in 1910 The region was once home to the
Pequawket Indians, an
Algonquian Abenaki tribe. Along the
Saco River they fished, hunted or farmed, and lived in
wigwams sheltered within
stockades. In 1642, explorer
Darby Field of
Exeter paddled up the Saco in a
canoe, and reported seeing "Pigwacket," an Indian community stretching from present-day Conway to
Fryeburg, Maine. The Pequawket tribe dwindled from
disease, probably
smallpox brought from abroad. In May 1725, during
Dummer's War, 36 men from
Dunstable, Massachusetts led by
John Lovewell skirmished with the Pequawket. The Pequawket losses are not known but the result of the day's battle was the withdrawal of the tribe from the area. In 1765,
colonial Governor
Benning Wentworth chartered sixty-five men to establish "Conway", named for
Henry Seymour Conway, who was later named Commander in Chief of the
British Army. To keep his land, a settler had to plant for every fifty in his share, and to do it within five years. The first roads were built in 1766. Construction of the first meetinghouse began at Redstone. Never completed, it could only be used in summer, with services held whenever a minister visited. Eventually, the partly finished meetinghouse was moved to Center Conway. In 1775, the town raised small sums to build two schoolhouses, one in North Conway. By 1849, however, the town had twenty school districts. By the middle-19th century, artists had discovered the romantic beauties of the
White Mountains, and "Artist Falls Brook" became a favorite setting for
landscape paintings. King
Edward VII of the United Kingdom bought twelve White Mountain paintings to hang in
Windsor Castle. Among the artists to work here were
Asher B. Durand and
Benjamin Champney, the latter known to paint
Mount Washington while sitting in the middle of Main Street. The
Portsmouth, Great Falls and Conway Railroad entered Conway in 1871. The
railroad was bought by the
Boston & Maine, and joined in town by rival
Maine Central. They transported
freight, mostly wood and wood products, away from Conway, and they brought tourists. Numerous inns and taverns were built in the 19th and 20th centuries, and tourism remains today a principal business. The first
ski trail began operating in 1936 at
Mount Cranmore, where
Hannes Schneider of
Austria provided instruction starting in 1939. In 1959, the
Kancamagus Highway opened, connecting Conway with
Lincoln. It travels through Kancamagus Pass, named for a
Pennacook chief, and at above
sea level is the highest paved through-road in New Hampshire. Since the 1930s, the population of the nearby city of
Berlin has decreased significantly, from 20,018 in 1930 to 10,051 in 2010. This decline, coupled with the population increase in Conway and the surrounding community, has led to higher levels of economic development in the Conway area than the rest of northern New Hampshire. Conway has both a tourism-based economy and
service economy. As of 2002, the largest employer in the town was Memorial Hospital, employing 350 people, followed by the Conway School District,
Hannaford Bros. Co., Red Jacket Resorts, and
Walmart. == Geography ==