6 Most Inviting Towns in New England

The first Maine Lobster Festival ran in Rockland in 1948 to convince out-of-state tourists that the mid-coast was worth a detour. Eighty years later it draws 100,000 visitors over five August days, and Rockland remains one of the working harbours of New England. The same pattern repeats across the region's small towns. Stowe turned a refugee Austrian family's hillside into a ski resort that still bears their name. Stonington sends commercial boats out to fish the same waters its 19th-century sealing captains worked. The six towns ahead each grew their reputation from a single anchor industry that never really left.

Rockland, Maine

Rockland is the gateway to Maine's mid-coast region with a working commercial fishing harbour and a deeper arts scene than most towns this size. The Maine Lobster Festival, running annually since 1948, takes place over five days in early August and draws around 100,000 visitors who collectively eat upwards of 20,000 pounds of lobster across the weekend. The Farnsworth Art Museum on Main Street holds around 15,000 works including the country's largest single-museum collection of paintings by the Wyeth family (N.C., Andrew, and Jamie). The Maine Lighthouse Museum at the south end of town holds the largest collection of lighthouse-related artifacts in the U.S., including original Fresnel lenses. The mile-long Rockland Breakwater, built between 1880 and 1899 from granite quarried locally, runs straight out into the harbour to the 1902 Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse at the end.

Stowe, Vermont

Stowe, a Green Mountain village of around 5,400 residents, sits at the base of Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak at 4,395 feet. The Trapp Family Lodge, on a 2,500-acre hillside property just outside town, was opened in 1950 by the actual von Trapp family who fled Austria in 1938 and settled here after the events later dramatized in The Sound of Music. Stowe Mountain Resort runs 39 miles of trails on Mount Mansfield (the Front Four expert runs include the famous Goat, Liftline, National, and Starr) and operates a gondola to the summit ridge in summer. The Cliff House Restaurant at the top serves lunch with a view east into New Hampshire's White Mountains. The Mount Mansfield Toll Road, paved 4.5 miles up the south side, has been operating since the 1850s.

North Conway, New Hampshire

North Conway sits in the Mount Washington Valley at the southern entrance to the White Mountains. Mount Washington, 25 minutes north at 6,288 feet, is the tallest peak in the Northeast and the site of the Mount Washington Observatory, which on April 12, 1934 recorded a surface wind speed of 231 miles per hour (the highest ever observed at a manned weather station until Cyclone Olivia in Australia in 1996). The Mount Washington Auto Road has been delivering "This Car Climbed Mt. Washington" bumper stickers since 1861. The Conway Scenic Railroad runs vintage passenger trains out of the restored 1874 North Conway Station through Crawford Notch. Settlers Green Outlets on Route 16 holds about 60 brand-name stores including L.L.Bean, Coach, and Polo Ralph Lauren in a tax-free shopping setup that draws Massachusetts day-trippers.

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Woods Hole, on the southwestern tip of Cape Cod, holds an unusual concentration of marine-science institutions for a village of around 800 residents. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), founded in 1930, is the largest independent oceanographic research institution in the country and operates the Alvin submersible (which discovered hydrothermal vents in 1977) and other deep-sea vehicles. The Marine Biological Laboratory, founded in 1888, has hosted more than 50 Nobel laureates as researchers or students. The Woods Hole Discovery Center on Water Street holds free public exhibits including the SharkCam underwater vehicle. The Steamship Authority terminal here runs car-and-passenger ferries to Martha's Vineyard year-round, and Pie in the Sky bakery near the ferry dock has been the standard breakfast stop since 1986.

Narragansett, Rhode Island

Narragansett, on the southwestern coast of Rhode Island where Narragansett Bay opens to the Atlantic, was one of the Gilded Age's prestigious resort destinations. The Towers, a stone Romanesque arch designed in 1883 by McKim, Mead & White (architects of the Boston Public Library and the original Pennsylvania Station), is all that survives of the 1886 Narragansett Pier Casino, which burned down in 1900. Narragansett Town Beach, 19 acres of sand directly downtown, draws around 10,000 visitors on peak summer days and includes a designated surfing area at the north end. The Coast Guard House restaurant occupies the actual 1888 station and serves dinner on a second-floor deck overlooking the Atlantic. Narragansett Beer, brewed locally since 1890, made its way into Jaws when Quint (Robert Shaw) crushes a can on screen in the 1975 film.

Stonington, Connecticut

Stonington sits on the Connecticut coast right at the Rhode Island border with around 5,300 full-time residents in the historic borough. The Stonington Harbor Light, built in 1840, is the oldest standing government-built lighthouse in Connecticut and now operates as a small museum. The Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House Museum, a National Historic Landmark on Palmer Street, was the home of the Stonington sealing captain who in November 1820, at age 21, became the first American to sight the Antarctic continent (his sloop, the 47-foot Hero, carried a crew of five). Stonington is also Connecticut's only commercial fishing port, with a fleet still working out of the harbour. The historic borough at the southern end of the village is one of the most-intact pre-1850 streetscapes in New England, with around 200 listed buildings in the Borough Historic District.

New England's Inviting Six

The six towns above split neatly into pairs along the regional axes. Rockland and Stonington run the working-port-and-lighthouse coast. Stowe and North Conway run the ski-and-mountain weekends. Woods Hole and Narragansett handle the southern New England beach and bay frontage. Each takes a long weekend to do properly, and a full week if the weather is good. The New England welcome is part of the deal.