Weeks State Park

Summit Estate On Mount Prospect Of John Wingate Weeks, Author Of The Weeks Act Of 1911 That Let The Federal Government Buy Land For Eastern National Forests, Including The White Mountain National Forest, With A Stone Lodge Museum And A Fire Tower With A 360 Degree View. · Lancaster, New Hampshire

A small hilltop state park on Mount Prospect just south of Lancaster, preserving the summer estate of John Wingate Weeks, the Lancaster-born congressman who wrote the Weeks Act of 1911. That law allowed the federal government to buy private land to protect the headwaters of rivers, and it made possible the national forests of the eastern United States, including the White Mountain National Forest, after decades of heavy logging and fires had stripped the hills. Weeks built a fieldstone lodge on the summit in the early twentieth century, and it now serves as a museum of his life, his family and the conservation story, with period furniture and a great room looking out on the mountains. Beside it a stone fire tower gives a 360-degree view from the Presidential Range to the Connecticut River valley and the hills of Vermont. A narrow paved auto road climbs to the summit in the summer season, and walkers can climb on foot at other times. The park is quiet, cheap and uncrowded, a short detour from US 3 and a good stop on a North Country drive.

Weeks State Park Road (off US Route 3), Lancaster, New Hampshire, 03584, United States

The park grounds are open all year for walking in daylight. The summit auto road is gated and generally open to cars only in the summer season, roughly late June to Labor Day or into early autumn, and closed to vehicles the rest of the year (confirm). The lodge museum is usually open on a limited number of days each week in summer, often Wednesday to Sunday, with daytime hours (confirm). The fire tower is staffed by state fire lookouts in the fire season, when visitors may climb it; at other times it may be closed (confirm). Restrooms at the summit are open only in the summer season. In winter the road is unplowed and used by walkers, snowshoers and snowmobiles.

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