Nicest Small Towns To Visit Near Columbus

The marquee of the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio.The marquee of the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio.Granville's Buxton Inn has been welcoming travelers since 1812, just nine years after Ohio became a state, and it's only 35 miles from downtown Columbus. That's the appeal of the nicest small towns near the state capital.

They're within a two-hour drive, and each has something specific that makes it worth the trip. Whether it's the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory, a town with a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, the home of the country's last washboard factory, or a place where you'll come across folks in their Amish buggies, these small towns near Columbus are worth seeing.

Granville

Settlers from Granville, Massachusetts, and Granby, Connecticut, planned this Licking County village in detail before they ever left New England, and it shows. Organized in 1804 as the Licking Company, they bought 29,000 acres of Ohio land, and when the first wagons rolled up in 1805, a public square, a school, a library, and a burial ground were already part of the plan.

Granville is just 35 miles east of Columbus, and Broadway, its wide main street, still looks like it belongs in Massachusetts. Churches stand on the corners of the square, and Denison University, founded in 1831, looks down from its location on the hill above town.

The Buxton Inn is the best-known building on Broadway. Built in 1812 as a tavern-cum-post office and stagecoach stop, it's the state's oldest continuously operated inn still in its original building.

Directly across the street, the stone and half-timber Granville Inn opened in June 1924 and features a full-service restaurant and pub. A block west, the Robbins Hunter Museum is located in the Avery-Downer House. Built in 1842, it's considered one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in America, and guided tours are available.

Bryn Du Mansion, a mile east of Granville, is an 1865 Italianate villa where polo is played on summer Sundays.

Yellow Springs

An hour west of Columbus, the spring that gave Yellow Springs its name is still flowing and an easy walk from the downtown core. Located in Glen Helen Nature Preserve, a 1,000-acre tract of woods, limestone cliffs, and creeks on the east side of town, the spring water is so rich in iron that it has stained the stone a rusty orange.

Trails are open daily from sunrise to sunset, and taking the Cascades Entrance will provide easy access to both the spring and the Cascades, a waterfall on Birch Creek.

Considered more of a village than a town, Yellow Springs is small enough to see on foot. Xenia Avenue is the main street, and its best-known building is the Little Art Theatre that opened in 1929. This single-screen cinema has been renovated and now includes digital projection equipment, though the original house lights and marquee were kept.

Also on Xenia Avenue are Dark Star Books and Comics, Yellow Springs Pottery, and the coffee shop Dino's Cappuccinos.

A great time to visit is on the second Saturday of June and October, when the Yellow Springs Street Fair closes the downtown streets to traffic. More than 200 vendors participate, and live music can be enjoyed on two stages, along with a beer garden sponsored by Yellow Springs Brewery.

Logan

The country's last remaining washboard factory is on East Main Street in downtown Logan, 45 miles from the state capital. The Columbus Washboard Company was founded in 1895, and at its peak in 1941 it turned out more than 1.25 million washboards. Facing closure in 1999, a group of investors bought the business and moved its original presses to Logan.

Interestingly, many of its customers these days are musicians, a fact that's celebrated at the Washboard Arts and Music Festival, held downtown each June.

Logan's other curiosity is the Paul A. Johnson Pencil Sharpener Museum. Located next to the Hocking Hills Regional Welcome Center, this quirky attraction displays more than 3,400 sharpeners, the largest collection of its kind in the nation.

Pop into the welcome center to learn more about Hocking Hills State Park, home to Old Man's Cave. A trail follows the gorge past the Upper Falls, the Devil's Bathtub whirlpool, and the Lower Falls.

Ash Cave, at the southern end of the park, is the largest recess cave in Ohio. It measures 700 feet from end to end, is 100 feet deep, and has a rim 90 feet high. A small tributary of Queer Creek spills over the edge into a plunge pool below, and the quarter-mile gorge trail to the cave is paved and wheelchair accessible.

