Ahern State Park gate closed after student crowd incident, park remains open

LACONIA — The gate at Ahern State Park was closed on May 16 because of, according to a sign posted on the premises, “vandalism and abuse of park property.” Ahern is still open and only vehicle access has been restricted. Though the sign has been removed by the state parks and recreation department, the gate remains closed indefinitely. 

Brent Wucher, Public Information and Marketing Officer for the New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation – which oversees Ahern – stressed that the gate has been closed but that the park is fully open. “We are restricting vehicle traffic into the park due to an unsafe situation with vehicles blocking exit and entrance within the park,” Wucher said. 

Laconia police responded to reports of loud music and a large crowd at the beach on May 12, according to Chief Matthew Canfield. He said that police did their best to address parking violations and “quell the crowd.” On state property such as Ahern, Canfield said, police are limited as to the type of enforcement they can pursue. Additionally, Ahern has no park or beach rules posted for police to enforce when they are called. 

Though, Wucher said, locking the gate was not a punitive response for incidents on May 12,  “locking the gate is a typical crowd deterrence strategy at unstaffed parks.”

When crowds get large, parking closer to the beach and trails can become improvised and overcrowded – locking the gate ensures the ability of emergency vehicles to access the beach if necessary, according to Wucher. Additionally, rowdy behaviors are disincentivized when people must walk a distance to get to the beach, rather than having easy access to their vehicle, and closing the gate should not prevent people from enjoying the park respectfully.

“People are still enjoying that park,” Wucher emphasized. “We are not in the business of closing parks.” Wucher said he did not know when the gate would be reopened. 

Joye Rutherford of Laconia walks her dog at Ahern every day – and she did so on May 12. Rutherford said as she approached the beach area from downtrail, she heard loud music. “I couldn’t get anywhere near the beach,” Rutherford said. “But I could see, I would say, over 300 people in the crowd. They were playing loud music and were on top of vehicles.” 

Rutherford said that she saw people in the crowd leaving trash on the beach and “not making an effort” to avoid littering. Several young women from the crowd approached Rutherford and her dog, and told her they were from a high school “senior skip day” from several high schools near Lowell, Massachusetts.

“Everyone I talked to was very nice to me and to my dog,” Rutherford said. “They were all very polite, but they were leaving trash everywhere.” 

Canfield said that the crowd was made up of several hundred high school students on a “skip day” trip, and named Lawrence High School. An administrator from Lawrence High School declined to comment on the actions of students at the beach but emphasized that “there were students from several local high schools that were there.” 

Clean up crews from the state were joined by local volunteers over the weekend. Canfield said they removed nearly 800 pounds of trash from the park. 

As a state park, Ahern is maintained and operated by the New Hampshire State Parks system. Ahern is an unstaffed park, and state parks and recreation staff periodically stop in to monitor the beach and whether park guidelines are being followed. According to Wucher, staff do make stops more regularly at Ahern during busy times but said exactly how often is not standardized. “It depends on what we have going on with other parks,” Wucher said. 

“We do rely on local police departments for a lot of enforcement,” he added. 

Canfield said that Laconia Police do not regularly get calls to the beach at Ahern and that the May 12 crowd was “an anomaly.”

Wucher echoed this: “We can’t predict when large crowds like this will gather at the beach. We can’t monitor who comes to the beach or what license plate people have.” Wucher said that low staffing limits how closely the park can be managed and overseen. 

There are talks within the state parks and recreation department to, “within a year or two,” potentially refurbish the park to allow year-round access, add a few year-round staffers and improve its access roads to provide both a safer and more enjoyable place for people to spend time, according to Wucher. “It’s a great park with so many possibilities,” he said. 

Canfield emphasized that short term solutions would also be key. Adding more and better trash receptacles could help with litter, as well as adding clearly posted and delineated park rules, so that when state officials or city police are attempting to get crowds to cooperate, they have something concrete to enforce. Canfield cited the rules at city beaches as a model for this. 

Last year, Laconia Department of Parks and Recreation officials implemented new rules and enforcement measures at Weirs Beach targeting similar behaviors such as litter, loud music, and mess from cooking. 

Ahern has historically been a quieter beach, Canfield said. But pandemic restrictions on crowd sizes drove people to find alternatives to more popular and larger beaches, making Ahern in particular increasingly popular.