Portsmouth, New Hampshire is a historic city on the state’s Atlantic Ocean coast. A popular summer tourist destination, Portsmouth offers a multitude of shops, restaurants, art galleries, cultural attractions, parks, beaches and historic sites for the enjoyment of residents and visitors alike. Portsmouth is centrally located within an hour’s drive of Boston, the state capital in Concord, the cities of Nashua and Manchester, the southern coast of Maine and the scenic Lakes Region. Additionally, the snowy peaks of the White Mountains and the idyllic fishing villages of Cape Cod are just a short drive away.
First explored in about 1603, Portsmouth was settled in 1630 as Piscataqua and soon renamed Strawberry Banke because of the abundant wild strawberries growing along the banks of the Piscataqua River. Portsmouth was incorporated under its present in 1653. Named the colonial capital in 1679, Portsmouth became a refuge for exiles from the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1713, the city was chosen to host the Treaty of Portsmouth, which formally ended hostilities between Eastern Abenaki Indians and European settlers in the New Hampshire and Massachusetts colonies. For more than 200 years, Portsmouth served as a major port of trade along the New England coast.
While Portsmouth’s fortunes dimmed somewhat following the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution, when inland mill towns such as Dover, Keene, Laconia and Manchester rose to prominencee, the city enjoyed renewed prosperity with the establishment of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in 1800. The first federal shipyard in the United States, it remains in operation, though Portsmouth’s maritime industry has largely given way to concerted growth in the tourist and service indus
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