Natural Attractions
Bartlett: ★ Diana’s Baths Waterfalls – a series of waterfalls and cascades fed by Lucy Brook
Conway: ★ Mt. Washington and The Cog Railway
Groton: ★ Sculptured Rocks Natural Area – In the 272 acres of the Sculptured Rocks Natural Area, the Cockermouth River has carved the rocks over many years with breathtaking results
Hale’s Location: ★ Thompson Falls – mile’s hike from the base of Wildcat Mountain
Lincoln:
- ★ Kancamagus Highway and White Mountain National Forest – A winding 34.5-mile section of New Hampshire Route 12
- ★ The Flume Gorge and Franconia Notch, Franconia Notch State Park – Crowded trail is mostly a boardwalk, with lots of stairs. Most able-bodied people can handle it. The spectacular rock formations, the vibrant plant life, and the rushing waterfalls are all wonderful. Check out the Lost River, just a 20-minute drive away.
- Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway – This 80-person passenger cable car brings visitors to the summit of Cannon Mountain in under ten minutes.
- Basin – huge pothole
- Franconia Falls
Madison: America’s Largest Glacial Traveler [RA] – It’s a rock, an easy 7-minute walk to Boulder. Lots of information on display, and you can walk right around it.
North Woodstock: ★ Lost River Gorge
Portsmouth: ★ Hilton State Park, Massive Tidal Flows [RA] – tidal surges like to walk out onto a pedestrian-only bridge to watch and hear the water rushing past.
National Parks and Monuments
Appalachian National Scenic Trail (Georgia to Maine)
Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park
Other Attractions
Allenstown:
- CCC Camp Museum [RA] – Bearbrook State Park, See the bunks and camp tools of the unemployed men who helped to build America’s parks. The last remaining CCC camp, and the most complete examples of a CCC camp still remaining.
- Snowmobile Museum [RA] – Bear Brook State Park, The first and only state-sponsored snowmobile museum in the United States.
Concord: Franklin Pierce Home and Museum [RA] – This is the only home Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), America’s 14th President, ever owned. He lived in it for six years, before he became President.
New Castle: Fort Stark Historic Site, Decoy Ship Building [RA] – Odiorne Point State Park, defunct military installation with a decoy ship outline facing the harbor, built to fool Nazi subs or planes so they wouldn’t attack the legit shipping facilities elsewhere.
- Strawbery Banke Museum – Name of the first 1623 settlement at what is now Portsmouth
- ★ Market Square and Portsmouth’s Historic Houses – Portsmouth Harbor Trail
- African Burying Ground Memorial [RA] – Portsmouth replaced an entire block of its former Chestnut Street with this long, thin memorial; although, to be fair, the Burial Ground was here before Chestnut St. The former graveyard was uncovered in 2003. The memorial opened in 2015, and includes statues of a slave and Mother Africa trying to reach around a separation wall; a circular burial vault; and vague human silhouettes that are not ghosts, but the concerned citizen-consciences of Portsmouth.
- USS Albacore, Submarine in a Ditch [RA] – This is a Cold War experimental sub built in 1952 and dragged out of the water in 1984, placed on way too small concrete blocks in a ditch, and turned into a museum.
Offbeat Landmarks and Oddities
Alstead: Rusty Mammoth [RA] – Wooly Mammoth stands outside an auto repair shop. Made of strips of rusty steel with bright blue eyes.
Bethlehem: ★ Rocks Estate, New Hampshire Maple Museum [RA] – old sap buckets, yokes, maple candy molds, spouts, tubing, taps, and tin syrup containers. Also a “The Stumpy Village” — a photo-op where you can stand among several white-painted stumps decorated to resemble anorexic snowmen.
Brookline: ★ Andres Institute of Art, Sculpture Park – Forest of “Huh?” [RA] – a collection of sculptures from around the world is spread along wooded trails on Big Bear Mountain. Mostly abstract and cryptic pieces, interesting to experience in the forest setting.
Canaan: Big Lumberjack Carved From Tree [RA] – Carved from a tree trunk, a Goliath-size (about 12-ft. tall), colorfully-painted woodsman greets visitors to a tree-shredding facility.
