Hanover

We noticed the white blazes before we noticed anything else — small painted marks on trees and lampposts leading straight across the Dartmouth Green, the unmistakable trail markings of the Appalachian Trail, which threads through the middle of Hanover on its way from Georgia to Maine. Lia, who’d hiked sections of the AT in her twenties, got visibly excited watching a thru-hiker with a battered pack cut across the same lawn where students were tossing frisbees. It’s a strange, appealing collision that defines the whole town: rigorous Ivy League academics and rugged New England wilderness sharing a single town green.

The Green and Baker-Berry Library

Dartmouth’s campus wraps around the Hanover Green in a tidy composition of white clapboard and red brick, and the whole scene is anchored by the Baker-Berry Library’s tall white bell tower, modeled on Philadelphia’s Independence Hall. We wandered inside to see the José Clemente Orozco murals in the basement — a sprawling, politically charged fresco cycle on the epic of American civilization, commissioned in the 1930s and still one of the most significant public artworks on any American campus. Students walked past it barely glancing up on their way to study; we stood there for twenty minutes.

The Connecticut River and the Ledyard Canoe Club

Behind campus, the Connecticut River marks the border between New Hampshire and Vermont, and the Ledyard Canoe Club — the oldest collegiate canoe and kayak club in the country, founded in 1920 — rents boats to anyone willing to sign a waiver. We paddled out just before sunset as Dartmouth’s crew team ran evening practice, their shells slicing past us with unnerving precision while we struggled to keep our canoe pointed straight. The river ran gold with the last light, Vermont’s hills rising green on the far bank, and for an hour neither of us mentioned that we hadn’t been students anywhere in over a decade.

Main Street and the trail town

Hanover’s short, tidy Main Street runs downhill from the Green, lined with bookstores, an old-fashioned five-and-dime, and Lou’s Restaurant, a bakery-diner that’s fed Dartmouth students their breakfast since 1947. We ate there twice in two days, partly for the sticky buns and partly to eavesdrop on a table of AT thru-hikers resupplying before heading back into the White Mountains, still a hard week’s walk to the east. It was a good reminder that Hanover, for all its ivy and endowment, remains a genuine trail town first.

Getting There

Lebanon Municipal Airport, just across the river, offers limited regional flights, but most visitors fly into Boston Logan and drive roughly two and a half hours north on I-93 and I-89. Hanover also sits about an hour and a half from Burlington, Vermont, making it an easy add-on for anyone touring northern New England. Once in town, the campus and Main Street are entirely walkable, though a car is useful for reaching White Mountains trailheads further east.