9 Of The Most Adorable Small Towns In New York

In New York's smallest towns the whole downtown fits in a single photograph. You can walk Main Street end to end before your coffee cools. At Watkins Glen the village streets stop at the mouth of a gorge with nineteen waterfalls. Walk to the edge of Lake Placid and you reach the ski jumps of two Winter Olympics. At Alexandria Bay a stone castle stands on its own island in the St. Lawrence.

Cold Spring

During the Civil War, the West Point Foundry cast the Parrott rifled cannons that armed the Union Army. Its brick ruins and rusting machinery now sit inside a Scenic Hudson preserve in Cold Spring. Flat gravel paths make the loop an easy first walk for families, and second-growth Hudson Valley forest has grown up around the old foundry buildings.

A mile north, hikers climb the small headland at Little Stony Point for open views of the Hudson River and the hills across it. Back downtown, Cold Spring's nineteenth-century Main Street slopes toward a riverfront bandstand. Just outside the village, the Magazzino Italian Art museum shows postwar and contemporary Italian work and charges nothing for admission.

Beacon

Dia Beacon opened in 2003 inside a former Nabisco box-printing factory near the town's waterfront. Rows of north-facing skylights light the galleries, which suit the large-scale minimalist and contemporary art on display. A few blocks up Main Street, Hudson Beach Glass occupies a former firehouse where glassblowers sell handmade pieces and teach beginner classes.

Southern Beacon holds Madam Brett Park, where a boardwalk crosses Fishkill Creek near a small waterfall. The surrounding marsh draws herons and other wetland birds, and a longer greenway trail continues along the creek from there.

Rhinebeck

Cole Palen founded the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in 1958 for the vintage aircraft he collected and flew. The living aviation museum in Rhinebeck keeps airplanes from the Pioneer era, the First World War, and aviation's Golden Age, most of them still airworthy. On summer weekends it stages airshows, and visitors can book a ride in an open-cockpit biplane over the countryside.

Ferncliff Forest covers 200 acres that the Astor family donated to the town in 1964. The old-growth preserve holds twelve miles of trails for hiking and mountain biking, plus campsites available by permit. From the fire tower at its high point, hikers can see across the Hudson River to the Catskills.

At the end of August, the Dutchess County Fair fills its 140-acre fairgrounds for six days. The fair dates to 1842 and now draws close to half a million people to its livestock barns, agricultural exhibits, and midway rides. It remains one of the largest county fairs in the state.

Lake Placid

Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympic Games twice, in 1932 and 1980. The village still uses much of that infrastructure, including the ski jumps at the Olympic Jumping Complex. An elevator and a stairway carry visitors to the observation deck atop the 120-meter tower, where they look out across the Adirondack High Peaks.

Mirror Lake sits in the center of the village, closed to gas motorboats. Its still surface holds clear reflections of the peaks, and swimmers and paddlers share the water through the summer. Along Main Street, Smoke Signals serves smoked barbecue from a deck above the lake.

Saranac Lake

In 1894, Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau built the Saranac Laboratory as the first American research lab devoted to tuberculosis. The Saranac Lake building now operates as a museum of that work, with original equipment and the town's cure-cottage history intact. With about 4,900 residents, the village is the largest community in Adirondack Park.

Hikers climb the Baker Mountain trail on a short but steep route to a summit that overlooks the village and its lakes. In winter, the town-run Mount Pisgah ski area just outside Saranac Lake opens its slopes for downhill skiing and snowboarding. A single lift serves runs suited to beginners and stronger skiers alike.

Speculator

Speculator sits between Lake Pleasant and Sacandaga Lake in the southern Adirondacks. In summer, swimmers fill a guarded sand beach at Moffitt Beach on the Sacandaga shore, next to a state campground and a boat launch.

In winter, Oak Mountain Ski Center runs downhill skiing, snowboarding, and tubing on runs for every skill level. Snowmobilers can reach hundreds of miles of groomed trail across the region, and Village Rentals in town rents machines by the day.

Watkins Glen

The gorge at Watkins Glen State Park descends roughly 400 feet in under two miles, past nineteen waterfalls. Walkers on the stone-cut gorge trail pass beneath and behind several of the falls on hundreds of steps. The park lies at the south end of Seneca Lake in Watkins Glen, the seat of Schuyler County.

Watkins Glen International has hosted racing since 1948, when drivers ran a course through the village streets. The permanent circuit now holds NASCAR Cup and IMSA sports-car weekends each summer. On open track days, the Drive the Glen program lets the public take their own cars around the course for a few laps behind a pace car.

Aurora

Fewer than a thousand people live in Aurora, strung along the east shore of Cayuga Lake. Just south of the village, Long Point State Park keeps a swimming beach, picnic grounds, and a boat launch on the water. Part of the point stays open to deer and small-game hunting in season.

Nearby, Long Point Winery pours estate wines on a patio that looks over the lake. In the village, the Inns of Aurora runs a lakeside spa with massage rooms, saunas, and treatment suites for a quieter kind of afternoon.

Alexandria Bay

Boldt Castle stands on Heart Island in the St. Lawrence River just off Alexandria Bay. The hotel magnate George Boldt began the 120-room house in 1900 for his wife, Louise, then stopped all work in 1904 after she died. It sits among the islands of the Thousand Islands, and the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority has restored it since 1977. Uncle Sam Boat Tours runs cruises from the village waterfront out to the castle and among the islands.

Closer in, Scenic View Park has a small riverside beach and a playground within walking distance of downtown. On summer nights, the Bay Drive-In Theatre screens double features on two screens outside town. It has run since 1968 and stays open from spring into fall.

Four Regions, One Kind Of Town

These nine places sit in four different corners of New York. In the Hudson Valley, the appeal is art and Gilded Age history. In the Adirondacks, it is mountains, Olympic venues, and the medical past of Saranac Lake. In the Finger Lakes, it is gorges, racing, and wine, while at Alexandria Bay it is the river and its islands. What holds across all of them is scale, since each town keeps its best attractions within a short walk or a single afternoon.