[mcdude]

From the Laconia Citizen

Exhibit looks at travelers' 'cabin fever'

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Roadside traveling has always interested Jennifer Carroll-Plante. When she was a child, her family often went on day trips and she stared out the window watching all of America laid out before her.

As the Director of the Laconia Historical and Museum Society, Carroll-Plante said she always had some sort of New Hampshire travel exhibit in the back of her mind, but it wasn't until she met Fred Clausen, the owner of the Proctor's Lake House Cottages in The Weirs and the collector of thousands of post cards and memorabilia about road travel in New Hampshire, that the exhibit came together.

"Are We There Yet?" takes a nostalgic trip into the world of New Hampshire's cabin colonies and mid-1900s automobile travel; back to a time when almost nobody could afford to fly, when gas was cheap, cars were huge and the entire family would pile in for a trip to the White Mountains.

Opening tonight at the Laconia Public Library, Carroll-Plante, working with Clausen and LuAnn Walsh, the former owner of LuAnne's Cottages, has assembled a pictorial look through history.

"We concentrated on the 1930s through the 1960s," said Carroll-Plante, who said there were so many businesses that they decided to focus on just the ones in the city, thExe Weirs and the surrounding area.

There are a huge number of places that are still open, Carroll-Plante said, noting Christmas Island and the Naswa to name a few.

Carroll-Plante said she was really drawn in by the evolving architecture and how some of the cabin colonies morphed into motels. She said the cabins and motels were pretty popular in the outskirts of Laconia while the city itself was home to many hotels, including The Tavern.

She said the cabins continued to be individual units until the 1950s when the photos began to show a single roof line and they began to be called "motor courts."

Now those same motor courts are often converted into condominiums and owned as summer homes for out-of-state families.

Part of the show, Carroll-Plante said, is to show the "before and after" of some local cottages.

For one example, the row of cottages along Route 25 in Meredith is now made up of little shops. There are some old cabins across from Wal-Mart in Gilford that are being razed.

She said the evolution of cabin living evolved as hotels began to spring up and provide more amenities to travelers.

"The little Mom-and-Pop places just couldn't keep up," she said.

She also said the dynamic of the family vacation started to die out in the 1970s and 1980s.

"Gone are the days when the nuclear family hopped in the station wagons so parents could teach their children about the country," Carroll-Plante said.

Now, many resorts target "adult" and "romantic" getaways like Las Vegas and the Poconos.

"It has become very popular to leave the children behind," she said, noting that when the children do come, there are televisions and other distractions so they are less curious about the country that's passing by before their very eyes.

"Are We There Yet?" opens today at the Laconia Public Library and will continue through Oct. 31.