Your Guide to Buying a Home in Concord, NH

Buying a Home in Concord, New Hampshire

Concord is located in Merrimack County

Population: 36,006 Concord has been consistently noted as one of the most desirable communities in New Hampshire in which to live and work.  Its cultural and educational resources are among the best in the region.  Also, its proximity to the Merrimack River and typically New England rural areas complements the high-quality service of its commercial areas and comfortable nature of its residential neighborhoods.

Education
Concord is recognized for one of the highest quality public education systems in New Hampshire.  It is home also to a number of excellent private schools, including the world famous St. Paul's preparatory school, the Franklin Pierce Law Center, and several well-recognized secretarial institutions.  Concord is acknowledged by Expansion Management magazine as a Gold Medal district, scoring well above the national average in academics, community educational attainments, and funding.

Attractions:
The City and the surrounding region offers a diversity of tourism destinations.  Whether you want to travel in the fast lane at a world class motor speedway, take a leisurely tour of the State House Hall of Flags or President Pierce's Manse, or enjoy a lively evening's entertainment at one of Concord's many fine performing arts facilities, Concord can accommodate you and offer even more.

History
The land, which Concord now occupies along the banks of the Merrimack River, was settled thousands of years ago by Native Americans.  The broad sweeps of the river valley, good soil for farming, and easy transportation on the Merrimack made the site of Concord equally inviting to English-speaking settlers in the eighteenth century.  Settled by immigrants from Massachusetts in 1725, the community grew in prominence during the eighteenth century.  Some of Concord's earliest houses remain today at the north end of Main Street.  In the years following the American Revolution, the City's central location made it a logical choice for the state capital, and in 1808 Concord was named the official seat of state government.  Today the 1819 State House is the oldest state capitol in which the legislative branches meet in their original chambers.

Concord's location also made it a hub for inland trade and commerce.  One of the city's best-known industries was carriage manufacturing, and here world famous Concord coaches were built throughout the nineteenth century.  A fine example of these coaches can be seen at the Museum of New Hampshire History.

Furniture making and granite quarrying were also major local industries.  The granite for the library of Congress in Washington, D.C. came from nearby Rattlesnake Hill, which to this day remains a major granite quarry.  Because of Concord's central location, it became the northern hub of the railroad industry.  For more than a century, scores of trains, headed in every direction, passed through the city daily.  Concord was also the home of the nation's fourteenth President, Franklin Pierce, and the Pierce Manse at the north end of Main Street is open to the public.  A few miles northeast of Concord in Canterbury, members of an unusual and fascinating religious order settled in the 1790s.  Today Canterbury Shaker Village is the premier museum of Shaker life.  Concord was also the home of teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe.  She is memorialized at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium, the nation's most technologically sophisticated planetarium.