What’s Happening in the Lakes Region This August

The month everyone comes home for, whether they still live here or not

In 1899, about 130 years after the first settlers started building homes (including mine thanks to Captain Jonathan Gilman) in the Lakes Region, a New Hampshire governor named Frank Rollins had a problem. Towns that used to hold two thousand people were down to a few hundred. Farmhouses were going to ruin. The forests that had been cleared for pasture were growing back wild, because the people who’d worked that land had left for factory jobs in the cities or farmland out west, and they weren’t coming back. Not to visit, not often enough, and certainly not to stay.

So Rollins invented something. He called it Old Home Day, and the idea was simple: once a year, invite everyone who used to live here to come back, just for a day. Not to move home. Not to buy back the farm. Just to show up, eat something at a long table, and remember that leaving a place doesn’t mean it stops being yours.

That was 127 years ago, and we still do it across the region and state. This August, something like two dozen towns across this part of New Hampshire will hold their Old Home Day, not to be confused with Town Pride days (which I totally thought meant something very different when I first moved here than it actually does). Somebody’s daughter flies in from Denver. Somebody’s college roommate makes the drive from Boston because her grandmother used to run the bean supper. Nobody’s asking if you still have residency in the state. You just have to still care about this place or someone who now, once, or might someday live here.

Tourists are welcome too, but really this one is for the people who have some long-standing connection to the area. The people who leave and the people who stay both think they’re the ones who got it right. Old Home Day just quietly refuses to pick a side and reminds us that this place means lots of different things to lots of different people. Sometimes it means nostalgia and sometimes it means you’ve arrived exactly where you want to be for the next season or chapter of life.

Here’s what’s happening, starting with the days built for exactly that.

Old Home Days

Activities vary, but often include food trucks, bean suppers, barbecues. There might be antique cars, craft shows, a book sale, a town-wide yard sale, displays from the local historical society. Live music, plays, and sing-a-longs have also been known to happen. As you’ll see below, details vary…but for Old Town Day, IYKYK.

Alton Old Home Day, Saturday, August 8 is the highlight but like Sandwich, there are activities for a full week.

Belmont Old Home Day, Saturday, August 8.

New Hampton Old Home Day, Saturday, August 8, 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., with square dancing from 7 to 10 p.m.

Sandwich Old Home Week, Sunday, August 2 through Sunday, August 9. A full week rather than a single day, which tells you something about how seriously Sandwich takes this.

Gilmanton Old Home Day, Saturday, August 15, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Bean-hole beans, an art show, thirty-some vendors, and this year an Abenaki storyteller added to the lineup. Free, no dogs.

Celebrating 250 Years: Discovering Your Milton Roots, New Hampshire Farm Museum, Milton. Saturday, August 15, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is Milton’s first-ever Old Home Day, timed to the town’s 250th anniversary, hosted at a working farm museum on 50 acres that’s been there since the late 1700s. There’s something particularly good about a town starting this tradition now rather than a century ago.

Gilford Old Home Day, Saturday, August 29.

Bristol Old Home Day, Kelley Park. Saturday, August 29, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Classic car show, food trucks, all-day live music, and if you plan your whole day around it, the TTCC lobster and chicken supper caps things off that evening.

Craft & Maker Season

League of NH Craftsmen’s 93rd Annual Craftsmen’s Fair, Mount Sunapee Resort, Newbury. August 1-9, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. Technically Sunapee country, not ours, but it’s the oldest continuously running craft fair in the country and an easy drive for most of the Lakes Region.

On the Green 2 Arts & Crafts Festival, Brewster Academy, Wolfeboro. August 7-9.

46th Annual Lakes Region Fine Arts & Crafts Festival, downtown Meredith and the Mill Falls Marketplace. August 22-23. Running since 1979, and still the one locals actually go to themselves.

Rumney Village Art Walk, town common and around the village. August 16, noon to 4 p.m. A juried fine arts and crafts fair spread through an actual working village rather than a fairground, which changes the feel of it entirely.

Not in the lakes region, but if you want to take a drive down to the Seacoast, Jenn will have a booth this year for Lakes and Peaks Provisions Co. at the Hampton Live Freely Fest on Sunday August 23rd. Stop by, say hello, and sample some NH made crafts and goods.

