Gorham sits where the Androscoggin River bends out of the Great North Woods and meets the northern end of the White Mountains, in a small, plain-spoken railroad town that has never tried very hard to be pretty. It does not need to. Look south on a clear day and the Presidential Range stands over the rooftops, with Mount Washington, at 6,288 feet the high point of the Northeast, wearing its own weather like a hat.
The town grew up with the Grand Trunk line between Portland and Montreal, and the paper industry along the river upstream in Berlin, nine kilometres north, which locals once called the City That Trees Built. You can still smell the mill on a damp morning, and the old railroad grade is one reason the roads here follow the valley so politely. For a rider, Gorham is a gateway more than a destination. Route 2 runs east into Maine and west toward Randolph, with the Presidentials on one shoulder, and Route 16 heads south through Pinkham Notch to the Mount Washington Auto Road turnoff, a long climb that is lovely when it is dry and miserable when the cloud sits down.
North of town, Route 16 follows the Androscoggin up toward Errol and the lakes, and this is moose country in a way the signs are not exaggerating about. Dusk and dawn are the danger hours, and an adult moose standing in black asphalt is close to invisible and shaped exactly like a wall at bumper height. Slow down when the road dips into the swampy stretches and keep your eyes on the ditches. The surface is mostly decent New Hampshire blacktop, with frost heaves that can flick a front wheel if you come in hot, and the corners are open, forested and easy to read.
Practically, Gorham is a good place to stop. It is a town of about sixteen hundred, so there is fuel, a few diners and a general store feel to the place that is worth a coffee. Berlin has the bigger supermarkets and more fuel choices if you need them. Weather turns quickly here, even in July, so check the sky over the range before you commit to the notch. Autumn foliage in early October brings crowds south of town, but up here the roads stay quiet, and the light on the birches along the river is hard to beat.