Exeter was a capital once, and for a few frantic years it behaved like one. During the Revolution, New Hampshire's government met here, away from the exposed coast, and the town's Ladd-Gilman house, now part of the American Independence Museum, stored gunpowder and state papers. The museum holds an early printed copy of the Declaration of Independence found in the attic, and each July the town stages a Revolutionary War festival with muskets, drill and dressed-up volunteers.
The place had been founded much earlier, in 1638, by the minister John Wheelwright, who left Massachusetts after a religious dispute, and the Squamscott River, which runs through the center and over a small waterfall, has powered mills ever since. The Gilman Garrison House, built around 1709, is a rare surviving timber fort-house. Dominating the northern part of town is Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school founded in 1781, whose brick buildings and big elms give the whole place the air of a New England college town.
Main Street is easy to walk, with a bandstand, an old town hall and a handful of independent shops, bookstores and restaurants. There are real fuel stations and supermarkets on the edge of town, and the whole place has a comfortable, lived-in air that suits a morning start or an evening finish. The surrounding country of the Seacoast region is flat to gently rolling, with tidal rivers, salt marsh and old farms, and the roads that thread it are quiet and wandering, rather than dramatic.
Riding out of Exeter, the lanes toward Kensington and East Kingston wind among stone walls, stands of oak and white pine, and fields where horses graze. The surface can be rough in places, with frost heaves and patches, and speed limits through the villages are low, so a relaxed pace is the way. Route 101 runs east toward Hampton and the beaches in half an hour, and Route 111 and Route 108 lead through villages with white-steepled churches. October brings color and apple stands; late spring brings lilacs, and Sunday mornings are the quietest of all.