New Hampshire’s economy slowly began to improve during the 1950s. New companies have replaced old textile mills and shoe factories with machinery, precision instruments, electrical products, and eventually, computers and computer accessories. In the 1960s, New Hampshire had become one of the fastest-growing states east of the Mississippi River; its population nearly doubled between 1960 and 2000. In addition to its economy, the state’s politics have also changed.
In the 1980s, New Hampshire’s population skyrocketed as major highways connected it to Greater Boston and created more bedroom communities. With the seventh-highest median household income in the U.S. and some of the lowest poverty, unemployment, and crime rates, New Hampshire has become one of the wealthiest states in the nation.
If you grew up in the 80s and 90s News Hampshire, you would remember visiting the toy Castle in Claremont, watching horse run at Rockingham Park, shopping at the Pheasant Lane Mall, and Blizzard of 1993.
Here are some stunning photos that show New Hampshire in the 1980s and 1990s by John Maroglies
Well I’ve seen the change from the ’50s especially in the southern tier of the state. There were once still farms, true agriculture and suburban sprawl n the bullshit we have today didn’t exist yet. Near Manchester was all farmland on the outside of the city from South Willow Street all the way to Bedford all the way to the river. Back River road which is now just another strip mall piece of crap was filled with historic homes and the old White horse tavern. It was one of the first buildings to be demolished when Jordan’s decided to build , But then rejected the site. The building was demolished for nothing. The great maple is still there if you know what you’re looking for near the highway and all the other garbage of today
Roads in general were narrower, the craziness of the federal dollars of the seventies widening everything extra large breakdown lanes and extra lanes in every little town and village destroyed the bucolic beauty that once was in every place. There is not a village that was not ruined with the process. You can see the difference that you cross into Vermont to Massachusetts the different standards that were adopted.
Londonderry was still sleepy but continued to build so the ’60s and the ’70s into the ’80s and of course derry
I don’t understand why everyone loves narrow roads honestly. If you haven’t seen any narrow roads in the state you need to get out of Derry imo
Because they’re beautiful ribbons of asphalt that take you through the countryside to where you want to be. You should go travel through Europe although Vermont has a fair amount of them as well. The New Hampshire has been so automobile centric that the beauty has been asphalted out of it.. It’s quite sad but especially in the village centers where everything has been widened to some 1970 standard.
I don’t have a problem with interstates of course or a secondary important road widened accordingly but in New Hampshire’s ridiculous. I looked at a house in Durham on the oyster River a couple of years ago. A beautiful location facing the Mill pond but you faced the main road into downtown Durham, the college campus. This ridiculous road which should have just been a simple two-lane road lined with elm trees was as if you could move the battle battalion’s of Red square in formation into the college town. What the fuck The Sea of asphalt in front of his house four lanes wide two travel lanes two huge huge breakdown lanes and then you get into the town itself And it’s an automobile engineering nightmare. Somebody went to work on there engineering desk about how many cars per minute for so many square feet or of however these rules are compiled and came up with this nightmare of asphalt wide Lanes in small side rocks in this little college town which is normally swamped with pedestrians.
But of course that’s just the poster child that came to mind but the same thing happens in just about any time you go to that accepted federal funds to vandalize the place
Go drive around Vermont on back roads or better yet go to Central Europe where the village abruptly ends and the fields begin. It doesn’t matter what kind of traffic is on it, the house s Don’t yield and the road snakes through the village. after all I was there first. In America that’s not the way it works. The far-flung suburbs, the strip malls the sprawl are all service by everybody coming and going and everybody along the way is just fucked like 114 going to goffstown. Just too bad you happen to have a house on the road oh well that’s the attitude
One could argue that roads ruined everything in the first place. It just depends on how far back in time you want to go with nostalgia.
I used to live in Durham and I’m pretty sure I know which house you’re talking about.
I can’t fully agree still. Pedestrian safety should take precedence over car capacity or asphalt beauty. No one has widened the main streets of Durham though. Some of those buildings have been there for centuries. If anything they’ve been narrowed again after route 4 bypassed the town. The crossings have been remade with bricks.
Durham is probably a good example of a town that is fighting against the things you’re upset about. It could be an industrial disaster with the near buyout from Onassis. Instead there’s a wagon and a park.
