to
Update
is a town in Coos County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 1,006 at the 2000 census. It is home to parts of the White Mountain National Forest in the south and northeast and to two theme parks: Santa's Village and Six Gun City . There are also several private campgrounds, motels and inns.
First granted in 1765 by Colonial Governor Benning Wentworth, the location was so deep in unexplored territory that few took up their claims. One who did was Colonel Joseph Whipple, who cut trails through the forests to build a manor house. He named the town "Dartmouth" after William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth and patron of Dartmouth College. Brother to William Whipple, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Colonel Whipple renamed the town "Jefferson" four years prior to Thomas Jefferson's election as president. The legislature would grant the town a new charter as "Jefferson" in 1796. Over the years, the boundary with the adjacent township of Kilkenny has been moved significantly several times, divorcing all habitations from Kilkenny jurisdiction.
During the early 1900s, Jefferson was a popular summer resort, boasting one of the five largest "Grand Hotels" in the White Mountains -- the Waumbek, with accommodations for nearly 600 guests, was destroyed by fire on May 9, 1928. The hotel maintained its own rail branch, delivering visitors directly to the hotel without changing trains.
In 1914, Jefferson was serviced by multiple daily trains from Boston and New York City. It had over 30 hotels at its tourism peak, reached by several mainline depots including Riverton, Baileys, Meadows, and Highlands. Many of the original station buildings remain, although most have been moved to nearby locations. The tracks were removed in the 1970s, leaving a basis for a "Rails to Trails" project. A number of historic, architecturally interesting structures remain from the resort era, and the Waumbek Cottages provided a backdrop for the popular White Mountains Festival of the Arts until 1979. In March 2006, the Waumbek Cottages Historic District was named to the National Register.
In 1885, a landslide on the north side of Cherry Mountain demolished the Stanley farm, mortally wounding a worker. Local hotels immediately arranged daily excursions to view the scene, now marked by a roadside historical marker. See Historical Marker 152.
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, a local farm boy born in 1832, became a world-famous inventor of aerostats (dirigibles) and other devices. Consulting President Abraham Lincoln, he organized a balloon corps during the Civil War, and went on to invent the ice-making machine, and later the water-gas process which for years ran gas lights in hundreds of cities. His father, Clovis Lowe, had been part owner in 1832 of nearby Low and Burbank's Grant, which contains much of Mount Adams and Mount Madison. See Historical Marker 19.
Jefferson found itself in the national spotlight in 1988-1989 when two local volunteer firefighters were charged in connection with dozens of arson fires that had plagued the area. Both defendants were acquitted at trials.