To continue your tour, return to the first floor and exit to the lakeside lawn via the terrace doors in the Main Hall.
You should now be standing on Lucknow Mansion’s terrace lawn, overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee and the Belknap Mountains. Now imagine you are Tom Plant, standing at the Crow’s Nest in this very spot over a century ago. This view, this incredible natural vista, is the reason Tom Plant chose to make this land his home.
Tom loved his mountains, both for the opportunities and the inspiration they provided.
“It isn’t merely the mountains themselves, though they give me every opportunity for outdoor life, for riding and driving and hunting, for buoyant health and a permanent constructive interest in things; it is more what they enable me to see and to experience as I contemplate from below their rugged bulk or stand on their lonely heights and try to take in the splendor of the outlook that stretches away around me.”
Fortunately for Tom, he never had to leave his beloved home. Olive, however, did. After returning to Illinois, she remained with her parents for several years, caring for them as they aged. When the Deweys passed, Olive received an inheritance and retired to California to be near her brother, Mills, and his family. She remained in the Laguna Hills area until her death in 1976 at the age of 93. We do not know if she ever returned to Lucknow – though it did open to the public as Castle in the Clouds in 1959.
