On October 26, Jessie Trowbridge spoke to the Meredith Selectboard at the Meredith Community Center. She is a former Camp Menotomy camper who brought her own family to family camp there before it closed. In her remarks, reported by InDepthNH, she listed what the camp taught her: "I learned to build a one match fire, I hiked in the White Mountains, I learned rock climbing and how to predict the weather by clouds."
More than 50 residents came that night to ask the town to get the state involved. The camp sits at 386 Meredith Neck Road on Lake Winnipesaukee. It covers roughly 95 acres, and Executive Councilor Joe Kenney put its undeveloped shoreline at 4,500 feet. The property is under an $18 million purchase and sale agreement for seven lakefront homes.
The sale now depends on a condition in a 1961 trust, and that condition comes down to a practical question: can someone else be found to run this place as a camp?
The sentence the case turns on
Camp Menotomy opened as a Girl Scouts camp in 1939. Its name comes from Menotomy, the original name of Arlington, Massachusetts. Before that it was a boys' camp. According to attorney Rachel Hampe, the property was placed in trust in 1961 so it would be protected during a national consolidation of the Girl Scouts. The 1961 deed is filed in Belknap County.
YourArlington describes the trust's priorities as a sequence, in this order:
- The property serves as a camp for girls ages 7 to 18, intended for Arlington Girl Scouts.
- If there is no Arlington Girl Scouts organization or similar group, the trustees may rent it to another group for camping and keep the rent as "camperships" for Arlington girls.
- Only if no other organization can be found to use it for camping does the trust permit a sale.
The organization overseeing Arlington Girl Scouts leased the camp from 1967 to 2023, most recently Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts. The Girl Scouts ended that lease in 2023 as a financial decision. That left the second step. The whole dispute is about whether it was satisfied.
Why the ruling came from Woburn, not Meredith
The trust is based in Arlington, so its oversight runs through a Massachusetts court. On September 2, Middlesex Probate and Family Court Judge Carla A. Salvucci signed a decree saying the trustees have the authority to sell. Objectors filed an appeal on September 14. According to InDepthNH, the named appellants are Eric Carlson, who operates Camp Quinebarge in Moultonborough, and Jessie Trowbridge.
New Hampshire has a role too. In late October, Department of Justice spokesman Michael Garrity told InDepthNH, "We are actively reviewing the matter. We have no new public updates to provide at this time." According to the same report, Hampe said the lawsuit and the Attorney General's review both turn on whether the property should be used as a camp, as the trust's creators intended.
The town's own options are narrower than many people expect. Each selectboard member voiced support for the residents' position, but the board took no immediate action. When residents asked whether the land could be rezoned, they were told that would be difficult and would likely be seen as spot zoning. Bob Higley of Bear Island, a board member of the Meredith Neck and Islands Alliance, pointed out that the town's 2025 community plan singles out Meredith Neck as a resource protection area. That plan states the town's priorities, but it does not decide what happens to a trust's property.
Two operators say they can run it as a camp
The trust's question has practical answers. In its September report, YourArlington describes two offers to keep the property as a camp.
- Camp Quinebarge's Eric Carlson has run his Moultonborough camp for 13 years. On July 18, 2025, he proposed a 30-year lease: $110,000 a year in rent to the trust, several million dollars in capital improvements, up to $600,000 a year in camperships for Arlington-area girls, and payment of the property taxes.
- The Station Foundation made an offer in October 2025 to lease the property for camping.
InDepthNH also reported interest in a camp for Gold Star families, the families of service members who died while serving. At the same meeting, longtime resident Bill French said Meredith's weekly gatherings at the POW/MIA memorial in Hesky Park were part of what drew that camp's interest, according to the Laconia Daily Sun.
The trustees came to a different conclusion. Their October 2025 petition says they hired two professionals to assess whether a renter could be found. After consulting with the Girl Scouts, they decided renting was not feasible and chose to sell. The buyer is Menotomy Development, a company associated with Jeremy Martin of Lakes Region Design Group. He plans seven single-family homes and would leave part of the land undeveloped. InDepthNH puts that conservation portion at 28 acres. An attorney for the trustees told YourArlington he could not comment on ongoing matters.
"Menotomy is that story, part two"
Mark Billings has lived in Meredith for 25 years and has served on the Conservation Commission for about 20 of them. At the October meeting he compared Menotomy to an earlier fight. The Laconia Daily Sun reported that he recalled a similar situation at Page Pond that took years to sort out, and quoted him:
"Patience is an important characteristic in this."
The Page Pond tract once had its own development plan. In 2007, Foster's Daily Democrat reported that the owner, The Wilds, had planned a lodge, a dining hall and a tube-style waterslide into Page Pond, while preservation efforts were underway. On January 12, 2009, the Trust for Public Land bought the 567-acre property from the Wilds of New England and deeded it to the Town of Meredith to keep as conservation land permanently.
Here is how the $2 million price was covered, according to the Trust for Public Land's announcement:
| Source | Amount |
|---|---|
| Town of Meredith | $750,000 |
| Private capital campaign | $752,000 |
| LCHIP state grant | $400,000 |
| 2008 Land Use Change Tax | $44,000 |
| Planned 2009 conservation timber cut | up to $54,000 |
The last two lines were added only a few weeks before the scheduled closing, when the Board of Selectmen and the Conservation Commission agreed on a way to close the gap. More than 425 private donors contributed, and the owners agreed to a significant price reduction in the final month. Billings co-chaired the volunteer campaign committee, which worked on the private fundraising for more than 14 months. Then-selectman Miller Lovett said each town dollar was matched by nearly two outside dollars.
The work continued after the purchase. In 2017, the Trust for Public Land added 198 acres to what became Page Pond Community Forest. That expansion was funded by $300,000 from the US Forest Service, $250,000 from LCHIP, $107,500 from the Department of Environmental Services, $20,000 from the Moose Plate program, and support from the Open Space Institute, the town and private donors. It also gave Meredith Village residents more access to the forest and created an outdoor classroom for Inter-Lakes Regional School.
The two cases are different. Page Pond was resolved with a conservation purchase. Menotomy will be decided by a court interpreting a trust. What Billings described in both was a long timeline and a town willing to work through it.
What the first story left on Quarry Road
You can walk the result of the Page Pond effort today. The Greater Meredith Program's trail guide describes the forest as 817 acres, with seven trails totaling more than 10 miles and trailheads on Quarry Road and Barnard Ridge Road. The trails are open year-round, pet friendly and rated easy to moderate. Along the way you'll find the Dudley Leavitt Cemetery, an 1830s mill dam and active beaver ponds. The guide calls it a great spot for snowshoeing.
Conservation Commission volunteers still maintain it. The commission's October 1, 2026 agenda listed expenses for Page bridge materials, mowing of the back field, cleanup of the Laverack Trail and a public outreach trail day. In April 2025, the commission approved spending on eight trail signs and hardware for the Quarry Road kiosk.
For Menotomy, the next developments will come from the Massachusetts appeal and from the New Hampshire Department of Justice. As of its October 27 statement, the department was still actively reviewing the matter.
If you live on Meredith Neck or simply care about how land along our shoreline changes hands, I'm happy to talk through how conservation land, trusts and deed history appear when a property comes up for sale. Ana Freitas works with Meredith families in English and Portuguese, and when you're ready to understand where your own home stands, you can start by getting your instant home valuation.
