Gunstock Mountain Resort

Gunstock, originally known as the Belknap Mountain Recreation Area, was a Great Depression-era project, built with approximately $600,000 in Works Progress Administration funds plus another $244,000 from Belknap County, making it, per Gunstock's own "Our Story" page, "among the largest WPA projects of any kind in New Hampshire." Hussey Manufacturing Company of North Berwick, Maine, led the previously unemployed laborers who built the recreation area, according to Wikipedia's "Gunstock Mountain Resort" article. When Gunstock opened in late 1936, it had one rope tow; two more were soon added, per Gunstock's own history page. The first chairlift in the East was installed at Gunstock in early 1938, only a year after the first two in the nation were installed at Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1936, per the same source. In keeping with the resort's name, most of Gunstock's trails are named for guns or gun parts, per Wikipedia. The Gunstock Area Commission (GAC) is a five-member board that governs Gunstock Mountain Resort under enabling legislation, New Hampshire Laws of 1959, Chapter 399; commissioners are appointed by the Belknap County Delegation, per Gunstock's own community page. The Belknap County Delegation is made up of the county's 18 state representatives, who appropriate money to county operations and also appoint the five-member Commission, according to the New Hampshire Bulletin, which on August 10, 2022 described Gunstock as "the county-owned Gunstock Mountain Resort." General manager Tom Day submitted his resignation on the night of Wednesday, July 20, 2022, per WMUR, and the resort's Adventure Park was reported closed "until further notice" as of Thursday, July 21, 2022, following the resignation of the management team, per CBS News Boston. In a letter dated July 21, 2022, Governor Chris Sununu wrote that state representatives Mike Sylvia, Norm Silber, and Gregg Hough, "along with the remaining members of the Gunstock Area Commission[,] have lost the trust of the citizens of Belknap County," calling for their removal, per the New Hampshire Bulletin. At a July 26, 2022 commission meeting, Commissioners Jade Wood and Doug Lambert, joined by roughly 250 members of the public, called for the resignations of fellow commissioners David Strang and Peter Ness; Wood told them, "Look out at that mountain that's not currently operational -- that's because of you." The New Hampshire Bulletin reported that Gunstock's reopening "hinged on the resignations of two Gunstock Area Commission members: David Strang and Peter Ness." In early August 2022, the Belknap County Delegation accepted commissioner David Strang's resignation, after which general manager Tom Day returned to work. As of the New Hampshire Bulletin's August 10, 2022 report, Gunstock had undergone "a 13-day closure this summer" before the issues that shuttered the resort "were resolved last week," with Adventure Park ziplines reopening and the resort expected to run its ski mountain "as usual" come winter.