Monadnock Moment No. 106

Era 6: Development of the Industrial United States -
           1870 to 1900

The Prospect House

Heat and humidity are a part of summer in the Monadnock Region. It is with some interest to look back more than 130 years ago to a time when "going out to the lake" was just beginning to become a popular summer activity. There were virtually no cottages on the shore of Chesterfield's Spofford Lake when John Herrick of Keene built a summer resort hotel there in 1873.

The hotel, named the Prospect House, was a large four story building which could accommodate 75 guests. Visitors from as far away as New York, where the Prospect House had an office, would travel by train to Keene and then ride to the hotel by stagecoach. Advertising brochures offered billiards, croquet, swings, bowling, bathing, rowing, sailing, hiking, and fishing for black bass and pike. Guests were also treated to scenic tours of the lake in the hotel's steamboat the "Enterprise." The Prospect House also advertised as an "unsurpassed health resort" because of the pure water, mountain air, and the absence of malaria, fog, and mosquitoes.

Sixty private cottages were built on the shores of Spofford Lake in the early 1890s as former guests and local residents constructed their own housing at the lake. The Prospect House survived for more than twenty years, however, as one of Cheshire County's few truly successful resort hotels.