11 Most Charming Towns In The Northern United States
The northern half of the United States is built on a different rhythm than the rest of the country. Lakes define the Midwest, the Rockies and the Great Plains shape the western edge, and the New England coast anchors the east. The small towns tucked into these landscapes tend to lean into the seasons: Medora sits at the gateway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park's Badlands; Lake Placid still hosts skating and bobsledding on its Olympic tracks each winter; Littleton, New Hampshire, maintains the longest candy counter in the world on a Main Street that draws visitors year-round. These eleven northern towns each hold a specific reason to go, whether that's Norman Rockwell's hometown in western Massachusetts, a Victorian mountain resort in the Pocono foothills, or an Oz museum in Kansas.
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
Jim Thorpe, in Carbon County in the Pocono foothills of eastern Pennsylvania, is a former coal and rail town with one of the best-preserved Victorian downtowns in the state. The two original boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk merged and were renamed in 1954 after the Olympic athlete whose remains were relocated here. The entire downtown is a National Historic District, with brick-paved Broadway rising up the hillside past the 1881 Asa Packer Mansion, the 1849 St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and the 1893 Old Jail Museum, which preserves the cells where seven Molly Maguires were held before being executed.
The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway departs from the 1888 Jersey Central station downtown for narrated rides along the Lehigh River. Lehigh Gorge State Park, accessible by bike along the D&L Trail, runs more than 30 miles of former rail bed through a steep, forested river gorge. The town has also emerged as a regional mountain-biking hub with trail networks above town.
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge, in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, was the hometown of Norman Rockwell from 1953 until his death in 1978. The Norman Rockwell Museum on Route 183 holds the largest public collection of his original art, including the actual studio building that was moved to the museum grounds from its original Main Street location.
Main Street itself is the view Rockwell painted in his 1967 Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, and the 1897 Red Lion Inn anchors one end of it with continuous hospitality operations dating to 1773 on the same site. Naumkeag, the 1885 Joseph Choate estate designed by Stanford White with gardens by Fletcher Steele, operates as a historic site a few minutes north of town. Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home, sits just across the Lenox town line and draws more than 350,000 visitors each summer.
Medora, North Dakota
Medora, a Billings County town of about 130 year-round residents, sits at the southern entrance to Theodore Roosevelt National Park's South Unit, where the Little Missouri River carves through the Badlands. The town was founded in 1883 by French nobleman the Marquis de Mores, who named it for his wife. The 26-room Chateau de Mores, the couple's summer residence, still stands on a bluff above town and operates as a state historic site with original furnishings intact.
The Medora Musical, an outdoor Western-themed production staged at the Burning Hills Amphitheater each summer since 1965, draws more than 100,000 visitors a year. Theodore Roosevelt's Maltese Cross Cabin, where the future president lived during his ranching years in the 1880s, sits at the park's visitor center in Medora. The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Theodore Roosevelt Center are both in town. Seasonal population swings from a handful of winter residents to thousands of visitors a day in summer.
Saugatuck, Michigan
Saugatuck sits at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River on Lake Michigan, about 12 miles south of Holland. A well-established art colony dating to the 1910s, the town holds dozens of galleries, the Saugatuck Center for the Arts, and the Ox-Bow School of Art, which has run summer programs tied to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1910.
Mount Baldhead Park, on the dune ridge across the river, climbs 302 steps to an overlook of the harbor and Lake Michigan beyond. The Saugatuck Chain Ferry, which has crossed the Kalamazoo River by hand-cranked chain since 1838, is the oldest continuously operating chain ferry in the country.
Woodstock, Vermont
Woodstock is widely recognized for its preserved Federal-era architecture and was called the prettiest small town in America by the National Geographic Society in 1968. The Taftsville Covered Bridge, built in 1836 and one of the oldest covered bridges in Vermont, still carries local traffic across the Ottauquechee River just east of town.
The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, the state's only national park, covers the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller mansion and surrounding conservation lands at the center of town. The Vermont Institute of Natural Science just west of Woodstock runs a raptor rehabilitation center and the Forest Canopy Walk, a boardwalk network built above the Ottauquechee River that brings visitors into the forest canopy.
