Hopkinton: A New Hampshire Town Center
Near Manchester, New Hampshire
Hopkinton, chartered in seventeen sixty-five, sits at the western edge of Merrimack County where the Contoocook River curves south toward Concord. It is a quintessential New Hampshire hill town: white-steepled meetinghouse on the common, colonial-era farmhouses along the roads, and a population that has grown slowly over two and a half centuries without ever becoming a city.
The town takes its name from Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which honors Edward Hopkins, a seventeenth-century colonial governor whose bequest benefited Harvard College. The community that grew here was agricultural, sustained by river meadows and the upland pastures that ran sheep and dairy cattle through the eighteen hundreds.
Hopkinton is split between two distinct village centers: Hopkinton village proper, perched on the hill, and Contoocook village down by the river, where the railroad arrived in the eighteen forties and commercial activity concentrated. The Contoocook Railroad Bridge, a covered span rebuilt in eighteen eighty-nine, still stands there as the oldest surviving railroad covered bridge in the country.
Hopkinton today is largely a residential community within commuting range of Concord and Manchester, a town that has preserved its colonial-era layout while its economic life moved closer to the cities.
