Crawford family of the White Mountains

The Rosebrooks had moved to the remote upper Connecticut River, where Colebrook now stands, but during the American Revolutionary War Eleazar was away, serving in the Continental Army, and his family relocated to Guildhall for safety.

[2][3] An alternative chronology to this has Abel Crawford initially moving alone to the notch in 1791,[5] leaving his wife in Guildhall while he constructed a cabin at a spectacular site on Nash and Sawyer's Location at Bretton Woods.

Eleazar Rosebrook, who was restless despite the success of his farm in Guildhall, visited and agreed to buy the cabin when Abel decided it was insufficiently remote for his liking.

[b] Eventually comprising Abel, Hannah, eight sons and a daughter, the Crawford family developed the new site, where the present-day Notchland Inn is situated, as a farm.

[4][5] Eleazar Rosebrook established the first inn at the Notch in 1803 when the state of New Hampshire decided to build a turnpike that connected its northern and southern areas via the mountain pass.

[4][c] Such a device had been considered by settlers since the 1760s because people living in Lancaster and the surrounding area of the upper Connecticut River were forced to make a long, difficult detour via Haverhill in order to trade with places such as Portland and Portsmouth.

[17][d] Ethan developed other trails in the area, including one initiated in 1821 whose route was closely followed later by the Mount Washington Cog Railway and which soon became more popular than the original path.

[13][18] His brother, Thomas Jefferson Crawford, together with guide Joseph Hall, who worked for him, improved the original path by converting it into a bridleway around 1840,[19] allowing Abel, then in his 70s, to become the first person to ride a horse to the summit of the mountain.

[3] At least one of the huts was fitted out with a stove, vegetation for bedding and a sheet of lead on which visitors could write their names with a nail,[22] but they proved too uncomfortable and so he erected a tent capable of holding 18 people.

[23][f] Also in 1823, despite his precarious financial position, Ethan expanded his provision of accommodation by renting the Old Notch House, which had been built in 1793 and lay close to Abel's home, and by extending the Giant's Grave building.

[25] Ethan was a capable guide for travelers using the trail, assisting surveyors such as a party that included John W. Weeks,[13] botanists such as William Oakes,[18] and, in 1821, the first women to ascend the summit,[3] as well as the author Theodore Dwight.

[26] Word of Ethan's abilities and deeds spread, gaining him a heroic status, with incidents such as one where he carried a bear on his shoulders, a feat immortalized in drawings and woodcut prints.

[25] Over time, the 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m)-tall Ethan gained the name "Giant of the Hills";[3] his father, who probably acted as a guide for the geologist Charles Lyell in the 1840s,[20] was known as the "Patriarch of the Mountains".

[3] Abel also acted as the collector of tolls from people traveling over the Jefferson turnpike and, in the early 1830s, his strategic position there caused him to be suggested as someone who might assist authorities in monitoring smugglers who were then particularly active in the area.

[1][25] Dona Brown believes that Cole and such other visitors as Nathaniel Hawthorne used the interest in the tragedy to further their careers, deliberately painting and writing about an area that had suddenly gained national attention.

[37] Ethan took out a further mortgage in 1832 to finance a new two-story wing for the Old Moosehorn Tavern, hoping that it would counter the competition now coming from the new White Mountain House hotel.

[38] He continued to develop new trails and also tamed some animals to amuse visitors, as well as adding a bowling alley and dance floor,[39] but he became less interested in acting as a guide and often employed people to do that for him.

No-one was prepared to offer a price that would pay his debts but during this time he also befriended Samuel Bemis, a dentist and early photographer from Boston through whom he found a doctor who was able to relieve some of the tumor-related pain.

[14] Pavel Cenkl says that Lucy intended the book to be in large part a paean to Ethan, building up his image so that more people might ask him to be their guide,[54] although just as with the trails and inns, it was subsequent investors in the area's tourism industry who benefited from interest in it.

Christopher Johnson notes: The Crawford Path was a major milestone, for it marked the birth of wilderness experience as a recreational activity in the White Mountains.

Increasing numbers of visitors used the trail, a sign that Americans were beginning to view the mountain wilderness as worthy of exploration for personal, aesthetic, and scientific reasons.