It was a half-century ago that Eastman and Quechee Lakes got off the ground, becoming what were the biggest housing developments ever to hit the Upper Valley, a status they still hold in 2025. Each has its own founding story, but in many aspects they share great similarities in how they evolved and where they are today.

Initially, they were pitched as meccas for well-to-do downcountry people wanting a second home up north amid the leafy hills and lush green meadows. The developments would be property tax bonanzas for the host towns, with virtually no burden from public services like schools.

Both were conceived to be examples of how development ought to be carried out at a time when Vermont and New Hampshire were witnessing a wave of shoddy developments on mountainsides and lakeshores. Planning and strategy would flow from two similar, colorful and controversial figures who were adept at gaining political support but who soon engendered prickly relations with the press and authorities in towns adjacent to their sprawling projects.

Eastman and Quechee Lakes both involved creation of large new water bodies, golf courses and ski runs, establishment of rigid site and architectural requirements and offered lucrative work for a legion of excavation and building contractors for decades.

Of greatest importance, however, is how the two developments would evolve from being purely leisure venues to the Upper Valley’s largest resources of primary housing for workers at the region’s Goliath employers, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth College, along with the myriad businesses and services that have pushed the area away from an Appalachian-style economy.

Quechee Lakes was first out of the gate when L. John Davidson, the head of a new corporation, laid out ambitious plans to “make Quechee the most beautiful village in Vermont” to a group of officials that included Gov. Deane C. Davis. The September 1969 presentation called for a golf course, restaurant, country club, family ski resort, specialty shops, an inn, a game preserve and recreational bodies of water.

Rumors had already been circulating about this out-of-state corporation buying up farms and woodland along the Ottauquechee River, with people speculating it was everything from a stalking horse for Laurance Rockefeller to a mafia operation. Davidson went to great lengths to assure his listeners that his enterprise was legit, backed by Kane Financial, a major Boston investment firm.

Harvard-educated Davidson came from the family that owned the ultra-preppy Andover Shops in Cambridge and Andover, Mass. He had made his chops as a developer in the booming Bay State real estate market and was taken by the potential of a resort community built in what was a tired little mill village and its surrounding classic rural Vermont countryside. So he set to work lining up support from local bigwigs like Norman “Joe” Reed, chairman of the Hartford Selectboard.

Gov. Davis said he “liked what he saw” in Davidson’s slideshow presentation and soon planning and economic development officials from both Windsor County and the state were falling in line behind Reed supporting Davidson’s ambitious plans. By 1974, Davidson’s Quechee Lakes Corp. had purchased almost 6,000 acres of land, about a quarter of all the ground in the town of Hartford. Gone were five dairy and fruit farms and a number of smaller holdings. One farmer, Henri Dupuis, thought he’d a made hell of a deal when he sold 100 acres for $100,000.

But not everybody was on board, and the Quechee Lakes project began picking up criticism from some in the public and garnering aggressive coverage in state newspapers. There were holdouts who were refusing to sell. While Hartford was giving it velvet-glove regulatory treatment, it was encountering determined opposition in adjacent Pomfret, where part of its land lay.

But Davidson and his team forged ahead with sales of lots for single-family houses and condominiums, even while construction of roads, recreational facilities and the signature “lake” were proceeding. Davidson became well-known for both his charm and his volcanic temper. Along the way he had marriages with women from prominent Hanover and Quechee families.

Twenty-five miles to the southeast in the town of Grantham, a similarly ambitious real estate project was taking shape in the early 1970s. Like Quechee, it was conceived as a way to show what carefully planned and executed development ought to look like. Behind this initiative were four bastions of old New Hampshire money and influence: Dartmouth College, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, Chubb Life Insurance and the Manchester Bank.

They began by buying 3,500 acres of forest land from Rockwell International, which had acquired it through real estate deals that traced back to the Draper Corporation, a manufacturer of wooden bobbins for textile mills in the early 20th century. The property was in a town with a population of scarcely 300 and, most important, no planning, zoning or subdivision regulations.

