This project attempts to memorialize the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge. The Lodge has significant meaning for many members of the Dartmouth community and beyond and we hope that this website captures some of this meaning through the use of stories and visuals. While the physical structure may be deconstructed, the beauty of the Lodge can still live on in our memories and this site. We hope this site can offer catharsis and community for its visitors.
This year long oral-histories project was made possible due to the generosity of the Claire Garber Goodman Fund of the Dartmouth Anthropology Department. Georgianna Anderson ’16 and Connor Gibson ’16 were advised by Professors Elizabeth Carpenter-Song ’01 and Sienna Craig and conducted over twenty interviews to gather the stories and memories that Dartmouth students, alumni and community-members had about their beloved Ravine Lodge.
Thanks to Ryan Collette of RyCo Design, Rory Gawler and Dan Nelson in the Dartmouth Outing Club and with contributions from the Dartmouth DALI Lab, we were able to pull together this website to act as a digital memorial to the Ravine Lodge. We’re excited about the multimedia nature of the site and are hopeful that visitors will share their own stories and memories in audio or text form, as we weren’t able to interview nearly as many people as the Lodge deserves.
Mount Moosilauke was first inhabited by the Abenaki people, who gave the revered summit its name. The word “Moosilauke” translates to “bald peak” and was believed to be the home of many powerful spirits. French Jesuit missionaries were the first non-native people to populate the area, introducing new waves of colonialism to the White Mountains. Dartmouth College claimed ownership of the area during the early 20th century. The Moosilauke Ravine Lodge was constructed at the base of Mount Moosilauke in 1938 under the supervision of Ross McKenney, who was affiliated with the College at the time of construction. It served as the base for some of the nation’s earliest competitive skiing. Originally intended to last for 50 years, the Lodge remained standing for over seven decades and was utilized by the Dartmouth Outing Club, students, alumni, Upper Valley community members and hikers as a space to welcome First-Year Students, eat family-style meals, host events, spend nights out in the wilderness and more. It is staffed in the spring, summer and fall seasons by crews of Dartmouth students that apply to manage and run the space. The structure was in need of repairs after nearly 80 years of existence and the new structure was constructed throughout 2016 and 2017 and reopened in fall of 2017. This oral histories project is aimed at gaining insight into the emotional place the Lodge inhabits in the hearts and minds of those affiliated with it, and to allow members of the community to share stories and memories about the Lodge as an attempt to memorialize and contextualize the space. Many consider the Lodge to be a pivotal location in their Dartmouth and life experiences and this project hopes to understand the power that this space exerts on them.
If you have any questions, concerns, or comments please contact us at sharingthemountain@gmail.com
Throughout our time at Dartmouth, we have been the fortunate beneficiaries of the Lodge and the mountain that surrounds it. The Lodge is our entryway to adventure, a table for good food and conversation, the blueprint for learning something new, and a refuge. This project granted us the opportunity to give back to a place that has had a wonderfully formative influence on our Dartmouth experiences. We hope that this site can begin to memorialize a sacred place, the community that fuels it, and the smart, kind and daring people that make it a home.
Gigi Anderson ’16 and Connor Gibson ’16
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