Squam Lake

Squam Lake sits fifteen minutes north of Winnipesaukee's marinas and boardwalk arcades, and it might as well be a different lake entirely. There's no jet ski traffic here — the Squam Lakes Association enforces a no-wake culture across most of the lake's coves, and the shoreline carries some of the strictest conservation covenants in the Lakes Region, which is why so little of it has been built up since the 1981 filming of "On Golden Pond" put the lake on the map. Holderness is the service hub: Route 3 through town holds Walter's Basin, the only full-service restaurant actually on the water, Squam Boat Livery and Holderness Harbor for pontoons and Boston Whalers, and the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, whose wildlife trail and loon cruises are the closest thing Squam has to a headline attraction. Center Sandwich, a short drive east, trades boat traffic for a historic village green and the League of NH Craftsmen's founding gallery — a place people linger in for an hour of pottery and woodwork rather than pass through. Moultonborough holds the lake's quieter northeastern shore, mostly private camps with almost no commercial frontage. The lake rewards people who came for the hike as much as the water: West Rattlesnake Mountain's Old Bridle Path is a two-mile round trip to a clifftop view over Squam's islands, easy enough for a family and popular enough that the Route 113 lot fills by mid-morning in July. Mount Morgan and Mount Percival, looped together, are the harder version once that one feels crowded. What Squam doesn't have is almost as telling as what it does — no winery, no brewery on the lake itself, no full grocery store, nothing resembling a strip. That's not an oversight. It's the same conservation ethic that keeps the loons nesting undisturbed, and it's the reason people choose Squam over its much larger neighbor in the first place.