Items | City of Portsmouth Bike Tour - Visit Historic Landmarks + Sites
City of Portsmouth Bike Tour - Visit Historic Landmarks + Sites
(14) Reviews
Portsmouth
Important Information
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Public transportation options are available nearby
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Specialized infant seats are available
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Not recommended for travelers with spinal injuries
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Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Cancellation policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
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For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
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Cut-off times are based on the experience’s local time.
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If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.
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This experience requires a minimum number of travelers. If it’s canceled because the minimum isn’t met, you’ll be offered a different date/experience or a full refund.
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Any changes made less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time will not be accepted.
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This is a great family-friendly easy tour that seamlessly blends history, architecture, public art, and local insights. Our city tour is guaranteed to satisfy your love of stories, history, and exploration. You and your guide will ride 6-8 miles in Portsmouth, along the quiet roads and into tucked-away neighborhoods, stopping at historic sites and landmarks.
Your guide will share fascinating stories about the maritime history and the fishing industry that paved the way to Strawbery Banke, historic landmarks, the redevelopment of the waterfront, and the 18th-20th-century that shaped Portsmouth. -Pedal through Portsmouth’s North End and hear the stories that bring this historic Little Italy ...
Highlights
1 hour and 45 minutes
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
1 hour and 45 minutes
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
What's Included
Helmet
Use of bicycle
Tips and gratuity
Meeting Points
Departure
43 Middle Street
Historic John Paul Jones House
Return
City of Portsmouth Bike Tour - Visit Historic Landmarks + Sites
(14) Reviews
Portsmouth
About
This is a great family-friendly easy tour that seamlessly blends history, architecture, public art, and local insights. Our city tour is guaranteed to satisfy your love of stories, history, and exploration. You and your guide will ride 6-8 miles in Portsmouth, along the quiet roads and into tucked-away neighborhoods, stopping at historic sites and landmarks.
Your guide will share fascinating stories about the maritime history and the fishing industry that paved the way to Strawbery Banke, historic landmarks, the redevelopment of the waterfront, and the 18th-20th-century that shaped Portsmouth. -Pedal through Portsmouth’s North End and hear the stories that bring this historic Little Italy ...
Highlights
1 hour and 45 minutes
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
1 hour and 45 minutes
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
What's Included
Helmet
Use of bicycle
Tips and gratuity
Meeting Points
Departure
43 Middle Street
Historic John Paul Jones House
Return
Itinerary
1
The Hill
Highlights of the Hidden Neighborhoods of Portsmouth City View Bike Tour:
Former North End / Italian "Little Italy"
The Hill
South End and Prescott Park
Strawbery Banke
Wentworth Coolidge Mansion
Frank Jones Brewery - West End
Creek Neighborhood - Christian Shore
10 minutes
2
Portsmouth
The destruction and preservation hits Little Italy. There are over a dozen colorful wooden houses are squeezed up against the towering Marriot and the Hilton Hotels. The concept, in the early 1970s, was that dilapidated buildings bred ragged people. After World War II, most cities demolish thousands of "blighted" urban areas across the nation. Most were replaced by high-rise apartments, shopping malls, and hotels. In Portsmouth, we lost much of historic Vaughan Street and replaced it with a parking garage and open lots. We will pass by a collection of preserved historic homes saved by urban renewal and move into this area for preservation.
10 minutes
3
Strawbery Banke Museum
Strawbery Banke Museum began as a “save our history” effort by the citizens of Portsmouth. In the late 1950s, Puddle Dock, an area of dilapidated homes near the Piscataqua River was targeted for urban renewal. All the “substandard” homes in Puddle Dock — some of which dated back to the 1600s — were to torn down and replaced with modern buildings. That was until city librarian Dorothy Vaughn addressed the Portsmouth Rotary Club one day in 1957.
That day Vaughn “laid it on the line” for the Rotary Club, telling them that every time one of the old houses was torn or an antique piece of Portsmouth furniture shipped out of town, the city was losing its past. The Rotary Club was galvanized into action, and while Puddle Dock did undergo urban renewal, much of it has been saved as a historic museum.
10 minutes
4
Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion
Explore the beautiful Little HARBOR
7 minutes
5
Brewery Lane
Franklin Jones was born in Barrington, New Hampshire in 1832. He was the fifth of six boys as well as the fifth of seven children in his family. He left home at 16 and moved to Portsmouth and worked as an apprentice in his older brother Hiram's stove store. Within 3 years he owned an interest in the store and in 1854 he took it over completely. Throughout his life Jones would be active in several businesses at once, a pattern he developed early and in these early years, he was also a tin peddler and a rag picker. In 1858 he became partners with John Swindell, an Englishman who had recently moved to Portsmouth to start a brewery producing ale.
7 minutes
6
Wentworth-Gardner House
The Wentworth Lear Historic Houses are a pair of adjacent historic houses on the south waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both buildings and an 18th-century warehouse were owned by the Wentworth Lear Historic Houses and were operated as a house museum. Only the Wentworth-Gardner house is a museum.
10 minutes
7
Prescott Park
Prescott Park is a ten-plus acre waterfront park in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. The land was purchased in the 1930s by two sisters, Josie and Sarah Prescott. The sisters, public school teachers, had used an inheritance to systematically purchase and clear properties along the Piscataqua River.
10 minutes
8
Bohenko Gateway Park
Visit the new Endeavor Sculpture dedicated for the Portsmouth 400th Anniversary.
10 minutes
9
Strawbery Banke Museum
Strawbery Banke is an outdoor history museum located in the South End historic district of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is the oldest neighborhood in New Hampshire to be settled by Europeans, and the earliest neighborhood remaining in the present-day city of Portsmouth.
5 minutes
10
Major General Fitz John Porter Statue
Porter was a prominent UnionBrevet Major General during the American Civil War, celebrated for his role in the Peninsula Campaign but infamously court-martialed and cashiered for his actions at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. A highly regarded officer in the pre-war army, he was eventually exonerated and reinstated to the army in 1886 after a long campaign to clear his name.
During the Second Battle of Manassas (Second Bull Run) in August 1862, Porter's V Corps was transferred to Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia. Porter, who held a low opinion of Pope, was accused of disobeying orders to attack on August 29, 1862, arguing that the attack would have been futile against strong Confederate positions. Following the Union defeat, a court-martial found Porter guilty of disobedience and misconduct, resulting in his dismissal from the Army on January 21, 1863.