The Cheapest Beautiful Towns To Live In California

California’s small towns offer remarkable scenery at prices far below the state median of $777,566. Mount Shasta rises above Dunsmuir’s river canyon. The Bizz Johnson Trail winds west from Susanville through tunnels and over bridges. Quincy gathers around the Plumas County Courthouse while Oroville sits beside the Feather River near Lake Oroville. Clear Lake fills Lakeport’s horizon. Noyo Harbor keeps Fort Bragg tied to the Pacific. Kernville hugs the Kern River while Julian preserves Gold Rush storefronts beneath the Cuyamaca Mountains. Find scenic California towns with below-state-median home prices plus practical details on jobs, local attractions, and outdoor recreation.

Dunsmuir

Dunsmuir's median sale price was about $312,830 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin (however, this data set is based on a small number of entries). The town sits in a canyon on the Upper Sacramento River in Siskiyou County, about 50 miles north of Redding on Interstate 5, with Mount Shasta visible from the edge of downtown. Its slogan, "Home of the Best Water on Earth," refers to a municipal supply of snowmelt filtered through volcanic rock. Public fountains around town run continuously, so you can taste it yourself. The Dunsmuir Historic Commercial District, centered on Sacramento Avenue, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and keeps its early-1900s storefronts. A 1924 fire burned a two-block stretch of houses on what is now Dunsmuir Avenue, and the rebuilding there came back commercial rather than residential, which is why the two streets read as different decades. Independent shops and restaurants occupy both, including Yaks on the 5. A short walk from downtown, Hedge Creek Falls drops into a grotto that residents can walk behind, and the Dunsmuir Botanical Gardens trace the riverbank with plantings of dogwood and Shasta lilies. Fly fishers come from out of state to work the Upper Sacramento and McCloud Rivers for wild trout, and Castle Crags State Park, a few miles south, adds granite spires to the view. Local employment is limited, though the Amtrak station gives Dunsmuir a transit link that most towns this size do not have.

Susanville

Susanville's median sale price was about $269,853 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin, the lowest figure in this list. The city is also shrinking: recent estimates put it near 12,400 residents, down from 16,728 at the 2020 census. Much of that decline followed the closure of California Correctional Center in June 2023, a state prison whose incarcerated population had been counted in the city total. Downtown, known locally as Historic Uptown Susanville, is home to the 1923 Lassen County Courthouse, a neoclassical building on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1917 Susanville Railroad Depot, now the Susanville Depot Museum, pleases history buffs. The Bizz Johnson National Recreation Trail follows an old Southern Pacific rail line for 25 miles along the Susan River canyon, crossing a dozen bridges and passing through two tunnels on an easy grade that draws hikers, cyclists, and horseback riders. Eagle Lake, about 15 miles north, is the native home of the Eagle Lake rainbow trout, a subspecies since raised in hatcheries and stocked in other California waters. Lassen Volcanic National Park is roughly an hour and a half away by car, depending on the entrance, the route, and whether seasonal roads are open. Susanville Ranch Park, 1,100 acres of trails on the edge of town, is a favorite for locals wanting a quick escape without leaving city limits. Public-sector work still carries the local economy, including High Desert State Prison and Lassen Community College.

Quincy

Quincy's median sale price was about $379,793 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin, roughly half the statewide figure. Quincy CDP counted 1,630 residents in 2020, and together with the separate East Quincy CDP, the pair came to about 4,100. Both sit in American Valley in the northern Sierra Nevada, just south of where the Cascade Range begins. Downtown is built around the 1921 Plumas County Courthouse, a four-story building with a marble staircase and a one-ton bronze-and-glass chandelier. Behind it, the Plumas County Museum covers the area's Maidu, mining, and railroad history. A self-guided Heritage Walk brochure available there leads residents past 61 preserved Victorian storefronts and homes over a roughly two-mile loop. Gansner Park, along Spanish Creek, gives the town a shaded riverside green space, and the Feather River Land Trust's Leonhardt Trail opens onto the wide meadows of American Valley just outside downtown. Plumas-Eureka State Park sits about 25 miles southeast, near Johnsville. The former gold-mining site keeps a museum, a stamp mill, and a miners' bunkhouse. Feather River College gives Quincy a community-college presence, with associate degrees and a small number of bachelor's programs. The Plumas-Sierra County Fair fills the fairgrounds each August, though the High Sierra Music Festival, staged here for 25 years, moved to Grass Valley for 2026.

Oroville

Oroville's median sale price was about $288,843 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin, among the lowest figures in this list. The city of about 19,700 sits where the Feather River flows out of the Sierra Nevada foothills into the Sacramento Valley, in Butte County. Its defining feature is Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in the state by storage capacity. Its state recreation area offers boating, fishing, and lakeside camping, a few minutes from downtown. The Bidwell Bar Bridge, California's first suspension bridge, was moved to the lake's edge when the reservoir went in and remains open to foot traffic. Feather Falls, shut for years after the 2020 North Complex Fire, reopened in the fall of 2025 with rebuilt bridges and a rebuilt overlook. Almost the entire canopy along the nine-mile loop burned, so shade is scarce, and summer heat on that trail is a genuine hazard; check current Forest Service conditions before setting out. North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve, a basalt mesa 20 minutes from town, puts on one of the state's best wildflower displays most springs. Downtown Oroville runs along the Feather River and keeps a run of Victorian-era buildings, including the 1856 C.F. Lott Home, which is open for tours. Median household income is below the state average, and poverty rates run higher than in the rest of Butte County, a tradeoff worth knowing, but the low cost of entry and the scenery around Lake Oroville are hard to match at this price.

