11 Nicest Small Towns In Ohio
A nice town is an easy one to spend a day in. Nobody is rushing you, the good stuff is within walking distance, and you leave in a better mood than you arrived. Ohio has a long list of small towns that fit, along Lake Erie beaches, in Amish farm country, and up in the Appalachian foothills. The eleven below are among the most pleasant, each an easy and rewarding place to slow down for an afternoon.
Oberlin
Art, architecture, and culture sit within a few blocks of each other in the compact college town of Oberlin. The Allen Memorial Art Museum spans six millennia across more than 15,000 works, from European paintings and Japanese prints to African and American art, and admission is free. The Weltzheimer/Johnson House, designed in 1947 and completed in 1949, was Frank Lloyd Wright's first Usonian home in Ohio, notable for its low-slung plan, built-in furniture, and long window bands opening onto the garden; public open houses run on the first Sunday of the month from spring through fall.
Near the museum, the Apollo Theatre, a single-screen movie house dating to 1913, mixes current releases with other programming behind an old-school marquee. Between campus and downtown, Tappan Square opens 13 acres of lawn and mature trees, with benches and paths linking Oberlin's college to its town center.
Millersburg
Millersburg is the seat of Holmes County's Amish Country, a landscape of historic homes, working family farms, and old-fashioned food stops. The Victorian House Museum occupies a 28-room Queen Anne mansion of period furniture and household objects, among them a preserved nursery and rooms arranged much as they stood in the early 1900s. At the Guggisberg Cheese Factory, a viewing window looks onto the cheesemaking floor, and the shop counter carries Baby Swiss, spreads, and other local products for sampling.
Yoder's Amish Home opens two Amish houses and an 1885 barn to tours, followed by a three-quarter-mile ride through the countryside in a real Amish buggy. Hershberger's Farm & Bakery rounds out the day with a petting area of more than 100 farm animals, buggy, pony, and draft-horse rides, and a bakery counter stocked with fresh breads, cookies, and pies.
Gallipolis
Gallipolis traces its French roots down to the Ohio River waterfront, where the town's founders, the French 500, settled in 1790. Gallipolis City Park is a natural starting point, with swings and benches over the river, an 1870s bandstand, and the Kerr Memorial Fountain; during the holidays the illuminated displays of Gallipolis in Lights go up across the grounds. A short walk away, Our House Tavern, an 1819 Federal-style inn turned museum, opens its taproom, dining room, ballroom, summer kitchen, and the upper rooms where travelers once lodged.
The Ariel Theatre, a restored 1895 opera house, serves as home to the Ohio Valley Symphony and hosts concerts, community theater, and other performing-arts events. The Gallia County Historical Society and Museum rounds out the history, with local artifacts tied to the town's French founders, its river-town years, and the Marquis de Lafayette's 1825 visit.
Cambridge
Cambridge is a glassmaking town, and its heritage shows up in hands-on stops. At Mosser Glass, the factory floor is open to watch glassmakers shape molten glass into vases, ornaments, and other pieces, with a showroom of hand-pressed glass in the colors and patterns the town is known for. About three miles south, Nothing But Chocolate has spent more than two decades turning out sea-salt and milk-chocolate truffles, chocolate-covered pretzels, cashew clusters, and offbeat pieces like its chocolate acorn boxes.
A mile northwest in downtown, November and December bring Dickens Victorian Village, when nearly 80 costumed, life-size Victorian figures line Wheeling Avenue and fill shop windows, and a courthouse light show runs after dark to music. Another three miles northwest, the Living Word Outdoor Drama stages what its operators bill as Ohio's only outdoor Passion play, with live animals and a 400-foot recreation of ancient Jerusalem across a hillside amphitheater.
Vermilion
Lake Erie and the Vermilion River shape most of what there is to do here. The Vermilion Lighthouse and the adjacent Main Street Beach put a replica lighthouse, a sandy swimming beach, and a paddling launch right on the water, with beach glass to hunt along the shore and sunsets over the lake. A ten-minute walk away, the Mystic Belle runs a 50-minute narrated cruise through the town's waterways, past waterfront homes, marinas, and reminders of Vermilion's fishing and boatbuilding years.
Sherod Park stretches nearly a quarter-mile of Lake Erie shoreline across 24 acres, with compact stone trails, lake views, picnic shelters, and a playground. In the evening, Paper Moon Vineyards & Winery lists wine and hard cider alongside pizza, panini, and cheese plates, and on Friday and Saturday nights live music runs from rock and folk to jazz, with seating over the vineyard and pond.
Coshocton
Coshocton stands along the old Ohio & Erie Canal, and Historic Roscoe Village is a restored 19th-century canal town of costumed interpreters, a working blacksmith, and buildings like the old schoolhouse and doctor's office. The Monticello III Canal Boat, a horse-drawn ride along a restored mile of the original canal, runs on summer weekends.
