Documenting history: Warren Huse prepares book in honor of Laconia’s 125th anniversary

LACONIA — You'd think that, having already published three books about the history of Laconia, Warren Huse would have exhausted his material about the city's past. In fact, he had enough to fill another 160-page book, including 270 photographs, which will be released in December.

"I could have put 2,700 photos in, if I only had the space," Huse lamented on Tuesday, speaking in the Laconia Historical and Museum Society collection on Water Street. His latest book, "Celebrate Laconia: 125 Years of the Lake City," is being published by The Laconia Daily Sun in collaboration with the Laconia Historical and Museum Society and Celebrate Laconia, and is meant to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the city of Laconia.

"Celebrate Laconia" is a large-format, coffee-table type book. While Huse has included about the equivalent of 34 pages of text, "Celebrate Laconia" is rich with historic photographs. Some are borrowed from the collections of the Laconia Historical and Museum Society or the Laconia Public Library but many others have never been published before, as they were offered from the private collections of local residents. Huse, who has written newspaper columns on local history for nearly 30 years, said he had more than 10,000 photographs to choose from, and that one of the hardest part of producing this book was decided which photographs he would have room for and which he wouldn't.

"There's never enough time and space," he said.

Despite the book's title, Huse describes the how the settlement that grew into Laconia dates back 250 years, or even longer if the seasonal encampments of Abenaki Indian peoples are considered. In 1652, a surveying team was set out by the Massachusetts Bay Colonial Governor John Endicott to explore the lands of central New Hampshire, and the explorers made it as far as the area now known as Weirs Beach. But, as Huse recounts, it was be another century before the area saw its first Colonial settler.

Ebenezer Smith settled along the shore of Lake Opechee – then known as Round Bay – in 1766. At that time, Smith, and most of the area now containing downtown Laconia, was included in the town boundaries of Meredith. The area near the Winnipesaukee River was known as Meredith Bridge. Other parts of the modern city, to the east and south of the river, were then parts of Gilford and Gilmanton, respectively.

Huse's book tell the story of how this community, though not an entity unto itself, grew to become an area of economic and political importance deserving the creation of a city in 1893.

That's a story he's told before, in the three books he has written for Arcadia Publishing: one each for the early years of Laconia, Lakeport and The Weirs. "Celebrate Laconia" is the first time that he's written about the history of all three city regions together, and, it's the first time that he has included the modern history of the city. In his other books, he concluded his histories around the beginning of the 20th Century. "Celebrate Laconia" takes readers up through the city's facelift of Lakeside Avenue at Weirs Beach, concluded in 2017.

That means that, for the first time in his books, Huse has been able to document the city's controversial "Urban Renewal" project of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which remade the physical footprint of downtown Laconia. The book devotes many photographs to the project, including the vote at City Council which authorized the work as well as images of the demolision and reconstruction as it took place.

Other significant events covered in the book include the Great Fire of 1860, the Downtown Revitalization Project of the 1980s, the launching of the Mount Washington II, and the creation of the beach at Weirs Beach. Huse has also dedicated one chapter each for Lakeport and The Weirs.

"It took five months to put this together – I would have liked five years," said Huse. "It's been a joy, it's been fun."

For ordering information, go to www.laconiadailysun.com.