Paddle across Little Squam early enough on a September morning and you might pass a plain aluminum boat with a diver's flag propped in the stern. It isn't fishing. It isn't a scenic tour. Someone is under the water pulling weeds out by the root, one plant at a time, and that work is a bigger part of why Squam looks the way it does than most people who live here realize.
A Hundred and Twenty Years Ago, Squam Was a Dump
It helps to know what Squam used to look like before assuming its clarity is just geography. In 1904, a group of landowners formed what would become the Squam Lakes Association because the lake had a problem. The surrounding mountains had been stripped by logging, sawdust several feet thick had settled into the coves, driftwood made navigation genuinely hazardous, and people had been dumping refuse, including tires, mattresses, and dead animals, straight into the water. The association incorporated the following year and went to work on pollution, water levels, and boat safety.
That history matters because it reframes what Squam is today. The lake didn't stay clear on its own. It was cleaned up on purpose, by people with names, and it has been maintained on purpose ever since. What follows is what that maintenance looks like this particular September.
The Boat That Keeps It From Happening Again
The modern version of that cleanup work has a boat and a mascot name. The Squam Lakes Association's current invasive milfoil removal vessel is an upgraded model the staff affectionately calls Millie, and she exists to do exactly what her predecessors did: get a diver into the water to remove invasive variable milfoil plant by plant before it spreads.
The divers themselves are mostly Lakes Region Conservation Corps AmeriCorps members who serve a full year with the association. They earn an SSI Open Water Diver certification and a NAUI Weed Control Diver certification specifically so they can do this work, along with Wilderness First Aid and CPR training and an NH Commercial Boating License. The same people who dive for milfoil in July are the ones clearing snow off trailheads in January. It's a small year-round crew doing a job that never actually finishes, because milfoil doesn't get solved once. It gets managed, continuously, by someone in the water checking.
The association also runs public water quality excursions where residents can learn to identify milfoil themselves and report sightings, which is one of the more useful things a Squam property owner can do without owning a wetsuit.
The Warning Next Door
Here's the part that changes how you should think about Squam's reputation. Cole Beale, the association's Director of Conservation, recently discussed the invasive spiny water flea that has been discovered in Lake Winnipesaukee, the largest lake in the region and one that plenty of boaters treat as interchangeable with Squam over the course of a summer.
Squam not having spiny water flea right now isn't proof that Squam is somehow a cleaner lake by nature. It's proof that the flea hasn't made the trip yet. Boats and trailers move between Winnipesaukee marinas and Squam launches constantly, and invasive species travel in bilge water, on hulls, and in the folds of boat covers just as easily as they travel through open water. The clean-drain-dry habit that boat launches post signs about isn't bureaucratic caution. It's the actual mechanism standing between Squam and its next infestation, and it depends entirely on individual boat owners bothering to do it.
The Neighbor Who Got a Report Card
Some of the most useful conservation work on Squam happens at the property line, not out on the water, and this year the association highlighted a specific example worth knowing about if you own shorefront yourself.
Bill Nesheim, a Holderness Conservation Commissioner and long-time SLA water quality volunteer, became the first person on Squam to be recognized through the NH LAKES LakeSmart program as facilitated by the association. Cole Beale evaluated Nesheim's Little Squam Lake property in person and gave it a near-perfect score.
"I felt a strong sense of responsibility to help preserve the wonderful resource we all share."
That's Nesheim describing why he asked for the evaluation in the first place. A LakeSmart assessment looks at how a shoreline property handles runoff and how well it's managed to protect the water it sits next to, and Nesheim's score is now the local benchmark other Squam and Little Squam owners get pointed toward. If you've ever wondered whether your own lawn care, driveway runoff, or shoreline plantings actually matter to overall lake health, this is your answer: yes, enough that the conservation association keeps score.
The Same Crews Work the Mountains Too
The water isn't the only thing this organization maintains. The Squam Lakes Association also keeps up more than 60 miles of trails through the Squam Range, and the money for that work comes substantially from one race a year.
Later this month brings the 14th running of the Squam Ridge Race, a 12.2 mile race and hike that crosses three summits including Mount Percival, where the climb averages a 15 percent grade for nearly two miles of stone steps, for close to 3,000 feet of total elevation gain. There's also a shorter four mile option up Mount Livermore for anyone who wants the views without the full commitment. Volunteer trail crews are already gearing up to prep the route in the weeks ahead, which means the same trail network you might hike on a random Tuesday afternoon gets a coordinated tune-up once a year, timed to the one event that pays for the rest of it.
It's the same small staff and the same rotating AmeriCorps crew doing this as the ones diving for milfoil in summer. One organization, one payroll, covering the lake and the ridgeline above it.
A Renovated Front Door, Same Address
One more thing worth knowing if you've driven past the association's headquarters on Route 3 recently and wondered why the parking lot looks different: renovations are underway there as part of what the association calls its Squam Watershed Campaign. Staff have moved into a temporary office in the large parking lot while the main building gets upgraded, and day to day operations are continuing without interruption.
It's a small detail, but it says something. This isn't a seasonal pop-up operation. It's an organization more than a century old that's currently investing in its own building, which is generally a sign of an institution that plans to be doing this work for a while yet.
What This Adds Up To
None of this is new information if you're an SLA member already. But strung together, it says something most people who live on or near Squam haven't quite put into words: the lake's clarity is a live workload, not a fixed feature. It's one boat named Millie, a handful of certified divers, a Little Squam homeowner with a near-perfect runoff score, a race up Mount Percival that funds trail crews, and a staff that just moved into the parking lot so the building could get fixed. Take any one of those away for a few years and the lake starts drifting back toward what it looked like in 1904.
A few small things worth doing this month if you keep a boat on Squam or Winnipesaukee, or own shorefront on either:
- Clean, drain, and dry your boat and trailer before switching between lakes, especially if you've been on Winnipesaukee recently.
- Report any suspected milfoil sightings to the Squam Lakes Association rather than assuming someone else already has.
- Ask about a LakeSmart evaluation for your own shoreline if you haven't had one. Nesheim's near-perfect score is the bar now, not the ceiling.
Meredith Landing keeps half an eye on this kind of work too, mostly because it's part of what keeps Squam looking like Squam for anyone who calls it home, whether that's twelve months a year or just the back half of every summer. If you ever want to talk lake life, dock etiquette, or which boat launch tends to be least crowded on a Saturday morning, Meredith Landing is always happy to compare notes. Let us help you find your next landing spot.
