The Goodrich Family
Behind you, the house across the street was built in 1877 as a summer cottage by Rev. James Buckley and was sold in 1888 to the Goodrich family.
In 1875, Arthur Goodrich, a 24-year-old Massachusetts teacher who spent his free time hiking in the White Mountains, saw Greeley’s Mountain House in Waterville from the Mt. Osceola summit and came down to stay for the night. He met 22-year-old Mary Bachelder at the hotel, and they were married two years later. Mary had been coming to Waterville with her father, Nathaniel, who was a fisherman, since she was eleven.
Arthur and Mary Goodrich lived in Salem, MA, and spent part of every summer in Waterville. They had three children: Nathaniel, born in 1880; Hubert, born in 1887; and Margaret, born in 1889. In 1888, they purchased this summer cottage from Rev. James Buckley. The Goodrich children returned to Waterville for the rest of their lives, and eventually six generations of the family were summer residents here.
Arthur Goodrich and his brother Charles explored the Waterville woods and found the large boulder northeast of town now known as Goodrich Rock. Arthur also carefully mapped the town and trails. In 1892 he published the first history and trail guide for Waterville as a thirty-page pamphlet with a map. He issued updated editions in 1904 and 1916. Arthur cut hiking trails around Waterville, and both of his sons continued that work. Hubert led the group that cut the trail to the summit of North Tripyramid and also cut a trail through old growth forest around the Greeley Ponds in 1937 and 1938. Unfortunately, the hurricane of 1938 destroyed most of that old growth and the trail.
Arthur Goodrich’s son Nathaniel, working as a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club, became one of the leading White Mountain trail builders. He and two others cut 55 miles of trails in nine years. Nathaniel was Librarian at Dartmouth College for thirty years and published The Waterville Valley, the first book-length history of Waterville, in 1952.
Waterville Valley Historical Society
wvhistorybuffs@gmail.com
