Out of nowhere

by Eric Purchase

On Monday night, August 28, 1826, an avalanche in isolated Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, in the heart of the White Mountains, killed innkeeper Samuel Willey, his wife and five young children, and two hired men, The landslide carved a channel fifty feet deep and buried the family in a stream of earth, stones, and uprooted trees after they had fled their house, which, incredibly, was spared. In Out of Nowhere, Eric Purchase examines the surprising connection of this disaster to the rise of tourism in America, investigating developments that ranged from land speculation to new interpretations of the meaning of nature and landscape. The Willey tragedy, widely recorded in literature, art, travel writing, newspapers, and scientific journals, was the first natural disaster in the United States to capture national attention. Suddenly the White Mountains became, in the public's imagination, a mythical place where nature was preserved in its original, potent state. Hundreds and then thousands o