9 Most Welcoming Towns In Pennsylvania's Countryside

Step off the interstate and count the seconds until someone says hello; if you reach ten, you’re not in the right borough. That unofficial test became our compass for mapping Pennsylvania’s friendliest countryside pockets.

We skipped big-ticket tourism and instead chased details that only locals bother to brag about. Out of dozens of candidates, we found nine towns where the welcome is less slogan, more muscle memory, places that greet outsiders with loose‑leaf church bulletins and a slice of shoofly before asking where you’re from. Think of this list as a roll call of communities that tune their radios to the same station: neighbors first, business later. Ready or not, these boroughs will recognize your face on day two, and yes, they’ll remember how you take your coffee by day three.

Wellsboro

Wellsboro is the kind of town where the streetlights still run on gas and the main drag is lined with elms, not parking meters. This remote borough, tucked into the northern stretch of the Alleghenies, anchors Tioga County like a time capsule. It’s one of the few places in the U.S. where you can drive straight into a glacially carved gorge and be in cell service one minute, hiking a 1,000-foot canyon rim the next. Leonard Harrison State Park offers the best vantage: from the overlook, Pine Creek threads the valley below like a moving postcard.

The Wellsboro Diner, a 1930s silk‑rail car of chrome and curves, still serves chipped beef and homemade pie on the edge of Main Street. The Deane Center for the Performing Arts hosts chamber quartets, community theatre, and touring jazz acts in a refitted department store. For quiet hours, the Green Free Library, founded in 1906, still opens its original oak doors daily. Just down the road, Highland Chocolates employs local workers with disabilities to hand-make pretzel bark and maple creams that rarely last long on the shelves.

Lititz

Lititz was founded in 1756 by Moravians who restricted outsiders from settling until the 1850s. That guarded beginning produced a town with a core so intact it now draws preservationists and planners from across the country. Today, Lititz is best known for two things: pretzels and paper. Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery, the first of its kind in the U.S., still sells hand-twisted snacks from its original 1861 stone house. Just a few blocks away, the Wilbur Chocolate Store operates in the same complex that once produced the brand’s signature cocoa buds, which are still available behind glass jars in the front shop.

Downtown, Slate Cafe roasts single-origin coffee inside a repurposed blacksmith’s shop with no sign out front. Across the street, The Savory Gourmet packs a delightful storefront with foie gras, local cheeses, and more than 100 mustards. For green space, Lititz Springs Park runs the length of Broad Street, with its trout-stocked stream and an original 19th-century band shell still in use for summer concerts. The entire park is privately owned by the Lititz Springs Park Foundation, not the borough, which has helped preserve its cleanliness and design.

Bellefonte

Bellefonte supplied five Pennsylvania governors, two U.S. senators, and the first registered female architect, yet it never became a city. Its political past left behind oversized architecture and a street grid scaled for ambition. The Victorian-era courthouse still anchors High Street, with cast-iron balconies facing the square. Nearby, the American Philatelic Center operates inside the former match factory, now 100,000 square feet of postal history, rare stamps, and a functioning research library open to the public. Trains used to load right at the rear loading dock.

Talleyrand Park cuts through the middle of downtown along Spring Creek, stocked with trout and crossed by an iron footbridge. The park’s stone walls and weeping willows make it central to the town’s layout. Just upstream, Big Spring Spirits distills gin and rum inside the renovated Match Factory complex, offering table service by reservation only. On Allegheny Street, Bonfatto’s Italian Market sells cold subs and old-family sauces from a narrow shop that has operated in various forms since 1910. Every October, the Bellefonte Art Museum opens its “Underground Railroad” exhibit in the museum’s attic crawlspace, where local families once hid escaped enslaved people.

Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe is the only town in America named after an athlete it never knew. The borough, formerly called Mauch Chunk, rebranded itself in 1954 after acquiring the remains of Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe. The move brought headlines but didn’t change the terrain: a steep gorge split by the Lehigh River, lined with coal baron mansions, switchback trails, and one of the earliest gravity railroads in the country. The Asa Packer Mansion, once home to the Lehigh Valley Railroad founder, still overlooks Broadway from its hilltop perch, filled with original furnishings and gaslight fixtures.

The Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway boards from the old train station, offering round-trip rides through the canyon in 1917-era coaches. Just across the bridge, the Switchback Pizza Company serves sourdough pies from a former auto garage, with a rotating menu that includes fennel sausage and hot honey. Downstreet, Muggle-friendly readers pack the shelves of the Muggles Mug Coffee Shop, a Harry Potter-themed café with butterbeer lattes and custom trivia nights. For a walk, the Glen Onoko Falls Trail remains closed due to erosion, but the D&L Trail picks up nearby for uninterrupted biking north through Lehigh Gorge State Park.

