[4] Claremont is a core city of the Lebanon–Claremont micropolitan area, a bi-state, four-county region in the upper Connecticut River valley.

The Upper Connecticut River Valley was home to the Pennacook and Western Abenaki (Sokoki) peoples, later merging with members of other Algonquin tribes displaced by the wars and famines that accompanied the European settling of the region.

[7] On October 26, 1764,[8] colonial governor Benning Wentworth granted the township to Josiah Willard, Samuel Ashley and 67 others.

Although first settled in 1762 by Moses Spafford and David Lynde, many of the proprietors arrived in 1767, with a large number from Farmington, Hebron and Colchester, Connecticut.

Spafford was also the first man to marry in Claremont, and his son, Elijah, was the first white child to be born in the town.

The Union Episcopal Church in West Claremont was built in 1773, and is the oldest surviving Episcopal church building in New Hampshire and the state's oldest surviving building built exclusively for religious purposes.

[15] The water power harnessed from the Sugar River brought the town prosperity during the Industrial Revolution.

[16] In the 1850s, the city of Claremont approached the state legislature asking permission to build a public high school.

[20] The city is in western Sullivan County and is bordered to the west by the Connecticut River, the boundary between New Hampshire and Vermont.

[21] The Sugar River flows from east to west through the center of Claremont, descending 150 feet (46 m) in elevation through the downtown, and empties into the Connecticut.

Included are two Civil War cannon and the centrally-located Soldier's Monument, designed by Martin Milmore and dating to 1890.

A number of mill buildings dot the Lower Village District in the city's center, along the Sugar River, and several attempts have been made at historic preservation of some of them.

To the north end of the town lies the Valley Regional Hospital, an out-patient resource of the popular Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center of Lebanon.

On the southern artery out of Claremont, Route 12, stood Highland View, the summer home of Claremont native William Henry Harrison Moody (1842–1925), who made his fortunes as a businessman and shoe manufacturer in the Boston area, but kept a residence in his hometown until his death.

The park has several miles of interconnected walking trailways; several of these trails terminate at the Boston and Maine Railroad.

[32][33] In 2021, The Ko'asek (Co'wasuck)Traditional Band of the Sovereign Abenaki Nation, a group claiming descent of the original indigenous population in the region, acquired and was gifted several parcels of local land for use in cultural ceremonies, nature preserves and education along with growing herbs and plants.

The closest Greyhound bus stops are in Bellows Falls and White River Junction, Vermont.

Wrightsville, the fictional small-town setting in New England of many Ellery Queen novels and short stories, was based on Claremont.

[58][59] Claremont was the filming location, though not the setting, of the 2006 movie Live Free or Die, co-written and co-directed by Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin and starring Aaron Stanford, Paul Schneider, Michael Rapaport, Judah Friedlander, Kevin Dunn, and Zooey Deschanel.

Set in fictional Rutland, New Hampshire, it is a picaresque comedy-drama about a small-town would-be crime legend.

[62] Claremont was featured in the fourteenth episode of the Small Town News Podcast, an improv comedy podcast that takes listeners on a fun and silly virtual trip to a small town in America each week, in which the hosts improvise scenes inspired by local newspaper stories.