9 Small Towns In Pennsylvania That Were Ranked Among US Favorites
Pennsylvania's small towns regularly land on national best-of lists. Some get the recognition for foliage and others for pretzel bakeries or Civil War history. A few keep showing up year after year. The reasons vary widely. The nine towns ahead all made their lists for very different draws.
Milford
Milford built its national footprint on Gifford Pinchot. The first chief of the U.S. Forest Service and two-term Pennsylvania governor grew up at Grey Towers, the French chateau-style estate that James and Mary Pinchot completed in 1886 just west of town. Richard Morris Hunt designed the 44-room mansion as a summer home. President Kennedy dedicated the grounds as the Pinchot Institute for Conservation in 1963. House tours run seasonally and the gardens stay open year-round. In town, The Columns Museum holds the bloodstained flag said to have cradled Abraham Lincoln's head at Ford's Theatre.
The Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area starts a few miles south of town. The Raymondskill Creek Trail leads to a three-tiered waterfall ranked as Pennsylvania's tallest, with viewing platforms above and below the main drops. Milford Beach on the Delaware River handles swimming and paddling through the warm months.
New Hope
Bucks County Playhouse opened in 1939 inside a converted 18th-century grist mill on the Delaware. Playwrights Moss Hart and Kenyon Nicholson were among the founders who saved the building from demolition and turned it into a summer theater. Generations of major American performers have appeared on its stage. The town also handles arts retail well, with galleries and antique shops lining Main Street alongside the storefronts heading down toward the river. New Hope sits across the Delaware from Lambertville, New Jersey, connected by a steel truss bridge that turns a stroll into a two-state walk.
Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve sits a few miles south of town and holds more than 700 native plant species across 134 acres of forest, meadow, and pond. About 4.5 miles of trails loop through the preserve. The Delaware Canal towpath cuts through the edge of town and follows the canal's 19th-century route between Easton and Bristol. The flat path makes for an easy walk or bike ride along the river, with the historic mule-drawn canal boats still operating in season.
Lititz
Lititz took Budget Travel's Coolest Small Town in America title in 2013, and the recognition still travels with the town more than a decade later. Moravian settlers from Bohemia founded it in 1756 as a closed religious community, and ownership stayed in Moravian hands for the first hundred years. The Lititz Moravian Historic District preserves the architecture from that period and anchors the downtown along Main Street and Broad Street. The Johannes Mueller House from 1792 operates as a museum showing 18th-century Moravian home life.
Julius Sturgis opened the first commercial pretzel bakery in the United States here in 1861, working out of a stone building on East Main Street that still runs as a working bakery and museum. The bakery tour includes hands-on pretzel twisting and a short walk through the history of the business. Wilbur Chocolate operated a factory in town for decades and still maintains a candy store on the original site. Downtown food stops include Bulls Head Public House, Café Chocolate, and Tomato Pie Cafe.
Jim Thorpe
The boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk merged in 1954 and took on the name of Olympic gold medalist Jim Thorpe in exchange for his burial in town. His third wife Patricia struck the deal with the two struggling coal towns after Oklahoma declined to fund a memorial. Thorpe's red granite mausoleum sits along Route 903 with bronze statues showing him in football and Olympic uniforms. The athlete never visited the town that took his name during his lifetime.
The Old Jail Museum, a fortress-like stone structure designed by Edward Haviland and built in 1869-1871, is best known for the executions of seven Irish coal miners called the Molly Maguires between 1877 and 1879. The 27 cells, basement solitary cells, and gallows can all be toured, and a much-disputed handprint marks the wall of Alexander Campbell's cell. The Mauch Chunk Opera House hosts concerts year-round in the historic downtown. Jim Thorpe River Adventures runs whitewater rafting trips on the Lehigh River through the cliffs and old-growth forests of Lehigh Gorge State Park.
Hawley
Most of Hawley's outdoor recreation centers on Lake Wallenpaupack. The reservoir is the second-largest lake entirely contained in Pennsylvania, with 5,700 acres of surface, 52 miles of shoreline, and 13 miles of open water. PPL Corporation completed the dam in 1926 by flooding the village of Wilsonville, whose stone foundations still sit on the lake bottom. Six public recreation areas around the lake handle boating, fishing for bass and walleye, paddling, and camping. Winter brings ice fishing, ice skating, and the annual Ice Tee Golf Tournament on the frozen surface.
