10 Best Up-And-Coming US Towns

What makes a small town up-and-coming? Usually the same handful of things: a downtown worth walking, a few stubborn local businesses, a natural or historical hook, and a festival calendar that gives people a reason to keep coming back. Get the mix right and the visitors arrive, the money follows, and the town starts to climb. The ten towns below have that mix in wildly different forms. One was a dying coal port that reinvented itself as a mountain-tourism magnet. One runs on bourbon. One sits on a lake so clean a city drinks straight from it. Here are ten of the best up-and-coming small towns in the United States.

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania

Jim Thorpe spent a century as Mauch Chunk, a coal-shipping town on the Lehigh River, before it renamed itself in 1954 after the Olympic legend and bet its future on tourism. The bet paid off. About 115 miles west of New York City, this borough of roughly 4,500 has turned its steep, Victorian streetscape into a year-round draw that locals call the Switzerland of America. The Asa Packer Mansion, finished in 1861 for the railroad baron who built the town's fortune, still looks down over the historic district. The Fall Foliage Festival packs the first three weekends of October, the Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway runs excursions into the gorge, and WinterFest keeps February busy. The population has held steady rather than boomed, but the visitor numbers tell the real story.

Camden, Maine

Camden may be the prettiest harbor in Maine, and it has built a steady economy around the view. Tall-masted windjammer schooners still work out of the harbor, and the town center climbs from the waterfront into the High Street Historic District. Behind it all rises Mount Battie in Camden Hills State Park, whose summit road delivers the postcard look down over the harbor and Penobscot Bay. A town of about 5,000 on the Atlantic coast, Camden has invested in the things that keep visitors coming, including a rebuilt riverwalk and public landing, while protecting the working harbor that gives the place its character. The schooners, the state park, and a compact downtown of independent shops do the rest.

Aspen, Colorado

Aspen is the outlier here, and not because it is sleepy. This Colorado mountain town is one of the most famous resorts in the world, and its permanent population of around 7,000 is holding flat rather than surging. What keeps Aspen climbing is reach, not headcount. Winter belongs to the skiers on Aspen Mountain and its three sister peaks, but summer is where the town flexes: the Food and Wine Classic, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and Aspen Summer Words all land in June, pulling chefs, thinkers, and writers into a town of a few thousand people. The result is an economy and a cultural footprint far larger than the place itself.

Taos, New Mexico

Taos has one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America at its doorstep. Taos Pueblo, the multistory adobe complex just outside town, has been lived in for roughly a thousand years and is both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Historic Landmark. That deep history, plus the high-desert light that drew the Taos Society of Artists a century ago, makes this town of about 6,500 a magnet that keeps pulling people in; its population rose roughly 12% through the 2010s. The Rio Grande Gorge Bridge spans a chasm hundreds of feet deep west of town, the Enchanted Circle loops through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the adobe storefronts around Taos Plaza keep the old art-colony energy alive.

Petoskey, Michigan

Petoskey has a stone named after it. The Petoskey stone, a fossilized coral that washes up along the Lake Michigan shore, is Michigan's state stone, and hunting for them on the beach is a local rite. The town of about 5,900 sits on Little Traverse Bay near the top of the Lower Peninsula and grew a steady 3.5% through the 2010s. Its walkable Gaslight District fills brick storefronts with shops and restaurants, the Bear River cuts a recreation corridor through the middle of town, and Ernest Hemingway spent boyhood summers nearby, mining the area for his early Nick Adams stories. It is the kind of place that quietly keeps drawing people back.

Skaneateles, New York

Skaneateles sits at the head of a lake so clean that the city of Syracuse drinks from it almost unfiltered. That lake, one of the clearest in the New York Finger Lakes, is the whole draw, and the village of about 7,000 runs a tidy main street right down to the waterfront. Skaneateles Lake sets the summer tone, with sailboats, swimming, and lakeside dining. The town leans hard into its events, too. The Curbstone Festival spills shopping onto the sidewalks, the "Off the Dock" chamber concerts play near the water, and the December Dickens Christmas, with costumed carolers roaming downtown, has grown into a regional tradition.

Bisbee, Arizona

Bisbee is what happens when a copper-mining boomtown refuses to become a ghost town. Carved into the steep Mule Mountains of southern Arizona, this old mining camp of about 5,000 reinvented itself as an artists' and bohemian haven once the mines wound down, and that turnaround is the whole up-and-coming story. The Copper Queen Mine still runs underground tours led by former miners, the enormous Lavender Pit gapes at the edge of town, and the staircases climbing the hillsides are so numerous the town holds an annual 1,000-stair race up them. Victorian houses cling to the slopes above a downtown of galleries, cafes, and the historic Copper Queen Hotel.

Brattleboro, Vermont

Brattleboro runs on creative energy. This Vermont town of about 12,000, in the southeast corner of the state where the West River meets the Connecticut, has built a reputation as one of New England's most artsy small towns. The monthly Gallery Walk turns downtown into an open-air arts crawl, the Brattleboro Farmers Market draws crowds for Vermont cheese, syrup, and crafts, and the Art Deco Latchis Theatre still screens films on Main Street. Just outside town, the Creamery Covered Bridge has spanned the Whetstone Brook since the 1870s. Add the surrounding dairy farms and sugarhouses, and Brattleboro keeps handing visitors reasons to return.

Bardstown, Kentucky

Bardstown calls itself the Bourbon Capital of the World, and the numbers back up the boom. This Kentucky town grew about 14% between 2010 and 2020 and keeps climbing toward 14,000 residents, powered by a whiskey industry that draws pilgrims year-round. Barton 1792 and Heaven Hill anchor a cluster of distilleries and tasting rooms, and the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History fills in the backstory. Bardstown is more than bourbon, though. My Old Kentucky Home State Park preserves the mansion that helped inspire Stephen Foster's song, and a well-kept historic downtown gives one of the South's fastest-growing small towns a real sense of place.

Auburn, California

Auburn earns its nickname, the Endurance Capital of the World. This Gold Rush town in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California is where the brutal Western States 100-mile run and the Tevis Cup 100-mile horse ride both finish, drawing athletes from around the globe. A growing community of about 14,000 in Placer County, Auburn pairs that athletic pedigree with a well-preserved past. Old Town Auburn keeps its Gold Rush-era storefronts and walking tours, the Auburn State Recreation Area follows the American River canyons for hiking and whitewater, and a giant statue of gold-seeker Claude Chana tips his pan over the highway. It is history and adrenaline in one foothill town.

What "Up-and-Coming" Really Means

None of these towns is trying to become a city. That is the point. The up-and-coming label here is not about sprawl, it is about momentum: a former coal port reinventing itself, a mining camp turned art colony, a bourbon town riding a national boom, a lake village living off some of the cleanest water in the country. A few are growing fast on paper, like Bardstown and Taos. Others, like Aspen, simply punch far above their population. What they share is a clear sense of what they are and a knack for giving visitors a reason to come back. Spend a weekend in any of them and you feel the same thing: a small place going somewhere.