Berlin

Berlin (locals say BER-lin, stress on the first syllable) was built on paper — literally. At its early-20th-century peak, mills along the Androscoggin River made this a boomtown that drew French-Canadian, Russian, and Scandinavian immigrants by the thousands. The last pulp mill, Fraser Papers, closed in 2006 and its 121-acre site with 300-foot smokestacks was dismantled, replaced in part by the Burgess BioPower plant, a 75-megawatt biomass facility that burns 800,000 tons of low-grade wood annually and supports over 200 jobs. The city's second act is outdoor recreation: Jericho Mountain State Park, just minutes from downtown, is the starting point of a 1,000-mile ATV trail network that threads through the Great North Woods, and the annual Jericho ATV Festival draws riders from across New England every August. In winter, the same corridors become snowmobile highways linking Berlin to Colebrook and Errol. For those exploring the broader White Mountains region, the Twin Mountain / Mt. Washington KOA Holiday campground sits about 20 miles away, offering everything from tent sites to RV hookups and cabins for visitors heading to Mount Washington and the surrounding peaks. Housing here is among the cheapest in the state, and the tradeoff is distance — you are 90 minutes from Concord and three hours from Boston, surrounded by mountains and forest in every direction. It's a place where the mills may be gone, but the trails are endless.