Sunapee Harbor

The summer visitors' favorite town on the west side of the lake (map), Sunapee Harbor is a delightful place with an old time summer-by-the-lake ambience.

Hotels, inns, B&Bs and rental cottages provide lodging, restaurants on the shore and several ice cream shops offer sustinence, and the m/v Mt Sunapee departs each summer afternoon on a 90-minute narrated lake cruise. Its sister vessel, the m/v Kearsarge, sets out on buffet-dinner sunset cruises. More...

Sugar River Covered Footbridge, Sunapee Harbor NH.

Newbury

At the southern tip of the lake, Newbury was the terminus for 19th-century trains—10 per day!—that brought vacationers to Lake Sunapee. From Newbury Station vacationers would board steamboats to cruise around the lake to their hotels and villas. More...

Today vacationers come to Newbury for its beaches, including Lake Sunapee's largest and most popular: Mount Sunapee State Beach, just northwest of Newbury. More...

Mount Sunapee State Beach on a fine August afternoon...

Near Newbury, The Fells Historic Estate & Gardens, once the summer residence of diplomat John Milton Hay, is a beautiful place open to the public with house tours, formal and informal gardens and nature trails. More...

New London

The commercial and administrative center of the Sunapee region, New London is a classic New England town with its white churches, public library, sturdy Town Hall, and fine old houses. It also boasts the New London Barn Playhouse offering summer stock theater productions, and Colby-Sawyer College, a small liberal arts-and-sciences college founded in 1837. More...

Crafts Markets

In the summer, Sunapee hosts very well-attended crafts markets on NH Route 103B at the blinking light (between Sunapee Harbor and Sunapee Lower Village). Both buyers and sellers flock to the intersection's roadsides, and everything from craftwork through antiques to junk is available.

Mt Sunapee State Park

Mount Sunapee State Park has hiking and interpretive trails, and a Family Adventure Park featuring canopy ziplines, an mountain bike course, aerial challenge course through the treetops, disc golf and miniature golf, and a quad chairlift ride to the South Peak of Mount Sunapee (2743 feet/836 meters).

Mount Sunapee, the mountain itself, is organized as Mount Sunapee Resort, with skiing in winter. At the summit there are walking trails (not difficult) to an overlook and to a glacial tarn named Lake Solitude.

—by Tom Brosnahan

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