New Hampshire
Discover New Hampshire
Introduction
New Hampshire is small, mountainous and famously contrary. Its motto is Live Free or Die, it has no sales tax and no tax on wages, and it holds the first presidential primary in the country every four years — a combination that shapes the place more than its size suggests.
The White Mountains take up the north and are the reason most visitors come. Mount Washington at their centre is the highest peak in the northeastern United States and has some of the worst recorded weather anywhere, with a summit reachable by cog railway, by toll road or on foot.
South of the mountains the state settles into lakes — Winnipesaukee is the largest — and then into old mill towns and college towns. Portsmouth on the coast is a colonial seaport that kept its centre intact.
The coastline is the shortest of any ocean-facing state in the country, around eighteen miles, and New Hampshire has made thorough use of every one of them.