Music, Most Nights of the Week

Wolfeboro’s Cate Park bandstand runs its Saturday series through August: High Range (bluegrass) opens August 1, Compaq Big Band plays the 8th, Ball in the House (a cappella) the 15th, Jimmy and the Jesters (50s and 60s rock) the 22nd, and the Eric Grant Band closes it out the 29th. Free, 7 to 9 p.m.

Alton Bay runs its own Saturday bandstand series all month too: Quint E. Sential Band on the 1st, Bittersweet on the 8th, Mutha Hubbard Band on the 15th, Saxx Roxx on the 22nd, and Cool Beans closing out the 29th. Same free, same lawn-chair energy, quieter crowd.

Bristol’s summer concert series at Kelley Park continues with North River Music on August 6 and Club Soda on August 20, Thursday evenings.

Downtown Laconia’s Concerts on Canal runs August 14 (Cozy Throne) and August 26 (Chris White Bandine), 5 to 9 p.m. on Canal Street, rain or shine.

Over in Moultonborough, Castle in the Clouds runs Music Nights on the Carriage House terrace most weeknights this month, dinner and live music with the sun going down over Winnipesaukee. Reservations sell out fast; check their calendar for exact dates.

Tuftonboro’s 19 Mile Beach has free outdoor concerts most Thursdays, including Skyroad on August 6, Idol Hands on August 13, and Carolyn Ramsay Band on August 20.

Theatre & Stage

Shrek the Musical, The Colonial Theatre, Laconia. August 7-9. Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative’s big multigenerational summer production, with donations collected for the Lakes Region Children’s Auction.

The 39 Steps, Winnipesaukee Playhouse, Meredith. August 14-23. Four actors playing over 150 characters in a spoof of Hitchcock’s spy thriller, including an onstage plane crash.

Annie, Interlakes Theatre, Meredith. August 13-16. If Shrek doesn’t scratch the family-musical itch, this will.

Juston McKinney: Parentally Challenged, The Colonial Theatre, Laconia. August 15, 7:30 p.m. New Hampshire’s own, if you haven’t caught his act yet.

On the Water

Loon Cruise, Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Holderness. Mondays and Fridays at 3 p.m. through late August. A Loon Preservation Committee biologist joins the ride, route changes weekly. Advance reservations required.

The Millie B, Wolfeboro Town Docks. A 60-minute narrated tour on a replica 1928 Hacker-Craft around the southern end of Winnipesaukee, past a loon preservation area, with the kind of history you only get from someone who’s told it a thousand times.

Sasquatch Footy Regatta, Bridge Falls Path, Wolfeboro. August 15, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Back Bay Skippers hosts this, by way of the NH Boat Museum, and yes, it is exactly what it sounds like: foot long model yachts that are raced across the Back Bay in Wolfeboro. Genuinely one of the more delightful things on this list.

JustGoXplore Overlanding Expo, Gunstock Mountain Resort, Gilford. August 14-15, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. New England’s only overlanding and camping expo, free to attend, with a Rig Show on the 15th.

Lectures & Local History

The Wright Museum in Wolfeboro runs its Tuesday lecture series all month, and hosts its Cruise In to the Wright car show on August 15.

The Lake Winnipesaukee Museum in Laconia has talks on the NH Bomb Squad (Aug 5) and the history of the Weirs (Aug 19).

Belknap Mill hosts the Central NH Writers’ Group on August 19.

Milton’s Old Town Hall hosts a talk on the history of Rochester, NH on August 16, part of the town’s own reckoning with 250 years of itself.

Farm & Nature

Guided Paddles at the Newfound Center, Hebron. Sundays 10 a.m. to noon and Mondays 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., August 2 through 17.

Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, Pemi Oxbow Preserve, Holderness. Weekly Mondays through August 31, 9 to 10:30 a.m.

Squam Lakes Natural Science Center has a bioblitz walk series on August 4 and 6, and an Animal Birthday Bash on August 12.

Grey Rocks Conservation Center, Hebron, runs Kids Nature Exploration on August 6, 13, and 20, and a Discovery Walk with a naturalist on August 3, 10, and 17.

Anytime in August

If you don’t want to plan around a single date, the Lakes Region doesn’t really need you to. The lake is at its warmest right now, which means early morning is still the best time to be on it before the boat traffic picks up. The trails that felt like mud in May are dry and dusty now.

And if you find yourself at one of these Old Home Days this month, even a town that isn’t yours, even one you’re just passing through, stay for the bean supper and talk to your neighbors. That’s the whole point of the thing.

🧭 Jenn

Keys to the Lakes