Chesterfield: Stairway to Nowhere, Madame Sherri Forest [RA] – Now surrounded by forest, the rock staircase was once part of a castle built by an eccentric widow. The castle burned to the ground in 1962.
Colebrook: Victims of Carl Drega [RA] – Upright black marble slab has etched portraits four victims killed in a 1997 spree by local resident Carl Drega, who had weapons and bad temper.
- 92-Foot-Tall Mercury Redstone Rocket Replica [RA]
- Doorstep Defended by Franklin Pierce, Vacant Lot Where He Died [RA] –
- Scenic RailRiders [RA] – Pedal A Rail Bike, pedal a sit-down “rail bike” along a 6.5-mile stretch of abandoned track. The circuit takes about two hours.
- Statue of Franklin Pierce [RA] – Franklin Pierce, America’s 14th President, a Yankee who sympathized with the South and defended slavery as Constitutional.
- Woodman Institute and Garrison House
- Big Blue Mecha-Crab [RA] – In Henry Law Park, Maybe ten feet tall, the crab is made of bolted-together steel with mechanical legs and large industrial claws.
- ★ Woodman Museum: Quirky Relics [RA] – our buildings of exhibits, including a four-legged chicken, a man-eating clam, and a blackjack used to kill a New Hampshire bank teller in 1897.
Enfield: La Salette Shrine [RA] – Shrine honors a miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary in France, 1846. Features kneeling stations, statues of Our Lady of La Salette and witness children, and other areas for quiet prayer and meditation.
Errol: Stuffed White Moose [RA] – L L Cote Sports center near the center of town, they have a rare White Bull Moose on display.
Franconia: Old Man of the Mountain Profiler Plaza [RA] – In May 2003 the “Old Man of the Mountain” fell off a cliff in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. It was a natural rock formation that looked like a craggy face, so loved by its state that its profile is still used on New Hampshire license plates and road signs. A clever arrangement of bumps on poles, viewed from one vantage point, recreates the collapsed cliff face symbol of New Hampshire.
- Golfing Moose [RA] – Bipedal moose with a businessman’s paunch and comedic clothes stands outside a mini-golf course.
- Grand Trunk Railroad Museum [RA] – A miniature train layout and museum have set up shop inside the cars of an old freight train at the Gorham Railroad Station.
Grafton: Ruggles Mine [RA] – upfront you’re shown a video and a museum, Next stop is the rental booth, where you can rent a hammer to search for semi-precious stones.
Greenville: Uncle Sam’s Boyhood Home [RA] – Where Sam lived before he got his billy-goat-beard and patriotic duds. There’s a historical marker for a quick drive-by, or tours of the house by appointment.
Hampton Falls: Beer Bottle on Hampton Falls First Baptist Church Steeple [RA] – An architectural fake bottle, much larger than life-size. An urban legend says it’s a nod to the local brewer who paid for the church, while others say it’s just a finial, no alcohol involved.
- 16-Foot-Tall Beach Santa [RA] – He’s tan, wears Birkenstocks and a Hawaiian shirt, and carries a boogie board in his sack. Proof to the world that New Hampshire really does have a beach.
- Giant Pirate [RA] – With cutlass upraised, he stands over 20 feet tall, and his peg leg does double-duty as a mini-golf hazard. Visible from the street, but behind a fence.
- OC Studio Suites, Hotel with Fake Lighthouse [RA] – Five-story hotel with a pseudo-lighthouse on the entrance corner.
- Memorial to a Witch [RA] – Eunice “Goody” Cole wasn’t burned, but she did have a stake driven through her dead heart. Some 300 years later New Hampshire felt guilty and put a plaque on a rock in her memory.
- ★ Tuck Museum, Thorvald’s Rock [RA] – This rock, with Viking runes, marks the AD 1004 grave of Thorvald, brother of Viking explorer Leif Eriksson and son of Erik the Red. Or — maybe it’s just a rock with scratches on it.
Hinsdale: House Covered in License Plates [RA] –
Hooksett: Old Man of the Mountain Consolation Replica [RA] – A one-quarter-scale replica of New Hampshire’s most famous rock outcropping. Reportedly cost at least $35,000 to build. After the original collapsed, this became the state’s go-to old man rock face.
