9 Cutest Small Towns in Pennsylvania

The cutest small towns in Pennsylvania come down to one good bakery and a main street that ends before the coffee cools. Just past the shops, a creek slips under a covered bridge. The whole loop is short enough that wandering needs no occasion, which is half the fun. They still light up for festivals and gas-lit evenings, then go quiet the minute the shops lock their doors.

Gettysburg

Four brick buildings ring a small green at the center of town. One is the David Wills House, where Lincoln put the last touches on his Gettysburg Address the night before he gave it. A bronze of him stands out front, one hand raised as if still mid-speech. Shops line Baltimore and Chambersburg Streets, among them a candy store actually named SWEET and the restored 1925 Majestic Theater.

The Dobbin House Tavern has stood since 1776, the oldest building in town. Dinner still comes by candlelight in low-ceilinged rooms that once hid travelers on the Underground Railroad. The little red Sachs Covered Bridge crosses Marsh Creek on a Town-lattice frame at the edge of town, still open to anyone willing to walk it.

Ohiopyle

Ohiopyle might be the smallest borough in the state, its whole downtown set along a few short streets. The old 1911 railway station stands in the middle of it, now a visitor center where cyclists wobble off the Great Allegheny Passage for a break. A bakery and a couple of cafes round out the block. Ohiopyle Falls drops about 18 feet across the Youghiogheny River, a five-minute walk from the bakery counter.

Two old rail bridges arc over the river at the edge of the borough, carrying the trail across to Ferncliff Peninsula, where wildflowers come up under the hemlocks every spring. Cucumber Falls, a mile south, slips over a mossy ledge in a thin bridal-veil sheet.

Ridgway

Ridgway is the seat of Elk County, deep in the Pennsylvania Wilds. A row of 19th-century storefronts lines its main street beside the old brick courthouse. The Elk County Council on the Arts has a gallery there, showing local work year-round. Each spring more than a hundred carvers descend on the Ridgway Mills lot for the Chainsaw Carvers Rendezvous. By the end, finished bears and owls stand around in the grass like they are waiting for a bus.

The Clarion River slows a few miles west at Sandy Beach Park, a calm bend a short way from the carving lot.

Lititz

Settled by Moravians in 1756, Lititz still shows their stone and brick houses along Main Street. The Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery has been twisting them since 1861, the first to do it commercially in the country. A giant pretzel sculpture stands guard at the door. Inside, the tours let visitors roll a knot of their own.

Lititz Springs Park has been the gathering spot since 1756, a shaded green ribbon along the spring it is named for. On the second Friday of each month, the shops open late and draw people out well after dark.

Benezette

Benezette is the easiest place in Pennsylvania to watch wild elk. The herd treats the village like its own backyard, nosing across front lawns and turning up beside the clotheslines and bird feeders. On a quiet morning a bull might be standing in someone's yard, in no particular hurry to leave.

The Elk Country Visitor Center crowns Winslow Hill above the village, its decks busiest when the bulls turn out at dawn and dusk. The Marion Brooks Natural Area, deeper in the Quehanna woods, protects one of the state's biggest stands of white birch, a grove so pale it almost glows on a gray day.

Jim Thorpe

Painted Victorian rowhouses climb the hillside above the Lehigh River, stacked up the slope in bright rows like a box of crayons stood on end. The town swapped its old name, Mauch Chunk, in 1954 to take on the Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. The 1881 Mauch Chunk Opera House still books concerts and plays in a hall that seats only a few hundred.

The 1861 Asa Packer Mansion opens for tours just up the hill, its Italianate rooms still dressed in their original furnishings. The streets tumble downhill from there toward the river, the Pocono Mountains rising behind.

Milford

Milford lays out a neat grid of 19th-century houses in Pike County, at the far eastern corner of the state. The Delaware River draws the line here between Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The small Columns Museum hides a real surprise, the Lincoln Flag from Ford's Theatre.

Grey Towers opens its grounds for tours a mile up the hill, a French chateau dropped into the Pennsylvania woods for the Pinchot family. Kayaks launch from Milford Beach below town, where the McDade Recreational Trail heads north into the Delaware Water Gap.

Wellsboro

Gas lamps have lit Wellsboro's Main Street median every night since the 1890s. On the town green, a little bronze fountain shows Wynken, Blynken, and Nod asleep in a wooden shoe, lifted straight from the old lullaby. Dunham's Department Store, one of the last family-run stores in the country, still sells hunting coats and fine china under the same roof.

Pennsylvanians call Pine Creek Gorge their Grand Canyon. They are not entirely kidding. The 47-mile canyon opens a short way out of town, its walls dropping close to a thousand feet below the overlooks at Leonard Harrison and Colton Point. When those close for the day, the Arcadia Theatre takes over with a movie back in town.

Mifflinburg

Mifflinburg takes its name from Thomas Mifflin, the state's first governor. For a stretch it turned out more horse-drawn buggies than almost any town in the country. The quiet streets still seem to remember it. The Mifflinburg Buggy Museum lines up restored carriages and old photographs of the Heiss family behind the trade.

Hassenplug Covered Bridge has crossed Buffalo Creek since 1825, the oldest covered bridge in Pennsylvania. Its red plank walls still shelter anyone crossing on foot. Sand Bridge State Park, all three acres of it just west of town, is the smallest in the state.

Down to the Details

These towns are built on small things. A giant pretzel guards a Lititz bakery. Elk graze the front lawns in Benezette. Gas lamps burn along a Wellsboro street. Painted rowhouses climb a hillside in Jim Thorpe. A red covered bridge still crosses Buffalo Creek in Mifflinburg. Chainsaw bears wait in a Ridgway lot. A candy store named SWEET brightens a Gettysburg corner. A waterfall pours a short walk from the Ohiopyle bakery. The smallest details give each town its character.