Ammonoosuc Inn & Restaurant

Berlin -Towns of the White Mountains

A city along the Androscoggin River in Coos County in northern New Hampshire, United States. The population was 10,331 at the 2000 Census. It includes the village of Cascade. Located on the edge of the White Mountains, the city’s boundaries extend into the White Mountain National Forest. Berlin is home to Northern Forest Heritage Park, the Berlin Fish Hatchery, and the White Mountains Community College, a member of the Community College System of New Hampshire.

Berlin is the principal city of the Berlin Micropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Coos County, New Hampshire and Essex County, Vermont.

First granted in 1771 by Colonial Governor John Wentworth, the town was named Maynesborough Plantation after Sir William Mayne, a West Indies trader. But the grantees did not take up their claims, which disappeared with the Revolution. Instead, Maynesborough was settled in 1781-1782 by William Sessions and others from Maine. Farming was the first industry. With 65 inhabitants in 1829, the New England town was reincorporated as Berlin by Thomas Wheeler, a selectman formerly of Berlin, Massachusetts.

Situated in a heavily forested region, the community developed early into a center for logging and wood industries. Falls on the Androscoggin River provided water power for sawmills. In 1821, a road was built to Gorham, and in 1851 the St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad entered Berlin. Acquiring water, timber and rail rights in the early 1850s, the H. Winslow & Company built a large sawmill at the head of Berlin Falls. In 1868, William Wentworth Brown and Lewis T. Brown bought a controlling interest in the business and changed its name to the Berlin Mills Company. By 1885, the mill town was home to several lumber, pulp and paper mills, including the Forest Fibre Company and White Mountain Pulp & Paper Company. Because of the need for labor, immigrants arrived from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Russia and Ireland. Many others were French Canadians from nearby Quebec.

In 1882, a group of Scandinavians founded here the nation’s first ski club, which would be named Nansen Ski Club in honor of Fridtjof Nansen, who in 1888 skied across Greenland. In 1897, Berlin was incorporated as a city, the northernmost in the state.

The wood and paper industries, however, have been in a long decline. In 1917, the Berlin Mills Company was renamed the Brown Company, which went into receivership during the Great Depression. It survived with governmental help, and was bought and sold several times after World War II. American Tissue filed for bankruptcy in 2001, before which it had stopped paying city taxes. Its facilities were purchased in 2002 by Fraser Papers of Canada. But in March 2006, Fraser Papers announced the closing of Berlin’s pulp mill. On May 6, 2006, 250 employees were displaced, some moving to Cascade’s paper finishing mill, but most were left unemployed.^[1] The North American Dismantling Corporation of Michigan announced on October 3, 2006, that it had bought the 121-acre (49 ha) defunct pulp mill site of Fraser Paper, and will spend a year demolishing the property to allow redevelopment