Grab your sturdiest boots. Most tourists crowd onto the sandy beaches down in Hampton, but Odiorne Point offers something much cooler and weirder. We are talking about 135 acres of wild coast where you can scramble over damp, slick rocks to find invasive green crabs and periwinkles hiding in the tide pools. It gets better. NHs first European settlers actually set up camp right here way back in 1623. You can still feel that heavy history.

Then there are the massive concrete bunkers. During World War II, the military built Fort Dearborn right on this ground, leaving behind giant, overgrown gun mounts that look like ancient ruins today. You can literally walk right up to these crumbling structures. Kids love it. If the wind off the ocean gets too brutal, you can duck inside the Seacoast Science Center to touch a live sea star or check out the massive whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling. It is the perfect mix of science, history, and salty air.

Indigenous people fished these rocky shores first. Then, in 1623, David Thompson built a stone house, establishing the area's first English settlement. He didn't stay long. A farmer named John Odiorne bought the land in the 1660s, and his family spent generations planting orchards and tending cattle. By the late 1800s, things changed. Wealthy families built massive, shingle-style summer estates with manicured lawns over the old pastures. But war changed everything. In 1942, the federal government seized all 265 acres through eminent domain. They gave families just weeks to pack up.

The military quickly demolished the grand estates. They built Fort Dearborn instead. Soldiers poured tons of concrete to construct massive, bomb-proof bunkers to protect the nearby naval shipyard. These bunkers still stand. If you walk the trails today, you can actually climb the giant earthen mounds of Battery Seaman. It once held two 16-inch guns. Those cannons could shoot 25 miles out into the ocean. Wild, right Today, you'll find these crumbling concrete walls covered in ivy, sitting right next to old 19th-century farming stone walls.