There's No Such Thing as 'The Lakes Region'
Seven towns, seven entirely different answers to the same question
People talk about the Lakes Region the way they talk about “the South” or “the coast” — as though it’s one coherent thing with one personality and one vibe. Come visit the Lakes Region. We love the Lakes Region. Have you been to the Lakes Region?
We live here. We’d like to respectfully complicate that. (Even though we totally do this too).
The Lakes Region contains multitudes. It contains the kind of downtown where you can get excellent cocktails and watch boats go by, and it contains the kind of village that has decided, repeatedly and on purpose, to have exactly two businesses. It contains lakes that host hundred-thousand-dollar boats and lakes where families have been dragging the same aluminum canoe down the same path for forty years. It contains ski traffic and farm stands and ice runways and mountain views and Route 16 Hannafords and Dunkin Donuts and the kind of quiet that makes “city people” either exhale deeply or check their phones in a panic.
Whether you’re coming up for a long weekend or thinking about something more permanent, where you land in this region shapes a lot about your experience of it. So here’s what we actually know about ten of its towns — three of the iconic ones and seven of the ones people tend to drive past without stopping. Because they’re all the Lakes Region. They just aren’t the same Lakes Region at all.
Wolfeboro
The sign outside town reads “The Oldest Summer Resort in America.” It’s not being modest and it’s not exaggerating. Wolfeboro has a walkable downtown right on Winnipesaukee — good restaurants, independent shops, the lake visible from most of it — and a quiet confidence about being lovely that it has had for a very long time. If you want the quintessential Lakes Region weekend, the one that looks like a postcard and delivers on it, Wolfeboro is your answer. Come in summer for the full effect. Come in fall if you can. The foliage over the water is not subtle about what it’s doing.
Meredith
More vibrant even than Wolfeboro in the sense of more happening — more noise, more traffic in summer, more of everything. Meredith sits at a crossroads literally and figuratively: only 15 miles off I-93, on Winnipesaukee, with Mill Falls, good restaurants, and a commercial energy that makes it feel like the hub it actually is. Summer weekends here are genuinely bustling. Year-round, it functions as a gathering point for the western Lakes Region in a way no other town quite does. If you want to be in the middle of things — easy in, easy out, always something going on — Meredith keeps you connected.
Laconia
The only actual city in this conversation, which means it operates differently than its neighbors — in a good way. Laconia has real infrastructure: a walkable downtown, a growing restaurant and arts scene that has been quietly gaining momentum for several years, Weirs Beach on the water, and Belknap Mountain essentially in the backyard. It's more layered than people give it credit for. The kind of place that rewards actually spending time there over forming an opinion based on a single week in June. If you want the full Lakes Region geography — water, mountain, downtown, services — without driving between three different towns to get it, Laconia puts it closer together than anywhere else in the region. The Bike Week energy is its own particular thing entirely, and worth experiencing at least once even if it’s not your scene.
Alton
Alton Bay sits at the southern end of Winnipesaukee and has one of the most genuinely charming small-town-on-the-water characters in the region. Quieter than Meredith, less self-conscious than Wolfeboro. In winter, the frozen bay becomes an active ice runway — small planes land on it — which tells you something about the spirit of the place. There’s a hardware store energy to Alton that we mean as a compliment. It feels like a town that still belongs to the people who actually live there. The surrounding hills and lake access make it a strong base for a weekend if you want less crowd and more water.
Bristol and Newfound Lake
Newfound Lake is one of the cleanest lakes in the world. Not in New Hampshire. In the world. It’s also milfoil-free, which anyone who spends time on lakes in this region understands is increasingly rare and genuinely precious. At 183 feet deep, the water is clear enough to see the bottom in detail you weren’t expecting. Wellington State Park sits right on it with the largest freshwater beach in the New Hampshire State Park system. Profile Falls is a ten-minute walk from the parking lot and worth every step.
Bristol, which anchors the southern end of the lake, has a Central Square with a brewpub hidden underneath it, good cafes, a historic district, and a year-round community of about three thousand people that doubles in summer without losing itself. Mount Cardigan is a short drive away. The Kancamagus Highway is accessible. If you’ve been spending all your time on Winnipesaukee and haven’t made it to Newfound, correct that as soon as possible.