Lakeport

Lakeport's median sale price was about $355,806 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin. The Lake County seat, population about 5,100, sits on the western shore of Clear Lake, the largest natural freshwater lake entirely within California and one of the oldest lakes in North America. Downtown centers on Courthouse Park and the 1870 Old Lake County Courthouse, a brick building on the National Register of Historic Places that now holds the Historic Courthouse Museum and one of the largest collections of Eastern Pomo basketry in the world. Library Park, a lakefront green space downtown, hosts a public boat launch and a summer concert series, and the Soper Reese Theatre a few blocks away stages the Lake County Symphony and community productions. Clear Lake draws boaters and bass anglers. The surrounding hills are part of Lake County's growing wine region, with vineyard views a short drive from town. Wildfire smoke can also settle into the basin for stretches in late summer. The tradeoff here is a smaller job market than the coast or the Bay Area, with tourism, agriculture, and county government as the main employers.

Fort Bragg

Fort Bragg's median sale price was about $499,478 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin, still well below the statewide figure. The Mendocino County town of about 7,000 sits directly on the Pacific coast, built around a working harbor that has supplied its economy since the lumber era. Glass Beach, a former dump site where decades of tide action smoothed broken glass into sea glass, draws residents to the tide pools at low tide, and the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens cover 47 acres of trails through redwoods and coastal bluff gardens. The Skunk Train still carries passengers from downtown into the redwoods on a line built in 1885 to move logs to the mill, with scheduled passenger service dating to 1904. Noyo Harbor remains an active commercial and recreational fishing harbor, with seafood businesses and charter operators along its docks. MacKerricher State Park, just north of town, adds tide pools, a seal-watching point, and miles of beach and dune trail. Major metropolitan job markets are a long way off, though Ukiah, the regional center inland, is roughly an hour and 20 minutes away by car.

Kernville

Kernville's median sale price was about $329,321 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin. The unincorporated town, which counted fewer than a thousand residents at the 2020 census, sits on the Kern River in the southern Sierra Nevada inside Sequoia National Forest, roughly an hour northeast of Bakersfield. This is the second Kernville. The original, known for a stretch as Whiskey Flat, was moved to higher ground upstream in the early 1950s, and its old site went under when the Isabella reservoir filled in 1954; that site is a California Historical Landmark, and foundations surface when the water drops. The Kern Valley Museum covers the mining years with wagons and period artifacts, and each spring, the river above town, a designated Wild and Scenic stretch, hosts whitewater races that pull rafters and kayakers to Riverside Park. About 15 miles south, in Bodfish, Silver City Ghost Town preserves more than twenty original buildings moved in from area mining camps and held in a deliberately weathered state. Lake Isabella is the heart of the local recreation economy with boating and fishing, and the Trail of 100 Giants, a sequoia grove about 45 miles north, is a summer-season side trip subject to weather and road conditions.

Julian

Julian's median sale price was about $516,719 over the three months ending June 2026, according to Redfin, the highest figure in this list but still well under the state median and a fraction of prices in San Diego proper, an hour and a half away. The San Diego County town of about 1,500 sits at 4,226 feet in the Cuyamaca Mountains, high enough for occasional winter snow in a county better known for surfing beaches. Julian's Main Street survives almost intact from its 1870s gold rush, with wooden boardwalks and brick storefronts now filled with apple pie shops, including the Julian Pie Company and Julian Cafe and Bakery, a legacy of the orchards planted after the gold ran out. The Eagle and High Peak Mine, a short drive from downtown, offers tours through original 1870s mining tunnels, and the Julian Pioneer Museum covers the town's Gold Rush and pioneer history in more depth. The 1897 Julian Hotel is listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places; it was built for Albert Robinson, a formerly enslaved man, and his wife, Margaret, and it still takes guests as the Julian Gold Rush Hotel. The townsite as a whole is a California Historical Landmark. Outside downtown, Volcan Mountain Preserve and the surrounding Cuyamaca Mountains offer hiking with views back toward the desert, and Lake Cuyamaca adds fishing and boating fifteen minutes away.

Cheapest Towns in California

None of these places lacks scenery or historic interest. Their lower prices likely reflect a mix of remoteness, smaller local labor markets, population trends, housing stock, and property risks; commuting patterns and economic conditions vary substantially by town. For some towns, remoteness reduces access to higher-paying jobs and buyer demand, but that effect is not uniform. Each of these places has a unique draw: Dunsmuir's water and its railroad-era storefronts, Oroville's waterfall and reservoir, Julian's Gold Rush Main Street. For buyers who can work locally or remotely, or tolerate longer drives, these places offer lower purchase prices and notable scenery.