Littleton

Littleton’s Main Street runs along a bend in the Ammonoosuc River, brick storefronts from the town’s mill-town heyday now holding bookshops, diners, and an old-fashioned candy store that turned out to be the whole reason Lia had circled this stop on the map. The town was also the childhood home of Eleanor H. Porter, who wrote the novel “Pollyanna,” and a small bronze statue of the relentlessly cheerful heroine now stands on the riverbank downtown — an odd, charming civic tribute that seemed to color the whole visit with a kind of stubborn good humor.

Chutters and the longest candy counter

Chutters holds a Guinness World Record for the longest candy counter on earth, a wall of nearly a thousand jars running the length of the store, and we spent far too long filling paper bags with saltwater taffy, sour gummies, and squares of maple fudge cut fresh behind the register. The woman ringing us up said she’d worked there long enough to have opinions on every jar, and talked us out of a licorice we clearly weren’t going to enjoy. Outside, the Ammonoosuc River rushed past a small falls right behind Main Street, close enough that we ate our candy on a bench listening to the water instead of traffic.

Gateway to Franconia Notch

Littleton’s real advantage is its position, tucked just west of Franconia Notch State Park, and we used it as a base for a morning hike to the Basin, a granite pothole worn smooth by the Pemigewasset River, and an afternoon drive along the notch with the Cannon Mountain cliffs rising sheer on one side. The Old Man of the Mountain, the rock profile that once watched over the notch, collapsed years ago, but locals still point to the spot with real affection, and a small memorial there lets you sight the missing profile through steel rods. Back in town that evening, we ate at the classic Littleton Diner, a 1930s dining car still serving blue-plate specials, and felt like we’d found the exact right pace for a mountain town.

Getting There

Littleton sits just off Interstate 93, about two and a half hours north of Boston and under an hour from the Vermont border. The closest commercial airports are in Manchester, New Hampshire, and Burlington, Vermont, both roughly ninety minutes away by car; there is no train or intercity bus service directly into town. A car is the only realistic way to reach Littleton and to continue on into the surrounding White Mountains.