Incorporating Mount Monadnock, America's friendly 'most climbed mountain,' this region is NH's picture postcard brought to life. The southwest corner of the state incorporates the white-steepled villages of Dublin -- home to Yankee magazine and the Old Farmer's Almanac, and Peterborough -- inspiration for Thornton Wilder's “Our Town” and to other members of the MacDowell Colony, also the site of the first free library in the world. Keene is a classic New England college town, named one of the National Trust's Distinctive Destinations.

Highlights: Hillsborough, Franklin Pierce birthplace (he was the 14th President of the US). Note that Jeb Bartlett, the fictional occupant of the "West Wing" is also "from New Hampshire." Burial site of Josiah Bartlett an actual signer of the Declaration of independence is in Kingston in the Seacoast Region.