When utopian libertarians took on a N.H. town
In continuous operation since the 1840s, this store is now known as the Grafton Country Store. Image c. 1919
“The four libertarians who came to {Grafton} New Hampshire had thinner wallets than…other would-be utopians, but they had a new angle they believed would help {in 2004} them move the Free Town Project out of the realm of marijuana-hazed reveries and into reality. Instead of building from scratch, they would harness the power and infrastructure of an existing town—just as a rabies parasite can co-opt the brain of a much larger organism and force it work against its own interests, the libertarians planned to apply just a bit of pressure in such a way that an entire town could be steered toward liberty.”
― Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, in A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (published September 2020)
Grafton, in the “Live Free or Die State,’’ was once a libertarian hub of the Free State Project, founded in 2001, with part of the town’s appeal its absence of zoning laws and a very low property-tax rate. But as of 2019, Grafton itself had the 16th highest property-tax rate in New Hampshire. That’s in part because of more affluent and well-educated people moving into a county best know for the Ivy League institution Dartmouth College, in Hanover, and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, in Lebanon. These newcomers demand better services, especially in public education.
The “Free Town Project” was begun by members of the Free State Project to encourage libertarians to move to Grafton. Although the Free Town Project died after conflict between organizers from outside and local residents, many libertarians continued to move to the town. Indeed, Grafton has remained a center of libertarian activism with a strong focus on homesteading, marijuana legalization and agorism, which is a social philosophy that advocates a society in which all relations between people are based on voluntary exchanges.
Originally granted its charter in 1761, Grafton takes its name from Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, a relative of colonial governor Benning Wentworth.
Up to the 20th Century, Grafton’s economic base was subsistence dairy, sheep and other farming, small-scale manufacturing and mining, of all things, with several mica mines and granite quarries, most notably Ruggles Mine.
The Ruggles Mine back when it was a tourist attraction. Sam Ruggles (1770-1843) started the first commercial mica mine in the United States at the site that bears his name.
The United Mica Company operated this mill between 1909 and 1916. Image c. 1909