumberjack in the White Mountains and eventually became Governor of NH and then Chief of Staff in the White House - to carve Loon Mountain out of nothing.

It was in February of 1964 - soon after the completion of the Kancamagus Highway between Lincoln and Conway - that Adams donned snowshoes to explore the newly accessible wilderness. He knew in his soul that there was a great ski area hidden in the area, carved and scraped millions of years earlier by the continental ice sheet. And he knew he wouldn't stop until he found it.
When he came upon Loon Mountain, with its well-sheltered, northeast-facing slope and close proximity to the new highway, Adam's search was over. After consulting with Sel Hannah, a former Olympic skier and fellow Dartmouth grad who had planned over a hundred ski areas across the United States, Adams realized he had indeed discovered a ski mountain that kids, mothers and fathers alike would fall in love with.

Today the ski area is as much a landmark as the historical farmsteads, logging camps, mills, factories, Civilian Conservation Corps camps, and old railroads that surround it. Its neighbor, the 800,000 acre White Mountain National Forest, has inspired not only Adams but countless writers and artists such as Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. And even Robert Frost once explained that there was not one of his poems that didn't have "something in it of New Hampshire."

Now it's your chance to be inspired. To embrace the NH lifestyle. To own a home where the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Micman and Maliseet tribes found their own paradise.

And to share in Sherman Adam's neverending dream come true.