Isles of Shoals: Ruined Monument to Man Saved by Pocahontas [RA] – Captain John Smith, the man who coined the name “New England,” gets no respect. His once-impressive monument, erected in 1864, has been reduced to a ruined base with a weather-hammered bronze plaque.
Jefferson: Santa’s Village [RA] – Santa’s Village is one of a string of surviving, aging Storybook and Santa-themed parks across New England.
Keene:
- Jumanji: Parrish Shoes Mural [RA] – A painted wall advertisement from a fake business seen in the 1995 Robin Williams’ film “Jumanji,” whose exteriors were filmed mostly in Keene.
- Monadnock View Cemetery, Teacher’s Desk Tombstone [RA] – The granite grave marker of school teacher Charlotte Gemmell (1920-2003) is shaped like a desk, complete with essential books and an apple.
Kingston: Greenwood Cemetery, Graves of Betty and Barney Hill [RA] – Flying saucerdom’s most famous abductees. Betty and Barney are buried beneath an unexceptional gray tombstone. Set flush with the ground next to the tombstone are plaques, added at a later date, with Betty and Barney’s familiar names and a notation that they are authors of “The Interrupted Journey” — their book about their abduction.
Laconia: American Classic Arcade Museum [RA]
- Abducted by Aliens [RA] – Betty And Barney Hill were the first of the modern-day “abductees.” They claimed to have been waylaid and probed by aliens while driving south on US 3 on September 19, 1961. Noted with a historical marker.
- Alien Abduction Gas Station [RA] – Photos, news articles, and reports line the inside walls. Outside is a mural of an alien standing in the road, a tribute to Betty and Barney Hill, who were abducted nearby.
- ★ Clark’s Bears [RA] – New England’s classic roadside attraction, where performing bears eat ice cream and a trains full of tourists are attacked by a hairy mutant in a Mad Max car.
- Indian Head Rock [RA] – From the Indian Head Motel Resort, travelers can make out the craggy profile of an Indian head at the top of a mountain. The motel features teepees, totem poles, and an observation tower.
- Mural: Ike’s 1955 Visit [RA] – President Eisenhower gave a speech outside Lincoln High School in 1955. In 1960 the town opened a new post office with an interior mural of Ike on his red, white, and blue-bedecked platform, painted by Robert Hughes. The mural was moved to the museum at Clark’s Bears in 2021.
- Statue of Pollyanna [RA] – promoted as “New Hampshire’s most welcoming attraction” — is a tribute to hometown author Eleanor H. Porter, whose fictional Pollyanna was so unstoppably cheerful that she became a colloquial noun. Visitors rub her shoes for “happiness.
- Wallace Horse Cemetery [RA] – A plot of fenced land set back from the road which has three horses buried in it – Maud and Molly in 1919 and Maggie in 1929. There’s a roadside sign pointing to the cemetery.
- Welded Robot Welder [RA] – Small robot made of welded-together tanks holds a welding torch, wears a welding mask, and deploys a spring for an antenna.
- World’s Longest Candy Counter [RA] – Chutters general store boasts of its 112-ft. long glass counter devoted to nothing but selling candy.
Londonderry: Dj Vu Furniture [RA] – Inside this used/liquidated furniture business you’ll find a big, ready-for-poses Elvis head, along with superheroes and other pop culture figures.
- Grieving Gold Star Mother Statue [RA] – a life-size bronze statue that shows a World War II mother in shock, a single tear on her cheek. One hand braces herself against an unsteady flower stand, clutching a crumpled telegram. Second of six statues around the US.
- Merci Box Car [RA] – The French sent over gifts of gratitude in the “Merci” train, thankful for the relief supplies sent over by individual Americans in the 1940s. Each state received their own box car, and NH has wonderfully preserved theirs in a gorgeous Lions Club-style shrine, decorated with fleur-de-lys and French signage aplenty.
Meredith: Bronze Archie, Ageless Teenager [RA] – A human-size statue of the redheaded, freckle-faced cartoon character Archie in the hometown of its creator.
Milford: Swinging Footbridge [RA] – Green-towered, 200-foot-long suspension footbridge, built in 1889, crosses the Southegan River.
Mount Vernon: Green Lawn Cemetery, Statue of Dog on Master’s Grave [RA] – William Bruce was out fox hunting, with his hound dog, when he accidentally killed himself with his own gun.
