3 charming New Hampshire Towns that are straight of storybooks
From Uncle Sam’s house to covered bridges, these three New Hampshire towns have charm to spare.
Anybody who has seen a Hallmark movie set in a picturesque small town sprinkled with colorful fall leaves, white church steeples, and cozy coffee shops probably thinks there’s no way places like that exist in real life. We beg to differ.
New Hampshire has dozens of these magical villages. Here are three of our favorites, where visitors can cross covered bridges, view a 1776 copy of “The Declaration of Independence,” see the inspiration for one of the most famous children’s books published in the country, and maybe even get a glimpse of an unidentified flying object.
1. Mason
This tiny town in the state’s Monadnock region is literally a story-book location. Children’s book writer and illustrator Elizabeth Orton Jones used a small red cottage on Nutting Hill Road as the model for her iconic 1948 Little Golden Book version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Not only is this 1786 house still standing and is literally situated over the river and through the woods on a dirt road, but it’s also become one of New Hampshire’s most charming year-round attractions in the form of Pickity Place, a must-see destination for foodies, gardeners, and fairytale lovers alike.
Visitors can step into the tiny red cottage that inspired Orton, complete with a life-sized reproduction of one of the book’s illustrations, a giant granny-clothed big, bad wolf lying in wait for his unsuspecting visitor. There’s a gift shop with Little Red knick-knacks and a small restaurant with a homemade five-course herbal menu, which changes each month, depending on what seasonal ingredients are available. The site also has kitchen gardens where guests are encouraged to stroll and “please handle the herbs,” and a greenhouse to view and buy plants.
Another iconic Mason destination is Parker’s Maple Barn, which has been serving pancakes and all things maple for over 50 years. The syrup is made right on the premises, and can be purchased along with other maple products and country-style gifts at the attached Corn Crib Gift Shop.
After chowing down, you might want to drive by the childhood home of Uncle Sam. The small Cape-style house, now privately owned, still stands today on Valley Road. It’s labeled with a nearby New Hampshire historical highway marker explaining that meat packer Samuel Wilson, born in 1766, grew up here. He became the supplier of beef rations to the Army during the War of 1812 and also served as the army’s meat inspector. Some say the Uncle Sam name came when Wilson marked his barrels with the letters US, and soldiers joked that the letters stood for “Uncle Sam” Wilson, which in turn became a popular avatar for our country.
If you’d rather walk off your five-course meal, head to the nearly 18-mile-long Mason Railroad Trail or meander through the historic Pleasant View Cemetery, opened on Valley Road in 1770, where 14 Revolutionary War veterans are buried, some of whom died in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
2. Exeter
Strolling through Exeter is like walking through a fairytale village mixed with a healthy heaping of early-American history. There is so much here for history wonks, book nerds, small-town enthusiasts, and even sci-fi lovers to embrace in this seacoast-area burg.
The charming downtown with its boutiques, art galleries, bookstores, restaurants, cafes, and museums centers around a 110-year-old white bandstand designed by Henry Bacon, who also designed the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Not coincidentally, the statue of the seated Lincoln in the memorial was created by Exeter native Daniel Chester French.
Exeter was founded in 1638 by a small group of settlers who were expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for following the controversial teachings of minister Anne Hutchinson. And in that true rebel spirit, Exeter played a big role in The War for Independence, serving as the capital of New Hampshire during the conflict and the de facto capital of the war itself due to its safe location and easy defensibility, according to Barbara Rimkunas, curator of the Exeter Historical Society and host of the online Exeter History Minute.
The first reading of the “Declaration of Independence” in New Hampshire occured in Exeter. That document, a first printing brought to the town in 1776, known as the Dunlap Broadside, is on display in the town’s American Independence Museum, along with thousands of other artifacts from the American Revolution.
Exeter, which would become a center of shipbuilding, international trade, and textile manufacturing, still has many 18th-century structures sprinkled throughout. One of our favorites is the Powder House, built of brick in 1771 at Duck Point on the Squamscott River and used to store the town’s ammunition during the Revolution, including some used at the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the War of 1812. It’s poetic that the town shoots its fireworks near this location each Independence Day.
History tourists can visit the 1721 Ladd-Gilman House or Folsom Tavern, built in 1776, where George Washington ate breakfast on a visit in 1789, or stand in front of Exeter Town Hall, where Abraham Lincoln gave a talk in 1860, three months before he became his party’s nominee for president. He was in Exeter to visit his son, Robert, who was attending Phillips Exeter Academy, which was founded in 1781. Among the school’s famous alumni are Mark Zuckerberg, New Hampshire’s only U.S. president, Franklin Pierce, Daniel Webster, John Irving, Gore Vidal, James Agee, and Dan Brown (still a resident of Exeter), to name a few.
A history of a third kind occurred in Exeter on September 3, 1965, when teenager Norman Muscarello told Exeter Police that he saw an unidentified flying object behind a barn in Kensington. This kicked off a national and international interest in Unidentified Flying Objects and led to the 1966 book “Incident at Exeter,” written by John G. Fuller, which is about a series of alleged UFO sightings in and around the town. Fuller claimed to have seen a flying saucer while researching the book. Exeter has wholly embraced this otherworldly reputation by holding an annual Exeter UFO Festival each August.
3. Littleton
How story-book is this White Mountain town? One of the first things a visitor sees when they drive past the library on Main Street is a life-sized statue of “Pollyanna,” that eternally cheerful girl made famous by children’s book author Eleanor H. Porter. The author, who was born here in 1868, wrote “Pollyanna” in 1913, about an ever-sunny orphan girl who changed a small New England town with her positive outlook on life. Porter wrote many books throughout her life, but none had the impact of “Pollyanna,” whose title became a euphemism for someone with blind faith and naive optimism.
You can understand Pollyanna’s positive outlook when you visit this town, which has kept its Main Street as the center of the community. Littleton has lots of little shops, boutiques, and eateries like the Littleton Diner, on 145 Main. It’s a freestanding 1940 Sterling diner serving the kind of traditional diner fare like homemade corned beef hash, meatloaf platters, and New England franks and beans with brown bread. Chutter’s candy shop, on 43 Main Street, has some serious Willy Wonka vibes going on with what it claims is the world’s longest candy counter. At a staggering 112-feet long with 500 types of candy, who’s to argue?
To add to its picturesque charm, Littleton’s 320-foot-long Riverwalk Covered Bridge, just off Main Street, is a pedestrian crossing with a birds-eye view of the Ammonoosuc River. The red, truss-style bridge looks like it could have been built 150 years ago, but was actually constructed in 2004 and is part of the town’s Littleton River District Trail.
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