Peterborough — New Hampshire

A brick mill town in the Monadnock region said to be the real-life inspiration for Thornton Wilder's 'Our Town,' with a river running straight through the middle of downtown. Lia and I sat by the falls until the streetlights came on.

Peterborough sits at the confluence of the Nubanusit and Contoocook rivers in the shadow of Mount Monadnock, a mill town of about six thousand people that Thornton Wilder is widely believed to have used as the model for Grover’s Corners in “Our Town,” having written parts of the play while staying at the nearby MacDowell artist colony. Lia and I came for the literary connection and stayed for a town that genuinely does feel like it’s built around the rhythms Wilder described — church bells, a working Main Street, a river you can hear from almost anywhere downtown.

The falls behind Depot Square

Right behind the brick storefronts of Depot Square, the Nubanusit River drops over a small dam and falls that once powered the town’s woolen mills, and there’s a little park where you can sit almost close enough to the water to feel the spray. We got there at dusk, and the old mill buildings — some still working light-manufacturing spaces, others converted to apartments and studios — lit up one window at a time as we sat, which felt like watching the town settle into evening in real time.

Water tumbling over the old mill dam on the Nubanusit River behind Depot Square in Peterborough, New Hampshire

MacDowell and the artist colony legacy

A couple of miles outside downtown, MacDowell has been hosting resident writers, composers, and visual artists since 1907, and while the studios themselves are private, the colony’s presence has shaped Peterborough into a town with a genuinely disproportionate number of independent bookstores and a well-regarded community theater for its size. We caught a small gallery opening at the Sharon Arts Center downtown, wine in plastic cups and paintings by artists who’d clearly been sharpened by proximity to that legacy, and talked to a sculptor who’d moved here specifically for the town’s quiet creative gravity.

A tree-lined path leading toward the historic MacDowell artist colony studios near Peterborough, New Hampshire

Getting There

Peterborough is about eighty minutes northwest of Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) via Route 3 and Route 101, or forty-five minutes southwest of Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (MHT). A car is essential — downtown is walkable, but Monadnock’s trailheads and MacDowell itself require driving.