Away from the canal, Clary Gardens spreads across 20 acres of woodland trails, sandstone outcrops, ponds, and cultivated beds, with a springhouse, a gazebo, and an amphitheater for outdoor performances. A mile west, the Coshocton Antique Mall spreads more than 60 vendors across two floors, a jumble of vintage jewelry, old toys, postcards, stoneware, advertising pieces, and furniture.
Tipp City
Most of what draws visitors to Tipp City is outdoors. Charleston Falls Preserve protects a 37-foot waterfall reached by a short hike through 216 acres of forest, meadow, and prairie, with trails running past a limestone cave, a pond, and an observation tower. Honey Creek Preserve spans 206 acres of prairie, wetlands, and woodland threaded by a one-mile trail, plus a four-mile bridle path, fishing along Honey Creek, and cross-country skiing in winter.
In summer, the Tippecanoe Family Aquatic Center opens three pools, two water slides, diving boards, and a spray-ground. Fifteen minutes south on Main Street, the Rad Candy Company trades in '80s-and-'90s nostalgia, with bulk candy by the cup, hard-to-find sweets, Pokémon cards, comics, collectibles, and premium ice cream.
Sugarcreek
Sugarcreek goes by the Little Switzerland of Ohio, a claim its town square backs up. The World's Largest Cuckoo Clock performs on the half-hour, a cuckoo emerging while a costumed couple dances to polka music beside a mechanical band, with hand-painted Swiss murals on the surrounding buildings. A few minutes away, David Warther Carvings & Gift Shop holds more than 75 hand-carved ivory ships tracing roughly 5,000 years of maritime history, with an observation deck overlooking the Amish farmland.
About 3.6 miles out, The Farm at Walnut Creek offers a 2.3-mile horse-drawn wagon ride past giraffes, zebras, and buffalo, hand-feeding for more than 600 animals from six continents, and tours of non-electric farmhouses and working barns. Hillcrest Orchard spans 75 acres of apple, peach, and plum trees, with a farm store of fresh fruit, local foods, and cider and a lookout deck over Mud Valley.
Athens
A few minutes past the college-town streets, Athens opens onto woods, trails, and lakefront. Strouds Run State Park opens Dow Lake to swimming, fishing, and kayaking, with more than 20 miles of hiking trails climbing the wooded hills to overlooks and rock formations. On the edge of town, the Dairy Barn Arts Center occupies a converted 1914 dairy barn on the National Register, its exhibits ranging from contemporary fiber art to the nationally known Quilt National series.
In town, the Athena Cinema has screened films continuously since 1915, and its three screens now favor independent, international, documentary, and student work. A few doors on, O'Betty's Hot Dog Museum ranks among the town's odder stops, a hot-dog counter surrounded by cabinets of frankfurter memorabilia, old cooking tools, and bun warmers.
Marietta
Ancient earthworks and 18th-century landmarks sit within a few blocks of each other in Marietta, the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory, laid out by the Ohio Company in 1788. At the Campus Martius Museum, visitors walk through the 1788 Rufus Putnam House and the original Ohio Company Land Office, where the collection runs to early settler tools, furniture, and personal belongings. Less than a mile away in Mound Cemetery, stone steps climb the 30-foot Conus Mound, an Adena burial mound preserved inside a graveyard that holds the remains of Revolutionary War officers.
Six minutes on foot stands The Castle, a Gothic Revival house from the 1850s furnished with period pieces and Victorian detail across its rooms. The Valley Gem Sternwheeler works the water below town, and its narrated cruises run along the Muskingum and Ohio rivers, passing historic riverfront blocks, bridges, wooded shorelines, and the confluence where the two rivers meet.
Granville
Granville sits about 34 miles east of Columbus, and its historic homes, brick sidewalks, and village greens earned it the nickname "Little New England of the West." The Robbins Hunter Museum occupies the Avery-Downer House, a Greek Revival mansion whose collection of period furnishings and decorative arts also takes in objects from Granville's 19th-century households. Two miles out, the 52-acre Bryn Du Mansion grounds host summer polo on the Great Lawn, and the carriage house holds concerts and exhibitions through the year.
Goumas Candyland, a Granville chocolate shop that opened in 1911, sells hand-dipped chocolates, truffles, caramels, and oddities like chocolate-covered potato chips. In summer, Lake Hudson draws swimmers to its sandy beach and spring-fed swimming area, complete with a diving board, a water slide, and a floating dock, with room to fish, picnic, or launch a canoe.
An Ohio Worth The Detour
The range is the point. Granville has Greek Revival architecture, summer polo, and a spring-fed swimming lake; Oberlin has a Frank Lloyd Wright house, a free art museum of 15,000 works, and a 1913 cinema in a few college-town blocks. Marietta is a river town built around 18th-century earthworks; Sugarcreek is a transplanted Swiss village. Eleven towns, eleven distinct reasons to turn off the highway across Ohio.
