The events and festivities may be over, but the legacy of the 101-year-old Weeks Act lives on. Last year, partnering agencies involved in the creation of the White Mountain National Forest celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Weeks Act, the legislation that allowed the federal government to buy land in the eastern United States for forest reserves . This year, motorists can honor it by taking a 100-mile tour of the Weeks Act Legacy Trail.

The whitemountainsinfo.com/walt/ website provides a virtual tour guide, with downloadable maps, an audio tour, exploration guide, and more, compatible for computer or smartphone. There are 40 stops in all, through Franconia Notch, across the Kancamagus Highway, up through Crawford Notch on Route 302, and west over Route 3, back to the top of Franconia Notch.

Starting at Artists Bluff at the top of Franconia Notch, the tour then stops at the Echo Lake. At the lake is a plaque in honor of Phillip Wheelock Ayres, who was instrumental in protecting the notch from overzealous timber companies. Ayres, the first forester for the Society for the Protection of NH Forests, lobbied for the Weeks Act and also led a fundraising campaign that allowed the state to purchase the notch in the 1920s.

Lincoln, home of the notorious timber baron J.E. Henry, is also home to an East Branch and Lincoln Railroad locomotive engine. An interpretive plaque by the engine, at the entrance of Loon Mountain, supplies a history of railroad logging in the area.

The tour includes both the familiar well-trod pathways — Cannon Mountain, the Mount Washington Hotel Overlook — and less well-known sites. On the Kancamagus Highway, the traveler is guided to the Discovery Trail, a fairly easy gravel path through the woods with interpretive signs and examples of forest management.

In Crawford Notch, the a few remnants of the town of Livermore sit beside the Sawyer River. Above the notch loom the highest mountains in the forest. Since the summits of the Presidential Range are above treeline, their tops were protected from the devastating effects of aggressive, leave-no-tree behind logging practices. The lower mountains and the valleys around them were not.

The tour brings the traveler to the Zealand Trail, where a relatively easy hike over an old logging railroad bed leads to Zealand Falls.

The Zealand area was the site of several forest fires, as the slash left over from clear cutting was tinder for the sparks from wood or coal-fired logging trains or from lightning.

Among the partnering agencies are the U.S. Forest Service, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, Plymouth State University, the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, NH Public Television, state Parks and Recreation, NHTOA, and Weeks Park Association.

For more information, go to weekslegacy.org.

syoung@newstote.com