During World War II, a factory churned out acetate, vital to weapons production, and wood alcohol. "We always had chicken pies out on the Fourth of July," Rosenstraus says, but the tradition "stopped because people got too old to run it."
Today, many of the residents "work on the State Road in the summer and live off unemployment in the winter," says Rosenstraus, referring to New York's highway-repair project.
They also work on odds and ends, including construction work and driving eight-wheel tractors for maple-sugar and maple-syrup facilities.
No one, including Rosenstraus, seems to know the origin of the hamlet's name, but she speculates that the town's founders were from New England and named it after their alma mater.
Harvard Glacier
Jutting into southern Alaska's Prince William Sound, the Harvard Glacier, 1,500 feet thick and 20 miles long, fills the lefthand fork of the College Fjord. The righthand fork is, naturally, the Yale Glacier. Seven tributaries of the fjord are named after Ivy League sister schools, including Radcliffe.
The fjord is "the most scenic fjord in Prince William Sound," says Bruce F. Molnia, chief of international poller programs at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va. The fjord is currently being studied for evidence of global warming.
The fjord, and Harvard Glacier, are visited by between 30,000 and 50,000 tourists a year, Molnia estimates. Many take day trips by bus, train and boat, departing from Anchorage.
The Harvard Glacier got its name in 1899 when the Harriman family--which later included W. Averell Harriman, undersecretary of state under President Lyndon B. Johnson--took a vacation in southern Alaska. They were accompanied by Harvard minerology instructor Charles Palache; John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club; an Amherst College professor; and two U.S. Geological Survey employees.
"They took great delight in ignoring Princeton," says Molnia, author of Alaska's Glaciers.
The glacier is quite active, moving about 2 to 3 feet a day. Thousands of icebergs break off into the sound each year; about once a year, a ship hits one, but there have been no sinkings or drownings so far.
The glacier is more then just ice--bands of sentiment, known as moraines, sit astride the west side of the glacier. However, except for moss, the Harvard Glacier supports no life.
Mt. Harvard
Finally, there is Mt. Harvard, Colorado's third highest mountain, at 14,420 feet. The mountain, part of the Sawatch Range, is part of a chain called the Collegiate Peaks, which include Mts. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Oxford, about 90 miles southwest of Denver.
Despite its height, climbing up Mt. Harvard is hardly a death-defying experience. "It's an undistinguished lump on a fairly undistinguished range; it just happens to be very high," says John C. Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. Reed, who has climbed the mountain once, describes it only as "a long walk" of about three or four miles.
Nor is the view from the mountain especially scenic, compared with Colorado's other 54 mountains above 14,000 feet. "In terms of being spectacular, Mt. Harvard would not be really high on the list," Reed says.