9 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About New Hampshire, According to People Who Live There
Think you know New Hampshire because you’ve driven Interstate 93 through the White Mountains?
Guess again.
Granite Staters field the same handful of confidently wrong assumptions from many people who pass through.
These are the assumptions people get wrong about New Hampshire.
Note: This is general information, not tax advice. Property tax rates and figures are subject to change, so confirm the current numbers with the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration.
1. New Hampshire Has No Taxes
New Hampshire skips a state income tax and a state sales tax entirely, and visitors treat that fact like the whole story.
It isn’t.
New Hampshire’s towns and cities pull 61% of their local revenue from property taxes, the highest reliance on that single tax of any state in the country.
That’s the trade every Granite Stater signs up for: No bill from the state, a bigger bill from the town.
The Math Behind New Hampshire’s Tax Bill
New Hampshire’s cities and towns can’t create a sales tax or an income tax of their own, so the legislature leaves property tax as almost the only lever local government controls.
That setup traces back to Dillon’s Rule, which limits New Hampshire municipalities to only the revenue sources state law allows.
The effective property tax rate on an owner-occupied home in New Hampshire runs about 1.50% of its value, well above what many income-tax states charge.
A separate analysis from the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute found towns collecting $3,388 per person a year in property tax, second only to New Jersey nationwide.
A town that wants a new school or a bigger fire department has to raise property taxes to pay for it because there’s no other switch to flip.
2. Manchester Is the Capital
New Hampshire’s biggest city is Manchester, and many visitors assume that makes it the capital too.
Wrong.
Concord has held that job since state lawmakers picked it in 1816, and the State House there opened its doors in 1819.
New Hampshire’s State House is also the oldest state capitol in the country where both the House and Senate still meet in their original chambers.
Manchester, by contrast, has more people, more traffic, and zero say in where the governor’s office sits.
3. Old Man Is Gone
New Hampshire’s most famous rock formation, the Old Man of the Mountain, hasn’t looked down over Franconia Notch in more than two decades.
It collapsed on May 3, 2003, and the whole granite profile came down overnight.
Visitors still pull off the highway looking for it.
It’s simply gone.
New Hampshire still prints its face on the state quarter, license plates, and highway signs, a tribute to a landmark that no longer exists anywhere but in photographs.
4. New Hampshire Touches the Ocean
New Hampshire looks landlocked on a lot of postcards, all mountains and maple trees.
That’s hardly true.
New Hampshire touches the Atlantic Ocean for about 13 miles by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) count, or 18.57 miles by the state’s own measurement, either way the shortest ocean coastline of any coastal state.
The gap between those two numbers comes down to the ruler: New Hampshire measured its coast at a finer scale that catches every curve, while NOAA’s count came from a broader scale that smooths the shoreline out.
Hampton Beach carries much of that shoreline regardless, with a boardwalk, an arcade, and summer crowds that rival any beach town twice its size.
5. New Hampshire Isn’t Vermont
Outsiders lump New Hampshire in with Vermont on sight, two green states with mountains, maple syrup, and license plates they can’t tell apart.
Granite Staters bristle at the comparison.
New Hampshire skips an income tax and a sales tax by design, while Vermont funds a broader social safety net through both.
That’s by design.
The population gap is just as wide, with New Hampshire’s 1,377,529 residents outnumbering Vermont’s 643,077 by more than two to one.
That’s the kind of gap outsiders never guess when they mix the two states up on a map.
6. Mount Washington Lost Its Record
New Hampshire’s Mount Washington used to hold the record for the strongest wind gust ever measured on Earth’s surface, clocked at 231 mph in 1934.
Trivia nights, old encyclopedias, and even some outdated travel guides still repeat that 231 mph figure as the fastest wind gust ever recorded on Earth.
That claim stopped being true two decades ago.
New Hampshire lost that title in 2006.
Just like that.
Meteorologists confirmed a 253 mph gust had hit Australia’s Barrow Island back in 1996, and the finding had simply gone unnoticed for a decade.
Mount Washington still holds the wind record for the entire Northern and Western Hemispheres, plus a well-earned reputation for the worst weather on the East Coast.
Old headlines just haven’t caught up.
7. State Liquor Stores Draw Crowds
New Hampshire runs every liquor and wine sale through state-owned stores, and outsiders picture a cramped counter with a slim selection.
That’s not what greets them.
New Hampshire’s Liquor & Wine Outlets sit right off interstates like I-93 and I-95, sell everything tax-free, and pull shoppers in from Massachusetts and Vermont.
One regional paper described the stretch along the Vermont border as a full-on liquor battleground between the two states’ retailers.
New Hampshire turned a government monopoly into a genuine tourist stop, tax-free bottle in hand.
8. Primary Still Comes First
New Hampshire has held the first presidential primary in the country for generations, and outsiders assumed that ended for good.
It didn’t.
The Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws panel voted to put South Carolina first on its calendar instead, a three-way count of 26 votes to Nevada’s 19 and New Hampshire’s 4, and headlines covered it as New Hampshire losing its spot.
New Hampshire state law still requires the secretary of state to schedule the primary at least a week before any similar contest, so the state votes first no matter what either national party decides.
Only the party’s delegate math changed. The calendar didn’t.
9. Motto Started With a Toast
New Hampshire’s state motto, “Live Free or Die,” looks like tough bumper-sticker branding to a lot of visitors.
It’s older than that, by a long shot.
Gen. John Stark wrote the line in a toast to his fellow Revolutionary War veterans in 1809, and New Hampshire didn’t adopt it as the official state motto until 1945.
The motto even reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1977, when a Granite State couple taped over it on their license plate and the justices ruled the state couldn’t force them to display it.
The line stuck.
Two centuries later, New Hampshire still stamps the motto on every license plate it issues.
Psst! How much do you know about New Hampshire’s history? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Granite State Trivia
Answer these nine questions on New Hampshire history and firsts. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
New Hampshire’s only native-born U.S. president was born in which town?
New Hampshire Drew a Modern Migration
New Hampshire's low-tax, small-government reputation didn't stay theoretical forever.
In 2001, a group of libertarian activists picked New Hampshire out of a shortlist of states and launched the Free State Project, asking supporters to relocate and get active in local government.
About 6,000 people have followed through so far, short of the project's original 20,000-person goal.
That number sounds small next to New Hampshire's 1.4 million residents.
Numbers aren't the whole story.
It hasn't stayed small in the State House.
New Hampshire's House majority leader told New Hampshire Public Radio their politics now sit at "the center of New Hampshire political thought," a considerable shift for a movement that started as an outsider experiment.
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