Grover’s Corners is so eloquently described by Thornton Wilder through the character of the Stage Manager. Sweet and small, the town of Grover’s Corners houses characters who appear so simple at first glance but contain a depth well beyond their initial impression.

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One will never be able to understand our town unless they understand its mother. New Hampshire gave birth to a tiny town known as Peterborough, a quaint little village with a population of just 4,000 to this day and the home of the MacDowell Colony, a hub for artists, writers, and creators founded by Mary MacDowell in honor of her late husband. It was here that Thornton Wilder came to write in isolation and peace, where he would find the inspiration to create his most popular work.

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There is no question that Grover’s Corners is in fact Peterborough. The coordinates which the Stage Manager names in the first scene are nearly identical to those of the actual town (“latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes”). It is clear that Wilder’s experience during his time spent among the inhabitants of the town, nestled at the southern edge of New Hampshire, was greatly impactful. He found a beauty there that struck something in him and sparked a creative outpouring of empathy and appreciation for the simplicity and complexity of humanity in its purest form.

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That is why I believe it is fundamental to examine this space and why it was created, to take a step back and look at the big picture of the state as a whole, to recognize its patterns and the consequences it has faced following decades of history. Specifically, what led people to stay? What caused them to leave? What brought new people in?

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New Hampshire geography is full of water. The state is often referred to as the “mother of rivers.” It is home to 40,000 rivers and streams and 1300 lakes and ponds. Those bodies of water are a huge element in tourist attraction, the state’s current leading source of income. Most of the state, where it is not water, is composed of pine forests, and where it is not forests it is granite, which was mined for decades and decades, though that mining has decreased exponentially in the last few. New Hampshire also has mountains with elevations higher than any others west of the Rockies, which is another draw for tourists seeking opportunities to participate in winter sports and hiking.

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This geography is so important to understand because it speaks to how hard it was to move around. The tiny towns located throughout the state were so isolated because they had to be. Switching locations was no easy feat until 1851, when the Atlantic and St. Lawrence railroads were completed, cutting through the mountains and giving inhabitants of the state direct access to the peaks and beyond. But even then, people were still using horse-drawn carriages, which fared poorly anywhere outside the bounds of their little villages.

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Another piece of New Hampshire history that I found important leading up to 1901 was the establishment of the first college in New Hampshire, the University of New Hampshire College of Agriculture and the Mechanical Arts in 1866. No one in the state had access to higher education within the state’s borders until this point, so it is perhaps little wonder that 35 years later George doesn’t seem to acknowledge its value. That level of education is also a huge factor in drawing people away from the communities they were born and raised within. Without it, in the comfort of a stable and thriving town, there seems to be very little incentive to pack one’s bags and seek a future of uncertainty. The people of Grover’s Corners seem to understand this concept better than anyone. 

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In 1890 the state of New Hampshire began encouraging tourists to take on abandoned farms as their summer homes because so many rural citizens had abandoned their less viable economic opportunities for the thriving new manufacturing industry which was booming in urban areas. This initiative drew in new customers, and the state embraced them as their own, beginning to cultivate the tourism scene which would become enormously profitable for the state over time.

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At the top of Our Town, the Industrial Revolution is still in the process of reaching Grover’s Corners. Much of the world was ahead and had begun to see what technology was capable of. People knew of the possibilities but were wary of them; these revelations hadn’t yet grown into norms by which people operated.

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As time went on it became relatively unusual for towns such as Grover’s Corners to remain as isolated from other towns and cities as they once were. Thornton Wilder aimed to capture aspects of such a community on the cusp of those kinds of changes.