New Castle: Great Island Common, Pose Inside Outdoor Picture Frame [RA] – An outdoor metal rectangle on an artist’s easel that frames a scenic view of the ocean. Visitors stand “inside the painting” and insert themselves into the picture.
New London: Old Main Street Cemetery, Loaf of Bread Tombstone [RA] – the tomb of the town baker.
Newbury: Chicken Farmer Rock [RA] – The famous “Chicken Farmer, I Still Love You” rock is found on the side of New Hampshire Route 103 in Newbury.
Newport: Thanksgiving Holiday Heroine [RA] – Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) pushed Lincoln to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. A 2013 monument recalls her accomplishments, including writing the poem that spawned “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
- Kancamagus Collectibles and Car Museum [RA] – Basically a gift shop with a small museum in the back, run by a guy who loves to restore old cars. Usually there’s a couple of quirky vehicles sitting in the parking lot.
- Tiny Church – Rock of Ages [RA] – Only 11 x 11 feet, it stands perched on a boulder on which has been stenciled “Rock of Ages.” Not the tiniest of tiny churches, but the location is unique.
Northfield: Tilton Arch: An Unoccupied Tomb [RA] – 50 feet tall and 40 feet wide arch with a giant red granite sarcophagus that was built as a burial chamber and not used.
Penacook: Hannah Duston Massacre Site Statue [RA] – Hannah Duston was kidnapped during a 1697 Abenaki raid. The raiders killed her baby, so she killed nine of them (six of them children). The 1874 statue of Hannah is supposedly the first in the U.S. to a real woman.
- Mt. Washington Auto Road: [RA] – The road wasn’t built because Mt. Washington needed it, but because its backers believed that people would pay to ride up it. They did, and they still do, setting a precedent for separating tourists from their money and earning for the road the right to call itself “the oldest man-made tourist attraction in the United States.” ($25 per car and driver) It’s steep and narrow, nearly eight miles long, with hairpin switchbacks and harrowing drop-offs. There are no guardrails and no pavement in spots, particularly above the tree line. Over 100 turns.
- World’s Worst Weather Museum [RA] – More than 140 people have died on Mt. Washington since 1849, and it’s not especially mountainous. This museum — opened mid-June 2014 — chronicles the awful weather that assaults its summit, which also happens to be the location of the museum. 231 mph wind recorded here in 1934.
Pittsburg: Border Monuments 18 Inches Apart [RA] – The only road crossing between New Hampshire and Canada is marked with two identical obelisks, set into a single concrete base, 18 inches apart.
Plymouth: Indian Village Attack Site [RA] – Plaque on rock marks the location of an Indian village attacked by white colonists in 1712.
- ★ Museum of Dumb Guy Stuff [RA] – taking action figures and customizing them into new characters and creatures
- Vintage Neon: Yoken’s Whale [RA] – The restaurant closed in 2004 and its sign was removed, but the town loved the goofy-looking neon whale so much that it was restored and re-installed at the original site.
Richmond: Birthplace of President Garfield’s Mom [RA] – Eliza Ballou was born in 1801 in the backwoods of New Hampshire — and it’s still the backwoods of New Hampshire. Someone hauled a big stone monument to her birth site, but be prepared to hike if you want to see it.
Rumney: ★ Polar Caves [RA] – Wooden walkways ease your path around mysterious ice caves. The ice can be 12 feet thick in the Spring, but it’s usually gone by August.
- ★ America’s Stonehenge [RA] – Built by a Native American Culture or a migrant European population? No one knows for sure. A maze of man-made chambers, walls and ceremonial meeting places, at over 4,000 years old America’s Stonehenge is most likely the oldest man-made construction in the United States.
- Giant Smoking Cigar Sign [RA] – The big cigar sign at the Two Guys Smoke Shop releases puffs of “smoke” during the business day, steam permitting.
Warren: Only Town With a Real Redstone Missile [RA] – The same kind of engine booster used to hurl New Hampshire native Alan Shepard into space. Brought here in 1971.
Wolfeboro: Wright Museum of WWII History [RA] – In addition to its indoor tank (and other equipment), this museum has an outside wall designed to make it look as if another real tank has blasted through it.