page_title: List of cities and towns in New Hampshire
hierarchical_section_title: List of cities and towns in New Hampshire
context_page_description: New Hampshire is a state located in the Northeastern United States. This is a list of the 221 towns and 13 cities in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is organized along the New England town model, where the state is nearly completely incorporated and divided into towns, some of which the state has designated as "cities". For each town/city, the table lists the county to which it belongs, its date of incorporation, its population according to the 2010 census, its form of government, and its principal villages. Cities are indicated in boldface. Cities and towns are treated identically under state law. Cities are just towns that dropped the town meeting form of government in favor of a city form by special act of the New Hampshire General Court. However, since 1979, changing the form of governance no longer confers city status. Towns may drop the town meeting by local vote and adopt a new charter for a representative government, such as a council-manager form, and retain their status as a town. Several of the higher-population towns have already done so.
  Generally, government forms come in several varieties:
context_section_description: New Hampshire is a state located in the Northeastern United States. This is a list of the 221 towns and 13 cities in the U.S. state of New Hampshire. New Hampshire is organized along the New England town model, where the state is nearly completely incorporated and divided into towns, some of which the state has designated as "cities".  For each town/city, the table lists the county to which it belongs, its date of incorporation, its population according to the 2010 census, its form of government, and its principal villages. Cities are indicated in boldface. Cities and towns are treated identically under state law. Cities are just towns that dropped the town meeting form of government in favor of a city form by special act of the New Hampshire General Court. However, since 1979, changing the form of governance no longer confers city status.  Towns may drop the town meeting by local vote and adopt a new charter for a representative government, such as a council-manager form, and retain their status as a town.  Several of the higher-population towns have already done so.
  Generally, government forms come in several varieties:
  The standard form has a board of selectmen acting as the town executive, while the entire voting population of the town acts as the town legislature in a form known as a town meeting.
  Some towns have adopted a town manager to act as the town executive, in those cases the board of selectmen acts as the town legislature, while town meetings are advisory in nature.  This form functions as the council-manager municipal form
  Other towns have abolished their boards of selectmen and replaced it with a town council, to form a council-manager system
  Prior to 1979, to abolish the board of selectmen and open town meeting required the town to be rechartered by the state legislature as a city, whereby the city charter would establish a representative government for the town, usually a board of aldermen or city council and led by a mayor and/or city manager.
  Regardless of which form of government a municipality uses, and whether it calls itself a city or town, all cities and towns are treated identically by the state law.
  New Hampshire also has a small number of townships, grants, gores and other unincorporated areas which are not part of any municipality.  These are small and rare, and cover a small amount of the land and population of the state.
caption: Map of the United States with New Hampshire highlighted