The Waterville Inn
This is the location of the second Waterville hotel, opened in 1868 by Nathaniel and son Merrill Greeley. It was expanded to become the Waterville Inn, which burned in February 1967.
After the first hotel burned in 1861, the Greeley family housed guests in their home until they opened the second hotel attached to their cottage in 1868. It could accommodate fifty guests, one third of the capacity of the 1860 hotel. Nathaniel Greeley turned management over to his son and daughter-in-law, Merrill and Lizzie Greeley, around 1870. Silas and Carrie Elliott took over the property in 1883 and ran it as Elliott’s Hotel.
Railroad passenger service reached Campton in 1883. This cut the carriage ride to Waterville in half compared to the trip from Plymouth, and the Elliotts expanded the hotel to the east in 1886. They added a large front porch and, in the 1890s, moved the Greeley cottage and expanded the hotel to the west and north.
In 1919, the hotel was taken over by the Waterville Valley Association, a group of summer guests who named it the Waterville Inn. During the summers of World War II it was open only for association members, and they handled staff jobs themselves. In 1948 the property was sold to Ralph Bean and his family, who owned it until Tom Corcoran’s Waterville Company acquired it in 1966. The Waterville Company opened the Mt. Tecumseh ski area for Christmas 1966, but the Waterville Inn was destroyed by fire February 23, 1967.
Waterville Valley Historical Society
wvhistorybuffs@gmail.com
