Enjoy beautiful vistas of Mount Monadnock, learn about New Hampshire’s once-booming granite industry and tour remarkably preserved historic buildings in this residential community.
Discover a rich history fuelled by granite alongside stunning New England scenery in Marlborough. Find the town in the southwest corner of New Hampshire. Experience centuries of history and four seasons of natural beauty in Marlborough.
Explore the Maynard-Gates House. Built in 1767, this cheerful red farmhouse is the oldest timber-framed structure in Marlborough. Its construction marked a transition from the log cabins that pioneers originally built when they settled the town.
Visit the Meeting House and Town Pound. Stone foundations are all that remain of both structures, but informative signs placed by the Marlborough Heritage Commission reveal interesting facts about the sites.
Learn about Marlborough’s industrial past at the Bell Tower. Inside the gazebo, check out the historic Monadnock Blanket Mill Bell, which rang to signal the mill’s working hours from 1869 to about 1950. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, Marlborough had many textile mills along the Minnewawa River.
Although you can easily see it from town, Mount Monadnock is about a 20-minute drive outside Marlborough. It’s easy to understand why authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau found its green slopes in summer or white slopes in winter inspiring. Hike Mount Monadnock and enjoy panoramic vistas from its summit.
Enjoy the beauty of rural New Hampshire in the Kensan Devan Meetinghouse Pond Wildlife Sanctuary. Located about 4 miles (6 kilometres) from Mount Monadnock, the sprawling sanctuary features a large pond, lush forests, pristine wetlands and sections of rock wall, a reminder of the area’s past as farmland. Hike along the sanctuary’s network of trails and watch and listen for birds and other wildlife.
Marlborough is sometimes confused with its much larger sister town of the same name, which lies about 60 miles (100 kilometres) southeast in Massachusetts. This is no coincidence many of its early settlers hailed from Marlborough, Massachusetts. When they resettled to New Hampshire and incorporated the town in 1776, they gave it the same name. Visit both towns on your New England trip.
