Hanover, New Hampshire, United States

🇺🇸 Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The town is home to Dartmouth College, the US Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, and Hanover High School. The Appalachian Trail crosses the town, connecting with a number of trails and nature preserves.

Most of the population resides in the Hanover place (CDP)—the main village of the town. Located at the junctions of New Hampshire routes 10, 10A, and 120, the town also contains the smaller villages of Etna and Hanover Center.

History Hanover was chartered by Governor Benning Wentworth on July 4, 1761, and in 1765–1766 its first European inhabitants arrived, the majority from Connecticut. Although the surface is uneven, the town developed into an agricultural community. Dartmouth College was established in 1769 beside the town common at a village called "the Plain"—an extensive and level tract of land a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the Connecticut River, and about 150 feet (46 m) above it.

At one point in its history, the south-west corner of Hanover, site of "The Plain", was known as "Dresden", which in the 1780s joined other disgruntled New Hampshire towns along the Connecticut River that briefly defected to what was then the independent Vermont Republic. After various political posturings, however, the towns returned to New Hampshire at the heated insistence of George Washington. One remnant of this era is that the name "Dresden" is still used in the Dresden School District, an interstate school district serving both Hanover and Norwich, Vermont—the first and one of the few interstate school districts in the nation.

Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 50.2 square miles (129.9 km²), of which 49.0 square miles (127.0 km²) are land and 1.1 square miles (2.9 km²) are water, comprising 2.21% of the town. The primary settlement in Hanover, where over 75% of the town's population resides, is in the south-west corner of the town and is defined as the Hanover place (CDP). It contains the areas around Dartmouth College and the intersections of New Hampshire Routes 10, 10A, and 120. The CDP has a total area of 5.0 square miles (13 km²), of which 4.6 square miles (12 km²) are land and 0.4 square miles (1.0 km²) are water.

Hanover borders the towns of Lyme, Canaan, and Enfield, New Hampshire; Norwich, Vermont; and the city of Lebanon, New Hampshire. Inside the limits of Hanover are the small rural villages of Etna and Hanover Center.

The highest point in Hanover is the north peak of Moose Mountain, at 2,313 feet (705 m) above sea level. Hanover lies fully within the Connecticut River watershed.

There are a number of trails and nature preserves in Hanover, and the majority of these trails are suitable for snowshoes and cross-country skis. The Velvet Rocks Trail, located on the Appalachian Trail, has a number of rock climbing and bouldering spots.

Education Public schools • Hanover High School • Frances C. Richmond Middle School • Bernice A. Ray Elementary School; Private schools • The Clark School was at one time located in Hanover but merged with Cardigan Mountain School in the nearby town of Canaan in 1953.

Universities Dartmouth College is a private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although originally established to educate Native Americans in Christian theology and the English way of life, the university primarily trained Congregationalist ministers during its early history before it gradually secularized. Emerging into national prominence at the turn of the 20th century, Dartmouth was considered to be the most prestigious undergraduate college in the United States in the early 1900s. While Dartmouth is now a research university rather than simply an undergraduate college, it continues to go by "Dartmouth College" to emphasize its focus on undergraduate education.

Following a liberal arts curriculum, Dartmouth provides undergraduate instruction in 40 academic departments and interdisciplinary programs, including 60 majors in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering, and enables students to design specialized concentrations or engage in dual degree programs. In addition to the undergraduate faculty of arts and sciences, Dartmouth has four professional and graduate schools: the Geisel School of Medicine, the Thayer School of Engineering, the Tuck School of Business, and the Guarini School of Graduate and Advanced Studies. The university also has affiliations with the Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center. Dartmouth is home to the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, the Hood Museum of Art, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Hopkins Center for the Arts. With a student enrollment of about 6,700, Dartmouth is the smallest university in the Ivy League. Undergraduate admissions are highly selective with an acceptance rate of 6% for the class of 2027, including a 4.5% rate for regular decision applicants.

Situated on a terrace above the Connecticut River, Dartmouth's 269-acre (109 ha) main campus is in the rural Upper Valley region of New England. The university functions on a quarter system, operating year-round on four ten-week academic terms. Dartmouth is known for its undergraduate focus, Greek culture, and campus traditions. Its 34 varsity sports teams compete intercollegiately in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. The university has many prominent alumni, including 170 members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, 24 U.S. governors, 23 billionaires, 8 U.S. Cabinet secretaries, 3 Nobel Prize laureates, 2 U.S. Supreme Court justices, and a U.S. vice president. Other notable alumni include 79 Rhodes Scholars, 26 Marshall Scholarship recipients, 13 Pulitzer Prize recipients, 10 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and 51 Olympic medalists.

Economy Hypertherm, White Mountains Insurance Group, and Daat Research Corp. are based in Hanover.

Water The Hanover Water Company supplies water for downtown Hanover from several local reservoirs. The company is owned by Dartmouth College (52.8%) and the Town of Hanover (47.2%), with management by the Town of Hanover under a contract. In 2000, all full-time company employees became town employees. In recent years, the town has spent over $20 million to upgrade main water lines, and will undergo another $6 million project to build a new water treatment plant. Outside the downtown area, residents rely on private wells that are not maintained by the town.

Other utilities FairPoint Communications furnishes telephone communication. The municipality provides sewage treatment.

Plaudits CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the sixth best place to live in America in 2011, and the second best in 2007. "This just might be the best college town", read the headline of a story in the January–February 2017 issue of Yankee.