Then and Now: Renting out the best view in town

The idea of making money from a lodging place overlooking the intervale and Mount Washington is hardly new. One building that has enjoyed that view for about 235 years has provided its owners for most of that time with income from renting rooms to people who want to enjoy it with their morning coffee.

Elijah Dinsmore — the third in line of four generations of Conway residents to bear that name — may have been the first to offer room and board to travelers at the old homestead. He was past 60 by the time White Mountain scenery began to attract noticeable numbers of people from “away” in the middle of the 19th century. Signage would not have been necessary for a homeowner to start a sideline as a hotelier; into the 1860s the Dinsmore house was the last one wayfarers saw in Conway on their way to the mountains, and that alone might have encouraged them to stop and ask for accommodations, even if they didn’t notice the view.