North Carolina's 11 Most Underrated Towns to visit in 2026
In Edenton, the brick courthouse on the green has heard cases since 1767, longer than any other government building in North Carolina. A few hours west, Bryson City sends a steam train into the Smokies most mornings. Andy Griffith turned his Mount Airy boyhood into Mayberry, and the town still plays the part. Up in the high country, Highlands stands higher than any incorporated town east of the Mississippi. The pull might be a courthouse, a railroad, or a ridgeline, and every one of these towns still gets passed over.
Bryson City
The Bryson City depot is the start of the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad. The train follows the Nantahala Gorge and the shore of Fontana Lake. Fontana Dam rises 480 feet behind that lake, the tallest dam in the eastern United States. Great Smoky Mountains National Park begins just past downtown, and the Deep Creek trails pass three waterfalls on a loop short enough for an after-work walk.
North of downtown, Everett Street becomes the Road to Nowhere. The federal government promised it to families displaced by Fontana Lake in the 1940s, then never finished it. The pavement ends at a quarter-mile tunnel six miles into the park, under a sign reading "a broken promise." The Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee people, lies just next door.
Sylva
A climb of 107 steps from Main Street reaches the 1914 Jackson County Courthouse, often called the most photographed courthouse in North Carolina. Below it, Sylva packs craft breweries and an independent bookstore into a Main Street about 2,080 feet up in the Plott Balsam Mountains. Pinnacle Park, just uphill and town-owned, climbs nearly 2,000 feet to a rocky summit.
The town took its name from William D. Sylva, a Danish handyman who boarded here in the 1880s and stuck in local memory. The Tuckasegee River runs through the valley on the Western North Carolina Fly Fishing Trail. Trout water is within walking distance of downtown.
Highlands
Two Kansas developers founded Highlands in 1875 with a map trick. They drew one line between Chicago and Savannah, another between New York and New Orleans, and built a town where the two crossed. The spot landed at 4,118 feet, one of the highest incorporated towns east of the Mississippi River. Close to 90 inches of rain a year make it one of the few temperate rainforests in North America.
The Highlands Plateau spreads through Nantahala National Forest, a botanical hotspot in the southern Appalachian Mountains. The Hudson Library is one of the oldest in the state. Bridal Veil and Dry Falls drop right beside the highway into town, close enough to walk behind.
Banner Elk
Each October, Banner Elk races woolly worm caterpillars up strings to crown a winter-weather forecaster. The bands on the winning worm supposedly call the season ahead. The Woolly Worm Festival has run since 1978. The rest of the year, Banner Elk is a ski town, with Sugar Mountain and Beech Mountain minutes away in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Lees-McRae College, founded in 1900, brings students downtown long after the ski lifts close. Grandfather Mountain rises to the east, an international biosphere reserve with a mile-high swinging bridge. Apple Hill Farm, a few minutes out, raises alpacas and llamas for tours.
Blowing Rock
Wind funnels up the gorge at The Blowing Rock hard enough to push light objects back over the edge. That updraft gave the town its name. A Cherokee and Catawba legend pins it to two lovers kept apart by their tribes. The cliff looks out on Grandfather Mountain, and the Blue Ridge Parkway runs past the edge of town.
Moses H. Cone Memorial Park was once a textile magnate's estate. Carriage trails loop past Bass Lake to a manor house that now sells regional crafts. The Blowing Rock Art and History Museum traces the town's start as a summer resort.
Hendersonville
Henderson County grows most of North Carolina's apples. Every Labor Day weekend, the North Carolina Apple Festival takes over Hendersonville's Main Street. That street curves on purpose, a serpentine S that slows drivers past painted bear statues and old storefronts. Jump Off Rock, up in Laurel Park, opens onto the Blue Ridge.
The Henderson County Heritage Museum, inside the old courthouse, walks through the area's past from the Civil War on. In Oakdale Cemetery stands the marble angel that gave Thomas Wolfe his title for "Look Homeward, Angel." It was carved in Italy and sold from his father's stone shop. Cideries have opened around the orchards in recent years.
Mount Airy
Andy Griffith spent his childhood in Mount Airy, and the town still plays the Mayberry he later invented. Floyd's City Barber Shop and Snappy Lunch are real storefronts here. The Andy Griffith Museum has the largest collection of memorabilia from the show.
Mount Airy has a second claim with nothing to do with television. The North Carolina Granite quarry on the edge of town, worked since 1889, is the largest open-faced granite quarry in the world. Its stone went into monuments and buildings across the country. Winston-Salem is about 40 minutes south.
Hillsborough
More than a hundred 18th and 19th-century buildings still stand in Hillsborough. One belonged to William Hooper, a North Carolina signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another, the Alexander Dickson House, was General Joseph E. Johnston's headquarters in April 1865. Days later he surrendered the largest remaining Confederate army nearby, one of the last acts of the American Civil War.
The hardest story in town belongs to the Burwell School Historic Site. Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly was enslaved in the Burwell household here from 1835 to 1842 and endured years of abuse. She was later sent to Virginia, bought her freedom, and became a celebrated dressmaker and confidante to Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln. The site now tells both sides, the white girls' academy and the people the family enslaved. The Riverwalk follows the Eno River past the ground where colonial Regulators once gathered, about 20 minutes from Durham.
Washington
Washington was the first town in the country named for George Washington, incorporated in 1776 while the first president still led the Continental Army. Locals call it Little Washington to keep it straight from the capital. On the downtown waterfront, the North Carolina Estuarium was the first museum of its kind in the world. It explains the Albemarle-Pamlico sounds, the second-largest estuarine system in the United States.
The Secotan and Pamlico peoples, related to the Tuscarora, lived along these rivers long before the town. Washington burned and rebuilt twice, once in the Civil War and again in a 1900 fire that took the waterfront. Its historic district mixes eras as a result. Goose Creek State Park, a few miles downriver, protects about 1,600 acres of swamp forest and shoreline.
Edenton
The 1767 Chowan County Courthouse is the oldest government building still in use in North Carolina. The state Supreme Court still convenes there now and then. Edenton was the colony's capital until New Bern took the title in 1765. In October 1774, 51 local women signed a public pledge against British tea, one of the earliest organized political actions by women in the colonies. A bronze teapot on the courthouse green marks the spot.
The Roanoke River Lighthouse and the Cupola House stand within a few blocks of Edenton Bay. The Lane House, built around the 1710s, is one of the oldest houses in North Carolina.
Manteo
Manteo stands on Roanoke Island, where England planted its first New World colony. The settlers landed in 1587 and had vanished by the time supply ships returned in 1590. Roanoke Island Festival Park recreates the landing with a sailing-ship replica and costumed crews. The Elizabethan Gardens bloom next door at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, near where the lost colonists stood. The Outer Banks start across the bridge.
The reconstructed Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse marks the edge of Shallowbag Bay. Beside it stood the old weather tower, where operator Alpheus Drinkwater wired out the first news that the Wright brothers had flown at Kitty Hawk.
The Quiet Half of North Carolina
North Carolina hides a lot of history in towns that rarely crack a top-ten list. Hillsborough saved the house where Elizabeth Keckly was enslaved before she sewed for Mary Todd Lincoln. Washington built the country's first estuary museum on the Pamlico waterfront. Sylva climbs 107 steps to a 1914 courthouse that out-photographs the whole county. Grandfather Mountain, near Banner Elk, earned a global biosphere title. An afternoon on any of these main streets makes the usual rankings look like they missed a few things.
