Franconia: Iron, Frost, and the Mountains

Franconia was granted in seventeen sixty-four, its name borrowed from the Franconia region of Bavaria by a governor who had never been there. The first settlers arrived in the seventeen seventies and found iron ore in the hills, leading to the Franconia Iron Furnace, which operated through much of the eighteen hundreds and supplied the region with cast-iron goods.

Franconia Notch, the famous glacial pass that carries Interstate Ninety-Three through the mountains today, gave the town its identity. Robert Frost spent several summers in Franconia and bought a farm here in nineteen fifteen, writing some of his most celebrated work while looking at the same ridgeline you can see from the highway. The Frost Place, his farmhouse, is now a poetry center and museum. The town itself is tiny, just about a thousand residents, but it sits at one of the most dramatic mountain gateways in the Northeast.