A monthslong search for someone to ramrod this initiative yielded Emil Hanslin, who had earned great acclaim for his work on a posh Cape Cod development called New Seabury. A fawning 1973 Time magazine profile of Hanslin laid out the owners’ goals: “… somebody to resolve their almost contradictory requirements … a high quality development that also would include some low-priced housing while conserving as much land as possible — and all to be sold at a profit. If anyone could deliver that, they decided, it would be Emil Hanslin.”

The development was named “Eastman” by the owners after a family that had once lived on the land. This then required convincing state and federal agencies to put the name on all official maps and highway signs going forward. Hanslin and a platoon of planners set to work, aiming to lay out 1,647 house sites of one to five acres, plus 400 clustered units. To achieve a land conservation goal, lot buyers were required to deed back to the development a portion of their land as permanent open space.

Hanslin quickly grasped New Hampshire politics and began staging lavish parties for movers and shakers at his residence in nearby New London. It probably didn’t matter, for as long as it was OK in the town, it was fine with the state bigwigs. But it wasn’t too long before Eastman was getting buffeted by the press, notably a now-defunct alt-weekly, the New Hampshire Times, which frequently raised issues over things like destruction of deer yards and erection of a large dam to create a 340-acre pond.

The next-door towns of Springfield and Enfield would become thorns in Eastman’s side as its holdings lapped over town boundaries. Springfield was tough on lot layouts; Enfield, after decades of wrangling, adopted land use regulation in response to Eastman’s strategies in Grantham.

Eastman sales started off briskly, but gradually the four sponsors began having second thoughts about their participation and eventually they all divested. As with Quechee Lakes, the founding principle of building a demonstration development of second homes would morph gradually over the ensuing decades, and there would be numerous struggles over ownership, governance, management and finances.

Relative stability would eventually come in the form of landowners’ associations that essentially control operations for things such as snowplowing and facilities maintenance and oversee adherence to standards for architecture and property appearance. These entities are funded by fees. Eastman’s association gets $7,000 up front and then about $4,400 per home annually. Owners of vacant lots get charged, too, and additional levies support water and sewer utilities.

Quechee Lakes today has 1,289 properties, including 711 single-family housing units and 578 condominiums, plus permitted unsold lots now in the hands of a company that markets them and handles all building construction. Eastman has 1,000 houses and 335 condominium units with about 40 vacant lots available for sale.

John Davidson and Emil Hanslin both would be replaced in the late 1970s. Davidson later moved on to oversee a luxury shorefront development in the Winnipesaukee area, lead a failed effort to raise a sunken treasure ship and dabbled in a venture to develop a process to pasteurize eggs in the shell. He died last year. Hanslin stuck around the Grantham area, partnering with his son Tony in a land development project on another parcel of Rockwell land near Eastman that became known as Olde Farms. He also founded and operated Yankee Barn Homes, which designs and fabricates contemporary homes using a blend of vintage barn timbers and modern materials. He died in 1987.

Although developed to tap the market for leisure time homes just off the region’s I-89/I-91 sinews, Quechee Lakes and Eastman today are vital pieces of the housing puzzle in the Upper Valley. Reliable estimates put the percentage of the residents in both developments who are full-time workers in the locality’s institutions and businesses at around 60%. That number is slowly growing, while retirees who reside full time in the developments make up the bulk of the balance, with the segment of full-time residents over age 70 slowly expanding.

Promised to have no new public service burdens, both host communities have had to expand school facilities to handle children that nobody foresaw coming to their doorsteps 50 years ago. Grantham’s school census today is almost half again larger than that of the whole town population back in 1975. Expanded fire, police and other municipal services have had to be funded to deal with the needs of a larger and quite different population.

Some old-timers still mourn all that has been displaced or lost but, for the economic and social health of the Upper Valley, a good argument can be made that these two huge developments have had a positive impact.

A resident of Meriden, Steve Taylor has contributed to the Valley News for many years.