Berlin starts weekly sightseeing bus tours focusing on history

NH’s northernmost city starts sightseeing tours

CONCORD, N.H. — The city of Berlin, which is redeveloping itself after the loss of its pulp mill industry in 2006, has started a weekly sightseeing bus tour of historic sites that focuses on early settlers and the industrial boom years.

“I love this city,” said Paul “Poof” Tardiff, a local historian who has written three books about the North Country city. “I want this place to bloom.”

Tardiff will narrate the two-hour tours, presented by the Northern Forest Heritage Park, a nonprofit group.

The tour will take in the two distinct mountains in Berlin. Mount Jasper housed a mine and quarries that was worked by Native Americans. “It has 7,000 years of history,” Tardiff said. People can walk a trail to see the cave where they worked. The other is Mount Forist, which dominates the city. “I call it the guardian of the avenues,” he said. “All the avenues are right there at the base. Looking at it is astonishing.”

The tour also features a Russian church and the Brown Company Research and Development buildings, which housed scientists and researchers who helped develop patents for the city’s mills. Tardiff also plans to recount stories such as the invention of an early tape rule by Berlin resident Hiram Farrand, and the growth of skiing in the area.

Dick Huot, director of Northern Forest Heritage Park, said the city used to offer a tour of the pulp mill, which has since closed and been demolished. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the city was a center for logging and paper industries.

Residents seem to be interested in learning more about the community’s heritage, Huot said.

“Locally, people have e-mailed me and said, ‘That’s a really cool idea. I’m going to take my kids on that,’” Huot said.

The tour, which costs $10 for adults and $6 for children 5-11, can be combined with a pontoon boat tour of the Androscoggin River, which provided water power for sawmills. The package would cost $15 for adults and $8 for children.

If You Go…

BERLIN, N.H., TOURS: www.northernforestheritage.org or 603-752-7202.