No I think you’re referring to the other side of the town but that’s a good example as well and that would have been a disaster had it gone what William Loeb pushed for in the ’70.
This is on the other side of the town directly on the old mill dam, almost bought the last remnant of one of the gristmills on the old dam but the road leading in was just so fucking ugly and only because it came off of engineering draw board as everything does in America but a specifically heavy-handed in New Hampshire. Automobiles first and their engineering need x amount of feet for the turn etc
To continue in that vein of automobile worship, in Manchester on Beech Street there was a magnificent 300-year-old white oak. It existed before the Manchester grid appeared in the 19th century and was undoubtedly a boundary marker on a old country road from the 18th century. Maybe the tree was even older than that. But at any rate it managed to just live on the side of Beach Street on the back of an industrial building and I always marveled at it that it survived. I go away in the winter these days and I came back and the fucking tree is gone. What did they replace it with. Somebody bought the building and the engineers got to work. So many square feet means x number of parking spots with no variants. They needed seven spots on this side of the building to complete the plan evidently and they cut the fucking tree down. You can see that somebody thought about it for 2 minutes because the concession was to plant two new trees 12 ft away. And guess what those fucking parking spots are absolutely never used. This is the kind of thinking that prevails.. And it’s an uphill battle to fight against it for everything.
If you live in a wealthy area more politically active and aesthetically conscious, historical district you can push back in there’s well heeled pockets willing to do it for their sake but everywhere else does it emanate from the state down, absolutely not Neanderthals. Or in this case the city of Manchester and the building department. And Manchester is filled with those kinds of road solutions traffic solutions that I speak about filled with them granite square, ex-mayor mongen’s pride. Ripped the soul out of the historic square demolished all the buildings so it looks like a piece of shit that could be in North St Louis or anywhere else garbage USA..
But yet when you enter the state is a welcome to New Hampshire sign with a cute little stylized village that we like to pretend it’s still cow Hampshire, rural lovely and so protected. Anything but unfortunately
The stone one where they redid the yard/lot with the black mulch? Right next to the dam. I know the whole town pretty well.
Speaking of Manchester trees, there’s one next to the Brady Sullivan Tower that is by far my favorite tree in the state.
Just look at this beauty: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Kvmc9bmhT6ACU49V6
I definitely agree that I’d love to see more old trees in the state. But again, if you go back far enough, you could argue that humans destroyed the entire place by clear cutting it for centuries!
I still think there are plenty of towns in NH that are just as you are envisioning. Orford. Rumney. Eaton. Hebron. They’re tucked away off the beaten path.
FWIW, I don’t love Manchester either.
Well it’s sad because Manchester is the economic powerhouse and it’s an okay City I still live there but it shoots itself in the foot every chance it gets ripping away part of its heritage and take it away It’s beauty. If only saner minds had ruled in the 1960s.
The upper valley is indeed a little more sleepy and that’s where my Yankee family comes from the town of unity, / Acworth etc The old stomping ground
And Yes that’s a lovely copper beach on the side of the old carpenter house. When you’re viewing this tree do you have any knowledge of what used to be behind the viewer where the Brady Sullivan Tower now stands. This is the poster child of everything that I could complaining about. I can go into a long rant about this whole area and how it was simply geographically removed in 1969 by the building of that fucking bridge, the highway ramps, the complete annihilation on the other side of the river of the original Mill village a decade before that and the crowning Jewel that used to be about 50 ft higher with a parking lot is, the entire Indian bluff, burial ground that was crowned with the finest second empire house north of Boston. Yeah that’s kind of Manchester in the 20th century in a nutshell
Phew… Was worried someone took a picture of me passed out in the toilet of the Elvis Room in 1997.
Immediately recognized Six Gun City as the main thumbnail. My first job. Pretty normal starting point for a lot of high-schoolers in that area, but in hindsight, a very unique experience.
Too much north. Show me some old school Manchester/Nashua/Salem/Derry.
Was thinking the same, scrolled through every photo looking for any of those towns, and was very disappointed. Southern NH is so underrepresented whenever NH is mentioned, despite that being where the majority of people in the state live.
Num 13 I don’t think is in Meredith, it’s in gilford