Jackson

Every approach to Jackson runs through the same red covered bridge, spanning the Ellis River right where Route 16 kinks toward the village, and Lia and I stopped the car in the middle of it the way everyone apparently does, hazards blinking, just to look upstream at the water tumbling over granite ledges. It is the kind of gateway a village invents for itself over a century and a half, and it works exactly as intended: everything past that bridge feels a little more hushed, a little more mountain-bound, than the highway strip a mile back.

The Nordic network

Jackson is quietly famous among cross-country skiers for maintaining one of the best-groomed trail networks in New England, more than 150 kilometers threading through the village, along the river, and up into the surrounding hills, linking old farm roads and covered bridges into a single winter circuit. We came in shoulder season and hiked sections of it instead, past the Jackson Falls cascading in stair-step drops beside the road and up toward Black Mountain, where a small, unpretentious ski area has been in near-continuous operation since the 1930s. A trail groomer we met at the touring center, waiting out the mud season, told us Jackson’s snow record is good enough that Olympic teams train here — a detail that made the quiet village feel briefly, improbably significant.

Wildcat and the Presidential views

A short drive up Route 16 delivered us into Pinkham Notch, where the gondola at Wildcat Mountain climbs to a summit deck facing Mount Washington dead-on, the Presidential Range laid out in a jagged line north to south. We rode up on a clear afternoon and watched clouds shred themselves against Washington’s summit, remembering that it holds the record for the highest wind gust ever measured by a human observer. Back in the village that evening, we ate dinner on a porch overlooking the golf course and the Wildcat River, the mountains going purple, and agreed that Jackson manages a rare trick: it feels grand and cozy in the same breath.

Getting There

The nearest airports are in Portland, Maine, and Manchester, New Hampshire, both roughly a two-hour drive; Boston’s Logan Airport is closer to three hours south via Route 16. Jackson has no rail or bus service, so a car is essential, especially in winter when snow tires or chains are wise for the climb up from North Conway. Once you’re in the village, though, the covered bridge marks the start of a world small enough to explore almost entirely on foot or skis.