Berlin, New Hampshire

BERL IN, NEW HAMPSHI RE held its own celebration which they’ve dubbed RZR Fest, held for two consecutive years, an event which brought in another six or seven thousand people,” Wheeler adds. In addition, Coos County has an initiative called “Ride the Wilds.” It’s the northeast’s largest interconnected ATV trail system, with more than a thousand miles of trails carved through the rugged North Woods terrain. No public funds were used to create Ride the Wilds; it’s been bankrolled by a collection of not-for-profit riding clubs whose members work to construct, maintain, and patrol the trails. Over the years, the OHRV boom has even led to the opening of all of Berlin’s streets for these off- road vehicles. “We started out slowly by opening up the streets during one of the ATV Festivals,” Wheeler explains. “Ultimately, we opened up all our streets and it’s been wildly successful with large benefits. We have people who love to OHRV, who have bought second homes here. We had a housing market that was soft and people had pulled up stakes because the paper industry had left the area. We had a surplus of housing and the market is now beginning to shift and property values have increased over the last year substantially. This has been a great benefit to local economy over the last few years. Another tourist draw in Berlin is called “RiverFire,” an annual event occurring on the Androscoggin River for the past decade. “It’s really quite a spectacle,” says Wheeler. “In the river, there are these boom piers, which are little islands that were created during the old river driving days, when the paper companies used to drive logs down the river.” The boom piers actually served as traffic cones, dividing the river into lanes so that the lumber companies could better control their log rolls, downstream. They were little islands of rock, framed by hemlock logs. Generally about ten feet wide, they were spaced a few hundred feet apart, depending on the depth of the river, stretching north from Berlin for eight miles. “We build bonfires out on top of these boom piers. We draw six or seven thousand people during that event.” RiverFire is a hallmark event for us and it is just one of several events that are led by the