Ossipee
Approach Ossipee on Route 16 and you’ll pass a Hannaford and a McDonald’s and probably keep driving. That’s a mistake. A few miles off that corridor, Ossipee Lake and the Ossipee Mountains open up in a way that genuinely surprises people. Shockingly beautiful is how more than one person has described it on first encounter, and that’s not an overstatement. The surrounding towns — Freedom, Effingham — have a deep rural character and natural beauty that most visitors to the region never find. The access corridor to both Boston and Portland, Maine is more direct from here than from much of the rest of the region. If you want to get away from the Winnipesaukee crowds and still be somewhere that earns its place in the Lakes Region conversation, Ossipee rewards the detour.
Brookfield
There are two businesses in Brookfield. And that’s just how the selectmen, and the townspeople who elect them, want it. To be clear, there’s a calligrapher, an accountant, a seasonal blueberry stand, a copy editor, a homestead bakery, and probably more microbusinesses and homesteads. But businesses with a website, posted hours, and a parking lot? Two.
Brookfield is a residential and agricultural community — hobby farms, horse stables, open land, and a residential character that has been preserved on purpose. It sits between Wolfeboro and Wakefield, which means you’re close to the amenities of both without either in your backyard. There’s not much to do in Brookfield in the traditional sense. That’s entirely the point. If your version of a perfect weekend involves a porch, some land, a sky with actual stars in it, and no particular agenda, Brookfield has that in abundance.
Gilmanton Iron Works
Blink and you’ll miss it. That’s not a warning, it’s almost the point. Gilmanton Iron Works is a village that exists along Route 140 between Alton and Belmont without making any particular fuss about itself — heritage farms, beautifully restored bed and breakfasts, Crystal Lake, and stone walls that have been in the same place for two hundred years. The Gilmanton Iron Works Market defies easy description. It’s a coffee shop. It’s a lunch spot. It occasionally functions as a bar. It is, more than anything, the town’s living room, and on a Sunday morning it tells you everything you need to know about the kind of community this is. There’s a farmers market on summer Sundays, a winery, and a historical society that takes its barn museum seriously. It is not a destination town. It is a find-it-by-accident town. The people who love it tend to feel like they made a discovery - like Shangri-La or Brigadoon.
Wakefield
Wakefield has several lakes — Lovell Lake, Pine River Pond, Great East Lake, Belleau Lake — that most visitors to the region have never heard of, and that have spent decades being exactly what they are: unpretentious, genuinely beautiful, and oriented around family camps and cabins rather than anything that needs to announce itself. It’s probably what Winnipesaukee felt like in the 1950s, before the boats got bigger and the restaurants got more ambitious. There’s a simplicity to a weekend on Great East Lake that is its own kind of luxury. The kind that doesn’t come with a dress code.
Tamworth
Technically on the edge of the Lakes Region and the beginning of everything north of it, which is part of what makes Tamworth worth knowing about. Mount Chocorua is in the backyard — the most photographed mountain in America, reflected in Chocorua Lake in a way that photographers have been chasing for a hundred years.
But what sets Tamworth apart in the Lakes Region conversation is its cultural density, which sounds like an odd thing to say about a small rural town and is entirely accurate. The Barnstormers Theatre — the oldest repertory theatre in the United States, founded in 1931 by a son of President Grover Cleveland — runs a full professional summer season of musicals and plays that people drive from Boston to see. The Remick Country Doctor Museum and Farm is one of only three of its kind in the country. There are two active libraries, a year-round farmers market, a distillery, a robust arts council, and a community association that throws a winter bonfire complete with potluck and spent Christmas trees.
None of these places has everything everyone might want - whether you’re planning your next vacation or your retirement. That’s the point. The Lakes Region contains all of them — the iconic and the overlooked, the bustling and the deliberately quiet, the polished downtown and the town that feels like something out of time.
We’ve spent a lot of time in all of them. We have opinions. We also have the good sense to know that the right one depends entirely on what you’re looking for.
So — which one sounds like it could be your favorite? We genuinely want to know. Drop it in the comments.
Here’s to a region that refuses to be one thing.
🏔️ Jenn & Andrea Keys to the Lakes
