Our Story
A New Chapter
on an Old Road.
Red Fox Inn sits at 112 Main Street in Lancaster, New Hampshire — the county seat of Coös County, the gateway to the Great North Woods, and a place where every view out the window exists because one local boy thought big.
01 · The Fox
Lancaster’s fox
is a bronze one.
The red fox isn’t just our name — it’s Lancaster’s official town symbol. In 1913, when Lancaster celebrated its sesquicentennial, the town commissioned sculptor Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington to cast a fox in bronze. Huntington was no local artisan — her Joan of Arc stands in Riverside Park in Manhattan, her El Cid guards the entrance to the Hispanic Society of America. The bronze fox she created for Lancaster still sits in Centennial Park, three blocks from our front door.
The town chose the fox for what it represents: clever, caring, independent, and at home with the wild. We chose the name Red Fox Inn because no other words capture this place better.
“Clever, caring, independent,
and at home with the wild.”
— The Town of Lancaster, on its fox
02 · The Forest
A Lancaster kid
saved the mountains.
Every mountain you see from Lancaster exists as protected land because of a boy who grew up on one of them. John Wingate Weeks was born and raised here, went on to become a U.S. Senator and Secretary of War, and authored the Weeks Act — signed by President Taft on March 1, 1911. That single law created the White Mountain National Forest and 47 other eastern national forests, protecting over 20 million acres.
Weeks’s summer lodge — a 1912 fieldstone mansion with a 56-foot observation tower — is now Weeks State Park, a five-minute drive from the inn.
“A Lancaster kid looked at these mountains
and decided they should belong to everyone.”
Stand at the top of that tower and you’ll see the legacy of a Lancaster kid who thought big.
03 · The Town
Chartered in 1763.
Stubborn ever since.
Lancaster was chartered on July 6, 1763. The first settlers arrived the following spring with twenty head of cattle and twelve acres of corn seed — only to watch a freak August frost destroy the entire crop. They stayed anyway. That stubbornness runs deep here.
The Israel River that flows through downtown was called Siwooganock — “place of the burnt pine trees” — by the Abenaki. Coös County itself takes its name from the Abenaki word for “white pines,” and remains the only place name in America officially spelled with a diaeresis.
Next door to the inn, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church — built in 1876 and modeled after a small English country church — is described by the Library of Congress as one of the most photographed churches in New England. The Lancaster Fair has run every year since 1870.
“The friendly town
in the friendly state.”
— Lancaster’s town motto
04 · The Colonel
One last battle.
Colonel Edward E. Cross set type at the Coös Democrat newspaper in Lancaster as a fifteen-year-old, then went on to found Arizona’s first newspaper, command the Fifth New Hampshire — the Union regiment that suffered the highest infantry casualties of the Civil War — and was killed at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. His grave is a short walk from the inn.
When General Hancock told him that morning, “Colonel Cross, this day will bring you a star,” Cross replied:
“No, General.
This is my last battle.”
— Col. Edward E. Cross, July 3, 1863
He was right.
05 · The Inn
A 1950s motor lodge,
still earning its keep.
Red Fox Inn is a 27-room motor lodge at the center of downtown Lancaster. We’re operated by Hanuram, LLC, and we’re part of a family of North Country properties that includes Eastgate Inn in Littleton and Saffron Inn in Auburn, Maine. We’ve been in the hospitality business in this region for over eight years.
The building dates to the 1950s, and we honor that heritage — the exterior-corridor format means you park at your door, whether you’re arriving by car, motorcycle, ATV, or snowmobile. We’ve upgraded every room with new mattresses, laminate wood floors, flat-screen TVs, fiber-optic Wi-Fi, and modern furniture, while keeping the retro character that makes a motor lodge worth staying at.
We’re not a luxury resort and we don’t pretend to be. We’re a warm, clean, well-run inn in one of the most beautiful small towns in America — run by people who live here and love it.
06 · Since 1955
The same patch
of Main Street.
The Lancaster Motel opened its doors in 1955 and quickly became a landmark on Routes 2 and 3 in downtown Lancaster. These vintage postcards show the property in its early days — the distinctive curved entrance and the classic motor court layout that welcomed travelers to the North Country for decades. Red Fox Inn carries that tradition forward.
“Where the North Woods
welcome you home.”