A mile-long dirt road, tucked into the woods on the edge of Franconia Notch State Park, separates the Gale River Cooperative Preschool from the rest of the world. The school is hidden, partly by the deep forest around it and partly because it sits on the grounds of a sleepaway camp. For 10 months of the year, Copper Cannon Camp in Bethlehem trades its summer campers for a different group: 3- to 5-year-olds who learn in a repurposed cabin, a dining hall basement, and a yurt the school built itself to make room for its 30 students.
That improvised setup is not a quirk. It is a portrait of how childcare survives in northern New Hampshire. As the New Hampshire Bulletin reported, Gale River is the only early education program in the town of Bethlehem, and one of just about 35 in and around the region north of the White Mountains, an area known to residents simply as the North Country.
When the Nearest Option Is an Hour Away
Fifty-three miles up the road in Colebrook, The Country Day School offers the only childcare, early education, and out-of-school time programming for the northwestern corner of Coos County. Sitting just a 15-minute drive from a Canadian border crossing, the school is an outpost. The next closest childcare program is more than 40 minutes away, said director Katie Hopps.
Families come from all over to reach it, Hopps said, from Pittsburg down to the Vermont line. They range from middle-class households to families who are, in her words, “just making it happen,” often without a car of their own.
“If you live four miles out of town, you’re hoping that your pal is going to give you a ride into town,” Hopps said. “Like that’s just kind of the culture here, because you don’t have those things.”
That reliance on neighbors and informal networks is the daily reality of a childcare desert. The Center for American Progress defines a childcare desert as any area with at least three young children, ages 0 to 5, for every available licensed childcare slot. By that measure, about half of New Hampshire families, especially those in rural areas, live in one. Recent research puts the figure at 46 percent of New Hampshire children, roughly on par with the national average.
A Statewide Problem With a North Country Accent
New Hampshire’s childcare shortage is not unique to the North Country. Affordability and availability strain families across the state, a theme New Hampshire Review has tracked in our reporting on the stalled childcare workforce funding and on how the state’s policies compare to neighboring Maine and Vermont. But up north, the same shortage takes on its own character.
State licensing data shows more than 600 registered childcare programs across New Hampshire, yet the North Country holds a noticeably lower concentration of early childhood and out-of-school time programs than the rest of the state. The region is celebrated for its natural beauty, vast wilderness, and year-round outdoor recreation. For families raising small children there, that same remoteness translates into fewer resources, fewer care options, and longer distances to reach them.
For the providers who do operate in these small towns, isolation cuts in multiple directions. Being disconnected from larger systems means fewer resources to draw on, persistent staffing challenges, and heightened pressure on the few programs that exist. When a single school is the only option for an entire town or county, its importance, and the stakes of keeping it open, grow accordingly.
More Than Daycare
The programs serving the North Country often function as something larger than childcare. Despite operating in small towns, they serve sprawling communities where money, resources, and access are limited. In that context, a family’s decision to prioritize early education becomes a weighty one, made heavier as children’s developmental needs come into focus.
Nicole McKay, who leads an early education program in the region, described the role these programs play for the children who attend. “For some families, this is the only thing (their children) are doing,” she said, underscoring how a single program can be a child’s primary source of structured learning and social connection.
That centrality also reshapes the relationship between educators and parents. “It boils down to the connection that (parents) have with educators, right?” McKay said. In tight-knit rural communities, trust is the currency that keeps programs viable. “If we did not have that relationship with them or their kids, then the feedback is harder,” she said. The personal bond between a provider and a family is not a nicety in the North Country. It is part of the infrastructure.
Why It Matters for New Hampshire
The North Country’s childcare story is a window into a challenge facing the entire state, but it also carries its own urgency. New Hampshire has spent recent legislative sessions debating how to fund childcare, where centers can operate, and how to attract and retain workers, debates we have followed in our coverage of childcare zoning reform. Yet policy written in Concord can look very different on a dirt road outside Franconia Notch, where the nearest alternative is an hour’s drive and a borrowed ride.
For the families who depend on a yurt in Bethlehem or a lone schoolhouse in Colebrook, the math is simple and stark. These programs are not one option among many. They are the option. And as the state continues to wrestle with how to expand access, the North Country offers a reminder that geography itself can be a barrier, one that funding formulas and zoning changes do not automatically erase.
