Lincoln: Pullman, New Hampshire

Lincoln is a company town in the literal sense. In eighteen ninety-two, timber baron James Henry bought roughly one hundred thousand acres of virgin White Mountain forest and built an entire mill community from scratch alongside the East Branch of the Pemigewasset River. He constructed the houses, the stores, and the railroad, installed relatives in civic offices, and turned out tons of paper daily. Visitors called it Pullman, New Hampshire.

In nineteen seventeen the operation sold to the Parker Young Company for three million dollars, which employed about six hundred men at its peak. A devastating flood in nineteen twenty-seven and then the Great Depression broke the mill's finances. Operations changed hands twice more and finally ceased in nineteen seventy-one. The mountains that once fed the timber trade now draw skiers and hikers to Loon Mountain, and Lincoln has remade itself entirely around the scenery that outlasted the mills.