It's a small state although the vast Manchester airport
-- essentially created by the success of Southwest Airlines -- belies
New Hampshire's size. (Its capital, Concord, is home to only 40,000
souls.) It's a proud state, too: its motto "Live Free or Die"
seems eerily prescient in today's world. (www.visitnh.gov). And
it’s a modest state to boot: the town of 6,000 that won the
“National Trust 2003 Great American Main Street Award,”
bears the self effacing name of Littleton.
  
This little town surprises. A 90-minute drive from Concord but
closer to Canada than New Hampshire’s capital, it may have
some flinty Yankees going about their frugal life in the Granite
State but those met on the street are breezy individuals proud to
know their town captivates those who come a-lookin’.
 
 
The award-winning main street offers a free booklet and a walking
tour map of the 22 historic sites along a former 1820 stagecoach
road, and the shop doorways sure lure people in. What visitor with
kids could pass a store's candy counter (with 800 candy jars) that
is 112 feet long? Chutters is the "World's Longest Candy Counter"
says the Guinness Book of World Records. Behind it, on the fast-flowing
Ammonoosuc River rises the Littleton Grist Mill, erected in 1797,
the oldest commercial structure in NH north of the state capital.
It's found down Mill Street, of course -- there's nothing complicated
about Littleton.
The narrow river descends 235 feet on its rapid journey through
town -- more than the 183 foot drop of Niagara Falls as locals are
wont to point out. Texas brags aside, in keeping with the concept
of a little town in a small state, Main Street is a short walk.
It's a half-hour stroll along a street anchored in typical New England
fashion with high-spired churches at both ends: the 1833 First Congregational
to the west and the Methodist Church, erected 18 years later, at
the east end of Main.
 
 
And to show Yankees have other interests, next to the Methodist
Church a local worthy named Jack Eames built the bowling alley
and JAX movie theater that saw the World Premier of The Great Lie
starring Bette Davis. The actress came in person in 1941 for the
event and was hosted by Eames at the historic 1850 Thayers Inn
he had acquired in 1927.
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