2015 Lee's Mills Steamboat Rally

[Redwing]

My thoughts are thus: Dave Thompson who is "Mr. Steamboat Extraordinaire" hails from Moultonborough, so it is quite fitting that the steamboats gather in that locale --- it's tradition.

[hemlock]

The area of Lees Mill is steeped in steamboat history.Frances Stevens book "Moultonborough As I Remember", describes the area as a working landing where steamboats were based to perform working tasks on the lake such as installation and removal of the buoys and navigation lights. Also logs were cut by local landowners all around the lake and dragged onto the ice during the winter. These logs were fastened together and when the ice melted these rafts of logs were hauled by steamboat to Lees Mill to be sawed out into lumber. At times the entire Lees mill bay would be filled with logs waiting to be sawed.
After over 100 years the bottom of the bay is still covered with a thick layer of sawdust as the Lees Mill saw was located over the mill race.
There were also many shops and boathouses located on the landing where steamboats and equipment were stored and repaired. The landing itself was all dredged land where if you wanted to build something or have a place to store your boat all you had to do was build some log cribbing and dredge sand from the lake to fill behind it. In recent years this has made for some interesting legal issues for the town of Moultonborough who claims to "own" the landing as opposed to those people who actually created the land by dredging.