8 Fairy-Tale Small Towns In New Hampshire

New Hampshire keeps a string of fairy-tale towns between Lake Winnipesaukee and the White Mountains. Their magical feel comes from places still doing the work they were built for. A theatre in Tamworth has run a fresh play every summer week since 1931. A store in Moultonborough has weighed out penny candy since 1781. Eight towns hold that same lived-in magic within an easy weekend loop.

Wolfeboro

People have summered in Wolfeboro since before the country had a name for the practice, which is why the town calls itself the oldest summer resort in America. The habit shows in how little has had to change. Main Street still runs down to Cate Park, where a waterfront gazebo hosts free concerts through the summer and the boats slide past while you listen. A short drive away, Brewster Beach keeps lifeguards on duty all season and still teaches local kids to swim on weekday mornings. For the long view, take the fifteen-minute drive up to Castle in the Clouds, a stone mansion with gardens and trails looking out over the water. Lake Winnipesaukee itself measures about 21 miles end to end, so there is a lot of shoreline to grow into.

Sandwich

The Sandwich Fair has run every fall since 1909, and it still centers on ox pulls and an antique auto parade rather than anything dreamed up for visitors. That practical streak carries through the rest of the village. The Center Sandwich Fine Craft Gallery has sold handmade pottery and textiles under the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen since 1926, and the work on the shelves is the real thing. Walk the green in Center Sandwich and you pass white clapboard houses, most of them more than a century old and still lived in. Just outside the village, the Durgin covered bridge crosses the Cold River the way it always has. A few miles west sits Squam Lake, which anyone who has seen "On Golden Pond" will recognize on sight.

Tamworth

The Barnstormers Theatre has staged a full professional season here every summer since Francis Cleveland, son of President Grover Cleveland, helped found it in 1931. It is the oldest theatre of its kind still running in the country, and it still mounts a new play each week from late June into September. The rest of Tamworth keeps the same working character. At the Remick Country Doctor Museum and Farm, the 19th-century office used by two generations of country doctors sits beside barns, gardens, and animals you can walk among. Drivers pull off at Chocorua Lake for the view of Mount Chocorua reflected in the water, one of the most photographed peaks in the state. For a swim, White Lake State Park has a sandy beach and a trail through a 72-acre pitch pine grove that is a National Natural Landmark.

Center Harbor

Center Harbor earned its name honestly, as the sheltered head of Lake Winnipesaukee where boats once put in for freight. You can still learn that story at the Center Harbor Historical Society, which keeps the record of the steamboat era when vessels hauled goods and passengers across the lake. The town has stayed small and useful. On Main Street, Squam Lakes Artisans sells pottery, hand-carved wooden toys, and jewelry from more than a hundred local makers. A veterinarian named Dr. Melvyn Hale laid out the 18-hole Waukewan Golf Club on an old farm starting in 1958, and it still plays across that ground. When you are done, the town docks are a short walk away and free to anyone who wants to sit and watch the water.

Holderness

Squam Lake borders most of Holderness, and the town's main draw is a research station as much as an attraction. The Squam Lakes Natural Science Center runs trails past enclosures for black bears and mountain lions, then continues into Kirkwood Gardens across a 200-acre campus. Its guided boat cruises take you out for close looks at loons and bald eagles you would never spot from shore. The work of watching the lake is the point, and visitors get to ride along. For a view earned on foot, the Old Bridle Path up West Rattlesnake Mountain takes under an hour and opens onto the whole lake and the hills behind it.

Moultonborough

The Old Country Store has stood at the Moultonborough crossroads since 1781, and the family that runs it will tell you it may be one of the oldest general stores in the country. It still sells penny candy, aged cheddar, and local maple syrup, and the same building has taken turns as the post office, the library, and the town meeting hall. Nature keeps its own institutions here on the north side of the lake. The Loon Center houses the Loon Preservation Committee, whose exhibits and short films explain how the group tracks and protects the state's loons. Trails from there run more than a mile through the Markus Wildlife Sanctuary along natural shoreline. For the wide view, the climb up Red Hill Fire Tower rewards you with Lake Winnipesaukee spread out below and the White Mountains beyond.

Bristol

Bristol wraps around the southern tip of Newfound Lake, which is counted among the cleanest and clearest lakes in the state. The town has built its public life around that water rather than fencing it off. Wellington State Park holds the largest freshwater swimming beach in the New Hampshire state park system, and its peninsula nature trail gives you views of Cliff and Belle Islands. From the same trailhead, the Elwell Trail climbs to the tops of Mount Sugarloaf and Little Sugarloaf for a wider look at the lake. A public boat ramp gives anglers direct access to the water. When you have had your fill of the lake, family-run spots like Pat's Seafood sit along Central Square, a short walk from the shore.

Peterborough

The Peterborough Players have put on a professional summer season in a converted 18th-century barn since 1933, which makes them one of the oldest summer companies in the country. A single mother named Edith Bond Stearns started the theatre on an abandoned farm, and the barn still holds the stage today. That habit of turning old buildings to good use is the whole character of the town. MacDowell, the country's oldest artist colony, has given writers and composers a quiet place to work here since 1907, and it was a stay there that gave Thornton Wilder the town he wrote into "Our Town." Down in Depot Square, the Peterborough Diner still serves lunch out of a 1950s dining car painted cream and green. The Contoocook River runs through the middle of it all, easy to paddle on a warm afternoon.

The Towns That Never Closed

What ties these eight towns together is that their best places were never rebuilt for visitors. The Barnstormers still rehearses one play by day and performs another by night. The Old Country Store still weighs out penny candy at a counter that has seen almost 250 years of it. The craft gallery in Center Sandwich still answers to the same league it did in 1926. You can drive the loop in a long weekend, but the pleasure of it is slower than that. These are working towns that happen to be worth your time, and they will be doing the same honest work whenever you get there.