Bedford

Bedford has drawn American presidents not for politics, but for water. Since the 1800s, its mineral springs have attracted visitors seeking sulfur, iron, and limestone cures. The Omni Bedford Springs Resort still operates above one of those springs, with a bathhouse and colonnade built before the Civil War. President Buchanan summered there; the original ballroom remains in use. The town’s scale remains modest, with brick storefronts and Federal-style homes built during its early years as a frontier outpost along Forbes Road.

Fort Bedford Museum, located inside a full-scale wooden stockade, holds original rifles, settler maps, and a recreated trading post. For lunch, Horn O Plenty runs a wood-fired oven and sources nearly everything within 50 miles, including chicken pot pie, pickled beet salads, and bread made with regional einkorn. To see farmland up close, the Bedford County Covered Bridge driving tour loops through 14 spans, including the 1880s Ryot Covered Bridge over Bob’s Creek. Bedford never industrialized on a large scale, which allowed its public buildings, roadbeds, and farms to stay rooted in their original placements.

Lewisburg

Lewisburg is one of the few towns in the U.S. with a still-operating Art Deco movie theater and a federal prison within walking distance of a liberal arts college. Bucknell University’s presence has shaped Lewisburg since 1846, anchoring a downtown where bookstores, bagel shops, and a used record store sit in tight alignment. The Campus Theatre, built in 1941, runs repertory and first-run films under restored neon signage and original wall murals. Across Market Street, the Barnes & Noble at Bucknell University stocks titles picked by faculty and houses a café open late even when classes aren’t in session.

At the Lewisburg Farmers Market, open every Wednesday since 1932, vendors sell everything from Lebanon bologna to hand-knotted rosaries inside a long, tin-roofed pavilion on Fairground Road. For lunch, Elizabeth’s An American Bistro serves crab cakes, beef tenderloin sliders, and short rib ravioli from a storefront that used to house a shoe repair shop. The Susquehanna River curves around the borough’s southern edge, and the gravel path beside it is often empty except for anglers and rowing teams.

Milford

Milford was designed in 1796 using the same city plan as Philadelphia, but reduced to a quarter-mile grid beside the Delaware River. Its architectural legacy comes from the Pinchot family, whose estate, Grey Towers, still overlooks the town from a bluff. Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and two-term Pennsylvania governor, shaped national forestry policy from that house, which is now a National Historic Site. The home’s twin silos, built for conversation rather than grain, remain open for public tours.

Broad Street serves as the spine of the town, lined with clapboard houses, independent bookstores, and the Hotel Fauchère. Built in 1852 and restored to service in 2006, the hotel’s Delmonico Room still serves trout amandine and deviled eggs under framed menus signed by Andrew Carnegie and Babe Ruth. The Columns Museum holds one of the country’s most unusual Civil War artifacts: the blood-stained flag that cradled Abraham Lincoln’s head after he was shot. Just outside town, Raymondskill Falls drops 178 feet in three tiers, with trail access less than 10 minutes from the square.

Honesdale

Honesdale claims to be the birthplace of the American railroad. In 1829, the Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to run on commercial tracks in the U.S., made its trial run here. The original line no longer operates, but its legacy continues through the Stourbridge Line, a heritage train that runs passenger excursions through the Lackawaxen River Valley. The Wayne County Historical Society, located inside a converted 1860s bank, houses a full-size replica of the Lion along with canal-era tools and glassworks.

The downtown grid remains walkable and built for function. Just up Main Street, Here & Now Brewing serves porters, kölsch, and small plates like chorizo sliders and sweet potato dumplings inside a converted feed store. Irving Cliff, a bluff that rises above the town, offers a full view of the rooftops and rail yards and can be reached by a short trail from 14th Street.

St. Marys

St. Marys is one of the only places in Pennsylvania where elk walk through residential streets. The town sits just south of the Winslow Hill viewing area, the center of the state’s wild elk range, reintroduced here after near extinction. Originally settled by German Catholic immigrants, St. Marys still observes the Feast of St. Walburga and is home to the tallest Benedictine church in the U.S., the twin-spired St. Mary’s Church on Church Street. Its bell tower is visible from nearly every edge of town.

Straub Brewery, founded in 1872, operates from the same hilltop building and is best known for the Eternal Tap, an always-on draft line pouring free beer for visitors in the tasting room. Just off Depot Street, Corner Restaurant serves fried haddock and pierogies with horseradish slaw during Friday lunch, and takes no reservations. Nearby, Benzinger Park includes public tennis courts, walking trails, and an open-air amphitheater used by the Elk County Community Band.

Hospitality here isn’t staged; it’s baked into Wednesday markets, brewed in century-old coffee pots, and poured beside free-flowing taps. Each borough guards a different fragment of Pennsylvania’s past, railroad ingenuity, Moravian kitchens, presidential bathhouses, yet they all answer the same roll call: look up, wave first, listen long. Follow those habits, and you’ll leave with more than photos; you’ll carry a shorthand greeting from Wellsboro’s gaslamps to St. Marys’ elk trails tomorrow.