Rye is perhaps best known to visitors for its long, North Atlantic state park beaches, including Wallis Sands State Beach and Jenness State Beach, as well as for two additional oceanside State Parks, Odiorne State Park (and its Seacoast Science Center) and Rye Harbor State Park at Ragged Neck Point, offering panoramic views to the historic Isles of Shoals, and the home of the 1614 Monument commemorating Captain John Smith’s expedition there.  Rye is also the home of Rye Harbor, a New Hampshire Port Authority-operated public harbor for recreational and commercial fishermen and boaters.  

Additionally, four of the nine historic islands that make up the Isles of Shoals, alluded to above, including Star Island, Appledore Island and White Island (discovered by Captain John Smith in 1614), are part of the Town of Rye.  

Rye Harbor (top and at left), was first visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1603, and is the setting for The Last Run, Stephen Clarkson’s fine novel about rum-running between Canada and New England in the 1920s, a must-read for every Seacoast resident and Rye Harbor visitor. 

The picturesque harbor is known not just by boaters, but also as a harborside, seafood lunch and dinner venue for visitors who come from all over the Northeast, who come for fresh lobster rolls and chowders. 

Rye Harbor is also the point of departure for the twice daily (in season) ferries on the M/V Uncle Oscar to Star Island and the Isles of Shoals, five miles to the east, and twice daily whale-watching trips on the M/V Granite State.