On 'Golden Pond'

"Squam Series: Side Porch" (oil on canvas), by Frances Hamilton, at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery, Center Sandwich, N.H.

Overlooking Squam Lake.

Beautiful Squam Lake, long a much-loved summer vacation spot, is in the Lakes Region of central New Hampshire and just northwest of much larger Lake Winnipesaukee.

Native Americans called Squam Keeseenunknipee, which meant "the goose lake in the highlands". The white settlers that followed shortened it to "Casumpa," "Kusumpy" and/or "Kesumpe" around 1780. In the early 19th Century, the lake was given another Abenaki name, Asquam, which means "water". Finally, in the early 20th Century, Asquam was shortened to its present version.

The 1981 film On Golden Pond, with Jane Fonda, her father, Henry Fonda, and Katherine Hepburn, was filmed in Center Harbor, on Squam.  Two tour-boat services are available on the lake, both based in Holderness (where there’s a prep school of the same name) --  Experience Squam, a private charter company, and the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. Both show  movie locations and items of natural and other significance.

Loons, eagles and great blue herons frequent Squam Lake.