The town is home to Hubbard State Forest and the headquarters of the Student Conservation Association.

The primary village in town, where 1,078 people resided at the 2020 census,[3] is defined as the Charlestown census-designated place (CDP) and is located along New Hampshire Route 12.

On the evening of May 2, 1746, Seth Putnam joined Major Josiah Willard and several soldiers as they escorted women to milk the cows.

[7]: 26–27  In 1747, during King George's War, the fort was besieged for three days by a force of French and Native people.

Captain Phineas Stevens and 31 militia stationed at the fort repelled the attack, with their success becoming well-known.

Admiral Knowles, in port at Boston during the 1747 siege, sent Captain Stevens a sword to acknowledge his valor.

Early in the morning of August 30, 1754, Susannah Willard Johnson along with her husband, her three children, her sister and two neighbors, Peter Labarree and Ebenezer Farnsworth, were captured by Abenaki people, marched to Montreal and incarcerated.

Sixty-three buildings on Charlestown's Main Street are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

They include the Gothic Revival South Parish Church erected by master-builder Stephen Hassam in 1842, St. Luke's Church designed by Richard Upjohn in 1863, and the Italianate Town Hall designed in 1872 by Edward Dow, New Hampshire's most prominent architect after the Civil War.

A reproduction of the Fort at Number 4 is now a historical site, where military reenactments and musters occur frequently throughout the summer months.

[5] None show on maps today, and were presumably inundated by the power dam built downstream at Bellows Falls.

Routes 11 and 12 lead north from the town center 11 miles (18 km) to downtown Claremont.

Amtrak's Vermonter passenger rail line runs through Charlestown along the Connecticut River but does not stop in town.