Why Nobody Wants to Visit Hampton Beach

My book, The Times You Grew Up With, takes you back: https://paulmcallister.store In 1897, the town of Hampton, New Hampshire, leased its beachfront to a private company for five hundred dollars a year — and couldn’t tax the land for the next ninety-nine years. That single vote created Hampton Beach as we know it: the trolley line, the famous Casino of 1899, the boardwalk, the grand hotels on Ocean Boulevard, the biggest dance floor in New England. Fires leveled the resort in 1915 and 1921; it rebuilt bigger each time. The town sold the beach itself to the state for one dollar during the Depression. In the 1960s, Labor Day riots brought the National Guard to the boardwalk. Through all of it, the Casino survived — until November 2025, when a $600 million demolition and redevelopment plan was approved, and the building that outlasted a century of fires, storms, and riots began its final act. This is the story of who owned Hampton Beach, who profited from it, and what a town lost by giving away its most valuable land for a hundred years. Sources: Peter Randall, Hampton: A Century of Town and Beach, 1888–1988 — chapters on the Hampton Beach Improvement Company, the Exeter, Hampton & Amesbury Street Railway, the public beach lands, and the fires of 1915 and 1921, accessed via the Lane Memorial Library Hampton History archive (history.lanememoriallibrary.org). New Hampshire Division of Parks and Recreation, Hampton Beach: Geographical and Historical Background and Turn of the 20th Century — A Seaside Tourist Destination (nhstateparks.org) — state records on the 1933 beach acquisition, the sand dunes, and the 99-year lease. The Hampton Beach Project: The Riots of 1964, Chapters 1–11 — the federally funded study of the Labor Day riots, including police reports, arrest records, crowd estimates, and the juvenile-delinquency field assessment, hosted at Lane Memorial Library. Norma C. Adams, “When Fire Lit the Sunny Skies of Hampton Beach,” Hampton Union, July 9, 1986, and Aggie Dowd, “The Year of the Fires: 1915,” Rockingham County Newspapers, March 1989 — contemporary and retrospective accounts of the 1915, 1921, and 1923 fires with damage figures and eyewitness detail. Patrick Cronin, “Hampton board approves Hampton Beach Casino hotel, gaming, and music complex,” New Hampshire Public Radio, November 6, 2025, and Max Sullivan, “Hampton Beach Casino project delayed, keeping Ballroom open for 2027,” NHPR / Portsmouth Herald, February 22, 2026. Carmelle (Caron) Druchniak, “History of the Hampton Beach Casino,” New Hampshire Sunday News, February 12, 1983 — detailed account of the Casino’s construction, the July 15, 1899 opening, and the early entertainment offerings, accessed via Lane Memorial Library.