Sunapee: Exploring This Charming Town

The Sunapee we know today — the busy harbor and hub of boat traffic on Lake Sunapee — began in the 1870s, although the town was settled nearly a century earlier. It was John Young Gardner, the grandson of one of the earliest settlers, who foresaw the potential of the lake and harbor. 

Prior to the 1870s, Sunapee’s economy was based off of farming and on the 20 or so mills and industries powered by the Sugar River, which flows out of the lake at the harbor. Then, in 1876, the train line opened to Newbury, at the foot of the lake.  

The following year, Gardner and his partner, Albert Runals, built Runals House, the first hotel at the harbor (Lafayette House, on Burkehaven Bay, was the first summer hotel on the lake, built two years earlier). The two-story Runals House had a broad front porch overlooking the lake and accommodated 40 guests. 

That same year, the Woodsum Brothers began a steamboat service on the 75-passenger Lady Woodsum, connecting the railroad station in Newbury to landings around the lake. With a sure means of bringing in guests, Gardner and Runals built the far grander Ben Mere Inn in 1890 where the Runals House had stood. It was a grand affair, its large parlor equipped with fireplaces, 100 guest rooms, a wide front porch with rocking chairs where guests could look out over the harbor, and a tower for wider views of the lake. 

The Sunapee Cruises fleet includes ships like the M.V. Mount Sunapee II to take you around Lake Sunapee on a dinner cruise or scenic lake tour.

Activities for hotel guests ranged from concerts and ballroom dancing to more active sports of tennis, riding and sailing. The hotel had its own bowling alley and a boardwalk leading to the harbor. The Ben Mere Inn was the harbor’s focal point for 77 years, until its final summer in 1967, with demolition coming the following year. All that remains today is the sloping lawn, now a city park with a bandstand that hosts summer evening concerts.

Meanwhile, part ownership of Lafayette House, then called Lake View House, was inherited in 1882 by Mary Burke and daughter Frances M. Burke, who bought out the other owner’s share of the hotel and 130 acres overlooking the lake. Frances and her husband continued to expand the hotel and property, building cottages along the lake and landscaping the hillside with gardens and terraces. 

Repeat guests bought some of the cottages, others built new ones on the land around the hotel, and the summer community of Burkehaven was born. By 1898, Burkehaven had its own church, built of local stone. Burkehaven’s St. James’ Episcopal Church, one of the nine Episcopal summer chapels in New Hampshire, still has Sunday services in the summer. The grand hotel is no more, but Burkehaven continues to thrive as a cottage community. 

The Lodge Hotel by Sunapee Stays are luxuriously appointed and ready for your next getaway.

The best way to appreciate the architecture and grandeur of some of Burkehaven’s “cottages” is on a lake cruise, from the deck of the M.V. MT. Sunapee II. These houses show their best faces to the water and are mostly hidden from land view by trees, and traveling by boat recalls the days when steamers were the only choice.

The scenic cruise is not only a good way to see the otherwise hidden cottages and estates, but includes a lively history of the lake, the hotels and the summer community. You’ll see that the shore is more developed than it appears from a quick scan, a steady series of cottage architecture from Rustic Deco and Adirondak to a few eye-boggling modern mansions. You’ll see the unique “droopy roofs” and hear a mix of history and lake-life gossip. Fans of ‘70s rock will see where Steven Tyler grew up (his father was the pianist at a former resort) and pass George’s Mills, location of The Barn where he and Joe Perry formed Aerosmith.

By the late 1880s, wealthy Victorians from the cities were arriving at Sunapee Harbor on the 600-passenger steamboat Edmund Burke, which also brought tourists to other hotels and landings around the lake. In 1887, the 650-passenger Armenia White was launched, the largest steamship ever to sail on the lake. Ten years later, the 250-passenger M.V. Kearsarge was launched, and there followed a succession of steamships until automobiles made the steamships redundant.

You can get a glimpse of those heady days of the grand hotels at the Sunapee Historical Society’s Flanders-Osborne Museum, housed in the former Flander’s Stable in Sunapee Harbor. It’s filled with artifacts, pictures, mementos and documents from Sunapee’s past. If it’s not open, you can look through the large window to see the deckhouse of a former lake steamer and a farm sales wagon. 

Sunapee’s tourism isn’t all about the past or for those with lakeside cottages. The Anchorage is a harbor institution, serving food and drink for more than a century. It’s had different names and been remodeled and expanded several times, but it’s still the place to go for refreshments after a spin on the lake.

St. James Episcopal Church is a summer chapel nestled in the heart of Sunapee.

We spent a few days in Sunapee this fall, enjoying the views of Mount Sunapee’s summit and then-green ski trails from the terrace of The Lodge by Sunapee Stays. The former motel on Burkehaven Road is now a small resort, with a garden-encased heated pool and suites decorated in Adirondak-style with log beds and natural wood finishes. Sunapee Stays also has a beautiful Tree House cabin in the woods (literally, it’s built in a tree), but it’s in nearby Newbury and not part of this story.

Fenton’s Landing, opposite The Anchorage, was our go-to for breakfast, and we savored one of the finest dinners in our travels, at SUNA, on Route 103. The shrimp and lobster grits with roasted corn was better than any shrimp ‘n’ grits I ever tasted in the southland. 

For fine dining of another sort, we stopped several times at Sanctuary Farm, an ice cream stand with shaded tables and a play yard filled with kids’ activities that include a wooden tractor and a playhouse on stilts.