Daniel Doan

Daniel Doan is best known for his classic hiking books, 50 HIKES IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS and 50 MORE HIKES IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. He is also the author of two novels, THE CRYSTAL YEARS and AMOS JACKMAN, and a memoir, OUR LAST BACKPACK.

His North Country history, INDIAN STREAM REPUBLIC: SETTLING A NEW ENGLAND FRONTIER, 1785–1842, grew out of his explorations in the Pittsburg area. Reviewing the book in the December 1997 issue of APPALACHIA, Gene Daniell wrote that it “gives an excellent account of the history of the Indian Stream Republic, and it also provides an evocative picture of the life of the settlements, a life hard but curiously satisfying to those who had the will and the luck to make good. The reader will gain a great deal of insight into the lives of the people who settled the frontier regions of New England, most of whom are memorialized only by a weathered stone in a cemetery near a church or along a back road. In a real sense, this book is their living memorial.”

Daniel Doan was born in 1914 in Summit, New Jersey, the son Frank Carleton Doan, a Unitarian minister. The family’s summer home was in Orford, New Hampshire, where Daniel Doan’s grandmother had been born. This area had a great influence on Dan, nurturing his love of the woods and mountains, hiking and fishing. After his father’s death in Winchester, MA, Dan moved with his mother at age fifteen to Hanover, New Hampshire, and lived in New Hampshire the rest of his life.

After graduating from Dartmouth College in 1936, he went into farming with his wife, Ernestine Crone, in Orfordville and then in Belmont. He also wrote short stories and articles. In 1939 his daughter Ruth was born, and in 1941 his daughter Penelope. The family moved to Laconia, where Dan worked for a manufacturing company and continued writing, hiking fishing.

After Ernestine’s death in 1982, he married Marjorie Marran and they moved to Jefferson.

In July 1993, the Dartmouth Outing Club named a Smarts Mountain trail in Orford the Daniel Doan Trail “in recognition of Daniel Doan’s efforts to stimulate interest and involvement in hiking and the out-of-doors.” Daniel Doan died in September 1993.

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project honored him posthumously with the 1994 Lifetime Achievement Award.