Inn Unique ?

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swamp

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I swear I have a book that describes an inn in the Whites, back in the day, that catered to climbers called Inn Unique. Unfortunately my wife and I are both unrepentant used-bibliophiles so our extra room is grommet-deep in books and there's no chance I'm ever going to find it again. Does anyone else happen to know anything about this inn and where it was located?
 
To quote from a great TR I read on another site:

"Dr. Samuel Americanus Bemis (1793-1881) made a fortune pulling the teeth of affluent Bostonians and struck his contemporaries as eccentric. As an affluent hobbyist, he bought the first camera sold in America, in 1840, and his daguerrotypes of Crawford Notch and other venues are the oldest surviving photos of the American landscape. You can look at a few here. He lost interest in a couple of years.

"He bought a big chunk of Crawford Notch from Abel Crawford in 1841 and decided to move there. His Boston girlfriend ditched him and he poured his energies into developing the palatial Hart's Location residence that is now the Notchland Inn. Dentistry may not be particularly aristocratic, but Dr. Bemis succeeded in making himself known as the 'Lord of the Notch,' in the process 'naming a lake, mountain, brook, ridge, and locality in New Hampshire's White Mountains for himself...' It wasn't all about himself, however, as he also named Mts. Crawford, Stairs and Resolution. "

The "Bemis place" became the Inn Unique became the Notchland Inn, according to the literature of the last.
 
Yes, we've stayed there several times over the years. Very nice, and I think the stones were quarried at Sawyer River .
We were there last week..out door hot tub, very nice.

The owners recently gave some land to the WMNF, if I remember correctly.
Apparently there used to be a trail connecting Mt Bemis to some of the others. I think the trail was lost to the hurricane of 38 and never rebuilt.
Davis path trail head is across the road a short distance.

Lots of nice history up there and Lucy Crawfords book helps fit the geographic locations more firmly in mind back then.

Nathan and his father Abel were both living in the notch, in dfferent locations, when the Wiley family mets it's fate further down river.
The efforts it took to reach their own homes and then return to search for the Wileys, helps put things in perspective.

Bemis, I believe, operated on Nathan Crawford who seemed to have some nasty aliment which needed unavoidable attention.
I think he was in a positon to foreclose on some of the Crawfords property but didn't or wouldn't till after Abel passed away. So while he didn't seem to be a warm fuzzy guy he definitely liked the Crawfords and the woods and mountains around him.

(Nice place to stay...a little high end, for special ocassions)
 
It was Notchland back in 1927 too

My grandfather was a life-long lover of the Whites and started backpacking there in the nineteen teens. He was also a devoted diarist and kept detailed records of his trips. Well past retirement age he wrote a small book based on his journal of a fourteen day trip in Aug. of 1927. One of his stops was at Notchland. If you want to see what he had to say about the place read on.

"I considered myself somewhat posted on the Notch trains, an ill founded conceit, for within minutes of journey's end we heard the arrival and departure of a locomotive that was headed in our direction, down valley, because it wasn't laboring. [They were coming down the Ethan Pond trail to Willey Station] Coming in the station master saw us and said that George [the third member of the group] had embarked, I mean entrained, and we'd have an hour's wait. A section crew was lounging in the dry purlieus of their storage shed and we joined them cigars alit. No problem, that hour, and rather fun, to reach Notchland and find George all washed up (best sense of the word.) Mrs. Morey was of a different cut from husband George, who was conspicuous by his absence; an aggressive, outgiving woman and later a New Hampshire legislator, she had ambitions and spoke of them post-prandially. There was the idea of a boy's school at Notchland, 'with a man like Joe Dodge to run the outdoor department.' We were well cared for, our drying-out problems carefully attended, the food ample and well served. As the oldest inhabitant George Morey's absence puzzled me, but I kept my mouth shut and later discovered he'd flown the coop. The idea-a-minute Pendergast girl from Charlestown must have been a 24-hour-a-day overload on his minimum demands for quietude, and even the 6000 acres didn't make it worthwhile. Next time I saw him, five years later, he was an itinerant salesman for Angostura Bitters and we met as equals, for I was a likker salesman myself."

Page 31 of Glencliff to Gorham: An Early Cross-Country Adventure with the League for Leaner Loins by Leon Keach.

The book is out of print though there is some thought of a new printing. It gets a mention in the appendix of Guy and Laura Waterman's Forest and Crag.
 
I appreciate all of your quick and knowledgable replies. It never occured to me that it might be the Notchland but that makes complete sense. I guess I'll have to book a stay there in the near future to check it out. Thanks again.
 
As I recall, Miriam Underhill got started climbing winter 4k with the "Bemis Crew", but I'm not sure where they stayed
 
I thought the place was called the Unique Inn, and the swimming hole across the street was named Inn-unique, being the other side of the road. The swimming hole, a vertical canyon, is owned by the inn and has been closed for years becuase of liability. It was a site of some filming of a movie made in the area years ago called The Return of the Secesus Seven.
 
I'm not sure we are in the same place..across the road is the Saco River.....
(near the trail head for Davis Path)
 
spider solo said:
I'm not sure we are in the same place..across the road is the Saco River.....
(near the trail head for Davis Path)
Yup, it's a gorge that is occasionally run but usually avoided by Saco R paddlers
 
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