The White Pine Monograph Series was a series of carefully researched, high quality brochures, paid for by Weyerhaeuser mills, that collected together photographs, drawings, and descriptions of early American buildings built with white pine. It was published bimonthly between 1915 and 1940, and sent to architects, with the goal of encouraging them to use white pine as a building material. The series was considered to be so expertly produced, that many architectural libraries retain copies of it to this day.

The April 1920 issue contained an article about the architecture of the town of Stotham, Massachusetts. Stotham was described as a village untouched by modernity, where ancient traditions were kept alive. It was a village "where the quintessence of naturalness finds its ultimate expression."

For over two decades the article, and its many photos, attracted no attention. It was only when the staff of the Library of Congress were cataloging the material in the White Pine Series that problems arose. They could find no evidence of Stotham's existence, despite consulting maps and histories of Massachusetts. They queried the editor of the White Pine series, who eventually admitted the truth.

In the course of producing the White Pine series, many good photos of classic old houses had not been published because of lack of room. Instead of wasting these photos, the editor had come up with the idea of collecting them together in one article dedicated to the architecture of Stotham, Massachusetts. It was a town that existed only in his imagination, but for two decades no one had been the wiser.

Pictured: Some of the buildings of Stotham. (Top) the first meeting house of the Stotham Congregational Society; (middle) "the only farm-house in Stotham concerning which the records show lack of authentic data"; (bottom) the Podbury-Ives House.