General Information on the State contains practical information for the State as a whole; the introduction to each city and tour description also contains specific information of a practical sort.
The Essay Section of the Guide is designed to give a reasonably comprehensive survey of the State’s natural setting, history, and social, economic, and cultural development. Limitations of space forbid elaborately detailed treatments of these subjects, but a selected bibliography is included in the book. A great many persons, places, and events mentioned in the essays are treated at some length in the city and tour descriptions; these are found by reference to the index. The New Hampshire Guide is not only a practical travel book; it will also serve as a valuable reference work.
The Guide is built on a framework of Tour Descriptions written in general to follow the principal highways from south to north or from east to west, although they can readily be followed in the reverse direction. In many cases the highway descriptions are equally useful to travelers on railroads. Whenever railroads parallel the described highway, the fact is stated in the tour heading.
As a matter of convenience, lengthy Descriptions of Cities and Towns are removed from the tour sections of the book and separately grouped in alphabetical order.
Each tour description contains cross-references to other tours crossing or branching from the route described; it also contains cross-references to all descriptions of cities, villages, and points of interest removed from the tour descriptions. A list of near-by points of interest is given at the end of each special city and town description, with cross-references to the tours in which these points are treated fully.
Readers can find the descriptions of important routes by examining the tour index or the tour key map. With only a few exceptions, each tour description follows a single main route; descriptions of minor routes branching from or crossing the main routes are in smaller type. The long tour descriptions are divided into sections at important junctions.
Cumulative mileage is used on main and side tours, the mileage being counted from the beginning of each section or, on side tours, from the junction with the main route. The mileage notations are at best relative, since totals depend to some extent on the manner in which cars are driven — whether they cut around other cars, round curves on the inside or outside of the road, and so forth. Then, too, the totals will in the future vary from those in this book because of road-building in which curves will be eliminated and routes possibly carried around cities and villages formerly on the routes.
Inter-State routes are described from and to the State lines; in the Index to Tours and in the tour headings the names of the nearest out-of-State cities of importance on the routes are listed in parentheses to enable travelers readily to identify the routes.
Descriptions of points of interest in each city are numbered and arranged in the order in which they can conveniently be visited; the numbers preceding the descriptions correspond with the numbers on the map of the city if one is provided. The key list of points of interest on the city map is an index to the descriptions of points of interest in the city.
Points of interest in cities, towns, and villages have not been indexed under the names of such communities, because many persons know the name of a point of interest, but are doubtful as to the name of the community in which it is situated.