FRANCONIA NOTCH, N.H. -- It is summertime in 1890, and the journey begins at a crowded urban railroad station just as the season's heat is about to make the city oppressive.

After hours spent on trains -- and sometimes in stagecoaches -- they reach their destination: a rocking chair on a sweeping veranda, with a cooling breeze and a view up the notch, where the cliffs of Cannon Mountain rise on one side and the slopes of the Presidential Range rise on the other.

This is the view that soothed the guests at one of more than 200 elegant hotels and inns -- some of them grand hotels with 400 rooms or more -- that made the White Mountains of New Hampshire the premier hotel resort community in ...