Chillicothe

The very real range of hills pictured on the Great Seal of the State of Ohio can be seen from the north lawn of Adena Mansion and Gardens in Chillicothe. Looking east across the Scioto River valley to Mount Logan, it's the view Thomas Worthington had from his 2,000-acre estate.

Worthington, one of Ohio's first U.S. senators and its sixth governor, completed the stone house in 1807 to a design by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, the architect of the U.S. Capitol.

An hour south of Columbus, Chillicothe was the capital of the Northwest Territory from 1800 to 1803 and then Ohio's first state capital, a role it filled from 1803 to 1810 and again from 1812 to 1816. Downtown, the Majestic Theatre dates to 1853, when the local Masons built a combined lodge room, dance hall, and theater.

Enlarged in 1876 as the Masonic Opera House, it showed its first motion pictures in 1896 and was renamed the Majestic in 1915. Now run as a nonprofit, the 532-seat theater is still used for concerts, films, and stage shows.

Chillicothe's oldest attraction, however, is a good deal older than the town. Hopewell Culture National Historical Park preserves ancient earthworks built by people of the Hopewell culture nearly 2,000 years ago. The Mound City Group, where the visitor center is located, is the only fully restored Hopewell earthwork complex.

Ohio's first National Park Service site when it was established in 1923, it has since been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list as part of the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks, the 25th World Heritage Site in the United States.

Marietta

Founded in 1788 and the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory, Marietta also holds the distinction of being the oldest city in Ohio. The settlers began with a simple stockade called Campus Martius, named after the training ground for Rome's legions. Today, Marietta is two hours southeast of Columbus and home to a museum dedicated to its early years.

Standing on the site of that original fort, the Campus Martius Museum is built around Rufus Putnam House, the only part of the fortification to survive. Three floors of exhibits cover the founding of the territory and Marietta's later years of rifle making, furniture building, and oil production. The Ohio Company Land Office, where Putnam made some of the earliest maps of the territory still stands.

Marietta is known as the Riverboat Town, and the Valley Gem Sternwheeler is the way to get out on the water. This 300-passenger boat runs narrated sightseeing cruises on the Muskingum and the Ohio from April to December, along with Saturday dinner cruises and fall foliage trips. On the weekend after Labor Day, the Ohio River Sternwheel Festival brings sternwheelers from all over the inland waterway system to the Marietta landing for races.

Millersburg

Former president Grover Cleveland stayed at the Hotel Millersburg in 1900, where the hotel's restaurant, Grover's Tavern, is named after him. Opened in 1847 and the third oldest continuously operating hotel in Ohio, it's a good base for seeing Millersburg, the Holmes County seat. Under two hours northeast of Columbus and in the midst of Ohio's largest Amish settlement, Millersburg makes for an excellent day trip.

The Victorian House Museum on Wooster Road is a great place to begin a day out. Built for Cleveland industrialist L.H. Brightman, this Queen Anne-style mansion has 28 rooms with self-guided tours that include the third-floor ballroom. On the same grounds, the Millersburg Glass Museum has the world's only public collection of Millersburg Glass, which was produced at John Fenton's local glass plant from 1909 to 1912. There are 400 rare pieces on display.

Built along a former Penn Central railroad corridor, the Holmes County Trail was the first such route in the country designed to accommodate the buggies preferred by the Amish. One lane is paved with asphalt for cyclists, walkers, and wheelchairs, while the lane alongside is surfaced with chip and seal for horses and buggies.

For a closer look at Amish life, Yoder's Amish Home features two houses, one of them dating from the 1860s, along with a barn built in 1885 and a one-room schoolhouse. Buggy rides are offered, and the farm's bakery sells bread, cookies, and jars of pickles made to traditional family recipes.

Six Small Towns Worth the Drive from Columbus

Columbus is well placed for day trips, with good roads heading out in every direction, and a nice small town at the end of most of them. Those with time to spare can even link two or more of these communities together, as Logan and Chillicothe are neighbors and Logan sits on the road south toward Marietta. Whichever comes first, these six small towns show how much of Ohio can be seen within two hours of its capital.