Berlin, New Hampshire

D eep in New Hampshire’s Great North Woods Region, along the banks of the Androscoggin River and in the shadow of Mt. Washington - at 6,288 feet, the highest peak in the Northeastern United States - lies the small city of Berlin, the northernmost metropolis in the Granite State. Incorporated in 1829, with 65 inhabitants, Berlin’s first industry was farming. Since that time, the City’s progress has always depended on its natural resources. By the early 1800s, the community had already developed into a center for logging and related forest industries. Abundant lumber from the North Woods was floated down the Androscoggin River, whose falls then provided water power for the sawmills and later, paper mills. The St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad came to Berlin in 1851, and the Boston and Maine Railway followed in 1874, further extending the City’s economic reach, and the lumber and paper industries thrived through the mid-20th century. With the ability to ship goods by rail this spurred the City into becoming a center of research and innovation for the paper industry. Today, those early days are just a memory. Although there is still some paper manufacturing in the area, notably by Gorham Paper and Tissue, located nearby in the town of Gorham, most of the paper mills have shut their doors. “The City is not unlike a lot of other communities in the country that had a base of manufacturing – in our case, it was paper – that has come and gone,” says City Manager, Jim Wheeler. “We have been seeking to redefine ourselves and replace the economy that we lost when the paper mills left.” In that