By Betsy McNamara

Craftsman and former CLA Board member Larry Nickerson is well-known to most Chocorua “regulars.” Many iconic homes and structures in the community have been built, improved, or maintained by Larry or an earlier generation of the Nickerson family. The Chocorua River Dam, the Narrows Bridge and information kiosks are just a few public projects Larry has contributed to or led in recent years. CLC consultant Betsy McNamara shares this interview.

Tell me about your family’s roots in Chocorua. My family has been here for a while. Mount Whittier is one of the Nickerson Mountains and Nickerson Ledge is on Mount Chocorua. Alonzo Nickerson started the Chocorua Community Church. One of C. P. Bowditch’s efforts to conserve the area was to buy Alonzo’s mill on the Chocorua River to control the level of the lake.

What are some of your memories of growing up in Chocorua? My sisters and I grew up at “Red Gables’, the red farmhouse on Route 16 right across from the lake. My parents, Bun and Helen Nickerson, ran the place as an inn. We weren’t there long but it was a great place to grow up. We had a bull that would sometimes get out onto Route 16. My mother would go and get my father wherever he was working, he would come and get the bull out of the road and back in the pen, and not a single vehicle would have gone by. My parents were very intent on teaching us how to swim. Every summer day we would go across the road and go swimming with mom. Once we could swim around the lake following dad’s row boat they let us swim on our own. When we moved to the village we’d ride the tailgate of dad’s truck to go swimming. It was like Mayberry RFD.

Tell me about the work you’ve done and currently do on CLC conservation lands? I’m the third generation of my family to work on houses around the lake. If something needs to be taken care of I try to do it or find someone who can. I’ve been a member of the board of the Chocorua Lake Association [the CLC’s predecessor organization] several times because I think the preservation work they do is important for all of us, not just those with homes on the lake.

*Larry Nickerson hefts one of the new railings he crafted for the Narrows Bridge, along with Ned Eldredge and Jack Terwilliger, April 2013. Photo: Mary Beth Bliss.*

What motivates you to do that work? There is something magical about Chocorua Lake, Mount Chocorua and the Grove. I remember going to the bridge during a big rainstorm and watching two loons start about 20 yards north of the bridge, dive under water, shoot down the rapidly flowing water under the bridge, pop up and fly back up to their starting point. They looked like they were flying underwater. Over and over again, playing.

Why do you feel the work of the CLC is important? C. P. Bowditch bought Alonzo’s mill at the north end of the lake to control the water level. Then he built the dams at the foot of the lake and in the village. He brought the water level up to make the lake bigger and deeper meaning there was more water in the village as well. Ellen Moot told me that when they bought their property she dove into the lake and saw old fence posts under the water, so that part of the lake had once been a field. C. P. Bowditch and others saw the beauty here and had the vision to preserve it. The generations that followed have done the same. There are no motorboats, so the lake is quiet. A buffer of trees is between the houses and the lake, so the shoreline doesn’t have big houses on it. Being on the lake is like going back in time. Dad and I worked on some of the older houses & he built some of the newer ones. What we saw in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s was the end of the summer houses of the Edwardian era. The current generations of those families work incredibly hard to continue the preservation work their ancestors started.

Tell me about the wooden railings on the Narrows Bridge. I remember my father rebuilding them, as others had over the years. When we were installing the new railings a few years ago, everyone who stopped had a story about work ing on them. Sam Newsom built the previous set of crossed railings. When it was time to replace those, the CLA’s bridge committee looked at a very old photo of the bridge that Anita Kunhardt had shared with us. We decided to replicate the design which used trees and branches as railings and fretwork. Ned Eldredge, Jack Terwilliger and I built them in Steve Weld’s yard and then installed them. It came out nicely and gives the bridge its historic look.

Banner: Winter mist tumbling across Lake Chocorua, silhouetting the rustic railing of the Narrows Bridge. Photo: Larry Nickerson