Wamego, Kansas
Wamego, Kansas has built much of its tourism identity around The Wizard of Oz. The OZ Museum on Lincoln Avenue holds more than 2,000 items of Oz memorabilia, and the town hosts the annual OZtoberFest in October. Four sculptures of winged monkeys mark the museum entrance.
The restored 1893 Columbian Theatre, a few doors away, originally opened with interior paintings purchased from the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. The Wamego City Park downtown holds a working 1879 Dutch windmill relocated from a nearby farm and now one of the oldest Dutch windmills in the United States.
Grand Marais, Minnesota
Grand Marais, the seat of Cook County in far northeastern Minnesota, sits on a natural harbor about 110 miles up the North Shore of Lake Superior from Duluth. The small harbor is anchored by the 1922 Grand Marais Light, a working lighthouse, and the downtown holds a concentration of galleries and outdoor outfitters unusual for a town of roughly 1,300 residents.
The North House Folk School, founded in 1997 on the harbor, teaches traditional northern crafts including wooden boat building, timber framing, and Scandinavian fiber arts across more than 400 courses a year. The Grand Marais Art Colony, established in 1947, is the oldest art colony in Minnesota. Grand Marais is also the southern trailhead for the Gunflint Trail, a 57-mile paved road that runs inland to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. More than 250,000 visitors a year pass through the town on their way to the Boundary Waters or along the North Shore.
Lake Placid, New York
Lake Placid is one of only three places in the world to have hosted the Winter Olympics twice, in 1932 and 1980. Many of the original venues, including the bobsled-luge track at Mount Van Hoevenberg and the ski jumps at the Olympic Jumping Complex, still operate year-round for athletes and visitors.
The Lake Placid Olympic Museum covers both Games through footage, artifacts, and medal displays. The town sits in the Adirondack High Peaks, with High Falls Gorge, Whiteface Mountain, and John Brown Farm State Historic Site all within a short drive. Mirror Lake, not Lake Placid itself, forms the town's immediate waterfront and freezes solid each winter into one of the country's best-known pond-hockey venues.
Valentine, Nebraska
Valentine sits in Cherry County in north-central Nebraska, at the northern edge of the Sandhills, the largest sand-dune formation in the Western Hemisphere, stretching across more than a quarter of the state. The Cowboy Trail, the longest rail-to-trail project in the country at roughly 195 miles of completed surface, runs through town. Smith Falls State Park, just east, holds Nebraska's tallest waterfall at 63 feet.
The Niobrara National Scenic River, designated in 1991, runs along the southern edge of town and draws canoeists and tubers through its summer season. The Cherry County Historical Museum on Main Street covers the ranching and railroad history that built Valentine into the county seat.
Littleton, New Hampshire
Littleton sits on the Ammonoosuc River at the northern edge of the White Mountains. Main Street, a designated historic district, holds Chutters Candy Store and its 112-foot candy counter, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's longest. The Littleton Diner has served on Main Street since the 1930s in a converted 1940s Sterling rail-style dining car.
A bronze statue of Pollyanna stands in front of the town library, honoring Eleanor H. Porter, author of the 1913 novel, who was born in Littleton. The 1895 Littleton Opera House on Union Street continues to host concerts, films, and community performances. For craft-beer drinkers, Schilling Beer Company operates in an 1802 former gristmill on Mill Street.
Greenville, Maine
Greenville sits at the southern tip of Moosehead Lake, the largest lake in Maine and the largest natural lake entirely within one state east of the Mississippi. The town serves as the jumping-off point for Mount Kineo, an 800-foot rhyolite cliff on a peninsula in the middle of the lake that was a source of stone for Native American tools for more than 10,000 years.
Lily Bay State Park on the lake's eastern shore runs camping and beach access, and Burnt Jacket Mountain offers one of the region's most accessible summit hikes. In town, the Moosehead Historical Society and Northwoods Outfitters handle local history and outdoor gear respectively. Moose sightings in and around Greenville are common enough that "moose safari" tours operate through the warmer months.
As life in the city keeps moving faster, it's worth remembering that hundreds of small towns across the country still operate at a different pace. The next time you're planning a trip, any one of these northern towns will slow things down.
