9 Offbeat New England Towns To Visit

New England's best small towns wear their quirks out loud. Salem turns all of October into one long Halloween. In Peterborough, the country's first tax-funded public library opened back in 1833. Mystic operates the largest maritime museum in the United States. Brattleboro built its downtown around a 1938 art deco movie palace. Each town earns the offbeat label with something you can walk right up to.

Bar Harbor, Maine

Bar Harbor shows its offbeat streak twice a day. At low tide, a gravel land bridge surfaces between town and Bar Island. Locals walk across to the wooded island and back before the water returns. Cadillac Mountain rises above town inside Acadia National Park. The peak hits 1,530 feet. It catches the first sunrise in the continental United States between October 7 and March 6.

The Abbe Museum on Mount Desert Street is Maine's only Smithsonian affiliate. Its exhibits cover the four Wabanaki nations. Lobster boat tours sail the working harbor all summer. Active lobstermen haul traps in front of passengers. The Shore Path traces the coast past the historic Bar Harbor Inn. It opens onto Mount Desert Island beyond town.

Peterborough, New Hampshire

Peterborough's claim to fame starts at the library. A town meeting voted to fund it through taxation in 1833. It was the first institution in the world to try that. The Peterborough Town Library has operated ever since. The MacDowell artist residency opened in 1907 at the edge of town. Edward and Marian MacDowell built private studios there for writers, composers, and visual artists. The program still hums along today.

The Peterborough Players have staged summer theater in a converted barn since 1933. The troupe mixes classic plays with new work. The Mariposa Museum and World Culture Center occupies an 1841 former Baptist church on Main Street. Its rooms display hands-on exhibits about cultures worldwide. Mount Monadnock rises south of town. It counts among the most-climbed mountains anywhere. Trails leave from several state-park access points.

Brattleboro, Vermont

Brattleboro feels less like a Vermont main street and more like a 1970s arts colony. The Latchis Theatre has shown films since 1938. The art deco palace carries a hand-painted astrological mural across its ceiling. The volunteer Brattleboro Arts Initiative operates it today. The Gallery Walk takes over Main Street on the first Friday of every month. Artisans and musicians spill out onto the sidewalks.

The Brattleboro Museum and Art Center occupies the 1916 Union Station downtown. It rotates contemporary work alongside art-house film nights. Hermit Thrush Brewery on High Street pours small-batch sour beers. Mocha Joe's roasts its own coffee a block away. Retreat Trails cover nine miles of public paths through woods and farmland. The old Brattleboro Retreat tower marks the high point.

Jamestown, Rhode Island

Jamestown spreads across Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay. Newport lies east. Narragansett lies west. Beavertail Lighthouse occupies the third-oldest light station in North America. The first beacon dates to 1749. The current granite tower went up in 1856. A keeper's house museum opens seasonally beneath it. The Jamestown Windmill dates to 1787. It still grinds corn on Windmill Day each summer.

Fort Wetherill State Park crowns 100-foot granite cliffs over Narragansett Bay. The view takes in Clingstone, a lonely mansion built on a bare rock island around 1905. Fort Getty Park on the western shore offers campgrounds, walking trails, and saltwater beaches. Watson Farm covers about 280 acres of working farmland. Sheep and cattle graze the property. Public trails open from May through mid-October.

Mystic, Connecticut

Mystic splits across two towns, Groton to the west and Stonington to the east. The village still works as one community along the river. The 1988 film Mystic Pizza put the place on the map. The real Mystic Pizza joint on West Main Street still serves slices under movie stills and memorabilia. Mystic Seaport Museum covers 19 acres along the river. More than 60 historic buildings moved in and got restored, piece by piece. The collection includes the 1841 whaleship Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship left on earth.

Mystic Aquarium ranks among the few places in the country with beluga whales. It also houses African penguins, Steller sea lions, and a ray touch pool. The Mystic River Bascule Bridge lifts on the hour through the warmer months. Sailboats slip past while traffic waits. Olde Mistick Village stands off the highway, an open-air cluster of shops and eateries around a duck pond. It makes a handy base before you cross into the historic village.

