Sunapee Town Wharf

Access to the lake for many at Lake Sunapee Harbor is the wharf located at the intersection of Lake Avenue, Burkehaven Hill Road, and Main Street. Today it is a busy area between the boat launch and the big tour boats. This has a colorful history back to the era of lake steamboats and grand hotels in the 1870s.

This story begins in the late 1870s when three Woodsum brothers started a passenger and freight steamboat service connecting various lake landing sites with the trains at Newbury station. It was also the time when the first hotels were being built around the lake. In 1876 the Woodsum brothers made serious improvements to a rickety dock at the end of the road to Sunapee Harbor they used for boarding and discharging passengers from their new steamboat business.

Ten years later improvements were needed again and in 1885 the Woodsums brought in a steam powered pile driver to set oak logs for a larger wharf and built a granite stone wall at the wharf's lake shore. With the opening of the Runals House hotel in 1878, the shore land at the wharf was part of the hotel's waterfront and over the next 20 years was transformed into a park for guests. The hotel owners built a granite lake wall, a bowling alley building, a large lawn, and tennis courts. The Woodsum Steamboat Company built a low-roofed passenger terminal at the wharf to maintain a low profile so the view to the lake would not be obstructed from the hotel. By 1908 the Woodsum Company had negotiated with the Ben Mere Hotel to build an even larger passenger terminal. The new building was two-stories high and included a snack shop and an upper floor workshop.

Following the first World War, the rise in automobile travel foretold the demise of steamboats. In 1928 the Woodsum Company was sold. The new owner sold the passenger terminal building and in 1932 it was moved to River Road to be used as boat storage by Osborne Marine and was named “Pete’s Shed”. The Great Depression of the 1930s were tough times for Sunapee Harbor followed in the 1940s by the war years. The steamboats were gone and hotels closed. But in 1944, the people of Sunapee voted to purchase the wharf and the Ben Mere waterfront that included the steamboat wharf and turn it into a town park.

In 1944 the Lake Sunapee Regatta Association directors raised funds to rebuild the old steamboat wharf and dedicated it to the memory of Edward Barry, a long-time regatta organizer and judge who had recently died. In the late 1940s a parking lot was built near the wharf, followed by a public restroom and bandstand for concerts. In 1950, lake passenger excursion service was revived with the arrival of the M.V. Mt. Sunapee. Harbor businesses began to thrive again in the post-world war boom years, bringing the harbor wharf to life once again. In 2004 the tour boat was joined by the dinner boat Kearsarge, an echo of the old Woodsum days when multiple steamers were an integral part of Sunapee Harbor. Today the Harbor Park is enhanced with flower beds and shrubs maintained by the Sunapee Gardeners.

For a deeper look into the stories of all that has happened here over the years, check with the Sunapee Historic Society. Look for Sunapee's Historic Buildings & Places Vol. 1 . 

Barbara Bache Chalmers, Sunapee's Historic Buildings & Places Vol. 1 (Sunapee Historical Society, 1918 & 1919).