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Radio Field Trip: Browsing the World's Longest Candy Counter in Littleton

Mary McIntyre
/
NHPR

In Morning Edition's series, Radio Field Trips, we're traveling across the state to bring you stories of New Hampshire life and culture.

This week, we traveled to Littleton’s Main Street to satisfy our sweet tooth.

Do you have a suggestion for an upcoming Radio Field Trip? Click here to submit your idea, or email us at fieldtrips@nhpr.org.

(Editor's note: we highly recommend listening to this story.)

As I walk into Chutters candy store, I see jars upon jars filled with sweets. They line a three-tiered shelf that runs the entire length of the store.

This is the world’s longest candy counter, nestled in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Licorice, gummies, chocolate, jelly beans, lolly pops the size of my head… They have every kind of candy imaginable.

Fifteen-year-old Olivia is visiting the White Mountains with her family all the way from New Jersey.

“Yeah I don’t even know where to begin,” she says. “There’s so much candy.”

Olivia says she’s not sure whether she fully believes that Chutters has the world’s longest candy counter. But owner Jim Alden has the certificate to prove it.

“It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records,” Jim says. “Technically, it’s 111 feet, 11 ¾ inches, because the Guinness folks being the imperious Brits that they are, shaved a quarter inch off for the molding.”

Frederick Chutter opened the storefront on Main Street in the 1890s to sell dry goods. Ownership has come and gone over the decades. But when Jim and his wife bought the store in 2005, they decided to focus their inventory on candy.

Jim receives calls from all across the country with requests for sweets that are difficult to find. But if you somehow weren’t impressed with the selection the counter has to offer, they make their own fudge too.

“At any given time, we have two dozen flavors of fudge, and we make the fudge right back here,” Jim says.

The store makes about 25,000 pounds of fudge each year.

I tell Jim I’d worried about bringing my 7-year-old in here because I’d never get out.

“We do have to sweep the store at the end of the day to make sure we don’t have any youngsters laying around,” Jim says.

I’m surprised to see so many parents and kids in the store on a weekday morning. Chutters has become a destination for families visiting the White Mountains.

They’ve now expanded with a full store in Lincoln, and seasonal stores at Loon Mountain and in Bretton Woods. But you have to be at this location to see the candy counter.

I ask Jim what’s his favorite candy.

“I really go to the Cow Tales quite often,” Jim says. “There’s a good mix of caramel
and the sugar.”

Do you have a favorite place in New Hampshire that you’d like to show us? Let us know by sending us an email here.

For many radio listeners throughout New Hampshire, Rick Ganley is the first voice they hear each weekday morning, bringing them up to speed on news developments overnight and starting their day off with the latest information.
Mary McIntyre is a senior producer at NHPR.
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