Nantucket, Massachusetts

Nantucket floats 30 miles off the Cape Cod coast. Ferries and small planes are the only way in. Cobblestone streets and shingled houses survive under one of the country's strictest historic codes. Brant Point Lighthouse first lit in 1746. It ranks as the second-oldest in the United States. The current 26-foot wooden tower dates to 1901. It marks the ninth light on the spot. Fires and storms claimed the earlier ones.

The Whaling Museum occupies a former 1847 spermaceti candle factory. A sperm whale skeleton hangs at its center. Visitors walk right under it. Sankaty Head Lighthouse went up in 1850. Crews moved it 405 feet inland in 2007 to escape an eroding cliff. The Sconset Bluff Walk threads along that cliff edge between cottages and the Atlantic. A longstanding town easement carries it through private yards.

Rockport, Massachusetts

Rockport occupies the rocky tip of Cape Ann on the North Shore. The old fishing village flipped into an arts colony in the 1800s. Painters loved the granite headlands and harbor light as subjects. Motif No. 1, a red fishing shack on Bradley Wharf, counts as the most-painted building in the world by most reckoning. The 1978 blizzard flattened the original. Crews rebuilt an exact replica that same year using the original methods.

Halibut Point State Park rests on 440-million-year-old granite at the northern tip. Crews quarried it from 1840 until the industry collapsed in 1929. A former 1944 fire control tower now serves as a quarry museum. The Shalin Liu Performance Center on Main Street built its back wall entirely of glass. The glass frames the Atlantic behind every Cape Ann concert. Bearskin Neck crams galleries, lobster shacks, and small shops onto a narrow rock spit. The spit juts straight into the harbor.

Salem, Massachusetts

Salem crams more personality into October than most cities manage all year. Haunted Happenings takes over the whole month. Costumed parades, ghost tours, and a Grand Parade kickoff stretch across the calendar. The festival pulls more than a million visitors into a city of about 45,000. Salem Maritime National Historic Site was the first the country ever established. The 1819 Custom House still stands along Derby Street. Nathaniel Hawthorne once worked inside it.

The Salem Witch Trials Memorial on Charter Street honors the 20 people executed in 1692. Stark granite benches line a quiet plaza beside the Old Burying Point cemetery. The Peabody Essex Museum owns one of the country's oldest and deepest collections of Asian art. It traces its roots to the East India Marine Society of 1799. The House of the Seven Gables on Turner Street is the 1668 mansion Hawthorne fictionalized. The property operates as a museum today.

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Stockbridge punches far above its weight in American culture. The town spreads through the Berkshires near the New York line. The Norman Rockwell Museum on Glendale Road owns the largest collection of Rockwell's original works anywhere. It even includes his actual studio, used from 1957 until his death in 1978. The studio moved to the museum grounds. Visitors walk right through it. Chesterwood preserves the home and barn studio of Daniel Chester French nearby. French sculpted the seated Lincoln of the Lincoln Memorial. The estate covers 122 acres of Massachusetts hillside.

French's original plaster Lincoln model still stands on the property. The same rail track once rolled it outdoors into daylight. Berkshire Botanical Garden across town spreads over 24 acres of beds, ponds, and trails. It opens from May through October. Naumkeag perches on a hillside above terraced gardens and its famous Blue Steps. The 1886 estate came from the firm McKim, Mead and White. The Red Lion Inn presides over Main Street and dates to 1773. Its wraparound porch slows foot traffic to a crawl.

Why The Quirks Endure

New England's offbeat towns all protect one strange thing at any cost. Nantucket dragged an entire lighthouse 405 feet back from a crumbling cliff. Rockport rebuilt a fishing shack board by board after a blizzard leveled the original. Jamestown still fires up an 18th-century windmill to grind corn every summer. Walk Bar Harbor's gravel land bridge at low tide and the seabed becomes a footpath. In Stockbridge, a plaster Lincoln rolls outdoors on its old rail track. Each town saved the one thing that made it strange.