Downtown Hawley keeps a compact strip of restaurants and shops along Main Street and Keystone Street. The Settlers Inn handles dinner in a 1927 arts-and-crafts hotel building with a working garden out back. Harmony Presents at Harmony in the Woods runs an outdoor music series through the warm months. Soarin' Eagle Rail Tours offers railbike rides on historic tracks along the Lackawaxen River, a quieter alternative to the lake's busier waters.
Stroudsburg
The Sherman Theater anchors downtown Stroudsburg, a 1920s movie palace converted into a music venue that runs national touring acts across its calendar. Megadeth, Train, and dozens of other artists work through the schedule in a typical year. The downtown also handles food and drink well, with Renegade Winery for tastings and Siamsa Irish Pub for a pint after a show. Klues Escape Room sits a few blocks over with multi-room puzzles designed for groups.
Just outside town, the Quiet Valley Living Historical Farm preserves a working farmstead that traces back to a German-Swiss family that settled the land in the late 1700s. Costumed interpreters demonstrate 18th and 19th-century farming and household work across the property, and the annual Pocono Garlic Festival and Christmas-on-the-Farm events draw visitors well beyond the local area. The Monroe County Historical Association in town fills in the wider local history.
Gettysburg
The Battle of Gettysburg over three days in July 1863 marked the turning point of the American Civil War. Gettysburg National Military Park preserves the battlefield across more than 6,000 acres, with ranger-led walking tours, presentations, and more than a thousand monuments and markers. The Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center houses the Cyclorama painting depicting Pickett's Charge and a film narrated by Morgan Freeman. The Soldiers' National Cemetery, where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in November of that year, sits adjacent to the visitor center.
Other Civil War sites cluster around the battlefield. The Eisenhower National Historic Site preserves the only home Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower ever owned, just south of town. The Seminary Ridge Museum tells the story of the first day's fighting from inside the building that served as a Confederate field hospital. The Shriver House Museum shows what civilian life was like during the battle. After dark, multiple ghost tour companies run nightly walking tours through the historic district.
Doylestown
Henry Chapman Mercer left Doylestown three poured-concrete buildings. Fonthill Castle, the Mercer Museum, and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works form a National Historic Landmark District known locally as the Mercer Mile. Fonthill Castle was his home from 1908 to 1912. The 44-room building packs more than 200 windows, 18 fireplaces, and concrete walls embedded with the handmade tiles he designed. The Mercer Museum, completed in 1916, rises six stories over downtown and holds 50,000 artifacts representing 60 pre-industrial American trades. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works between the two still produces tiles using Mercer's original processes.
Doylestown also delivers green space. Central Park on the edge of town has basketball courts, soccer fields, tennis courts, and walking trails on more than ninety acres. Kids Castle, a wood-built children's playground from 1997 designed for visitors of all abilities, sits within Central Park. Peace Valley Lavender Farm grows several thousand lavender plants across multiple varieties, with peak bloom typically running through June and July.
Wellsboro
Wellsboro keeps its downtown lit by gas street lamps along Main Street. Pine Creek Gorge sits about ten miles to the west, the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon that runs roughly 45 miles long and nearly 1,500 feet deep at points. Leonard Harrison State Park anchors the east rim with hiking trails and overlooks. Colton Point State Park covers the west rim with similar terrain. The Tioga State Forest surrounds both parks.
The Pine Creek Rail Trail runs 62 miles along the gorge floor between Wellsboro Junction and Jersey Shore. The crushed-limestone surface follows the old Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railroad bed at a barely-noticeable two-percent grade. Bicyclists, hikers, horseback riders, and cross-country skiers all share the path. Bald eagles, black bears, and river otters live in the surrounding woods. Back in town, the Deane Center for the Performing Arts handles the indoor side of the visit with concerts, theater, and the annual Wellsboro Comic Con.
Picking The Right Pennsylvania Town
The nine towns above sit in different parts of the state and earn their reputations through very different angles. Lititz and Doylestown bring the history-and-architecture side, with Mercer's concrete castles and Moravian heritage at the front of each visit. Hawley and Wellsboro deliver the outdoor base, with Lake Wallenpaupack and Pine Creek Gorge respectively. Gettysburg and Jim Thorpe carry the heaviest historical weight, the Civil War in one case and Industrial Revolution coal country in the other. New Hope, Milford, and Stroudsburg fall in between, with arts, conservation history, and small-town theater at their cores.
