11 Underrated Pennsylvania Towns Worth the Drive in 2026
Ask around for a Pennsylvania weekend getaway and Jim Thorpe or New Hope usually comes up first, which leaves plenty of equally rewarding small towns with shorter lines and quieter main streets. Farmington sits a short drive from two Frank Lloyd Wright houses and the meadow where a young George Washington surrendered Fort Necessity, yet it rarely makes anyone's shortlist. Down in Lancaster County, Strasburg has steam locomotives pulling passenger cars on a railroad chartered in 1832. The 11 towns below belong on a 2026 itinerary, and several of them are at their best in winter, when the trails around them are open to snowshoes and cross-country skis.
Farmington
About 60 miles south of Pittsburgh, Farmington is a small Laurel Highlands community with some of the most significant ground in Fayette County. Fort Necessity National Battlefield covers the Great Meadows, where 22-year-old George Washington surrendered to French forces on July 3, 1754, in one of the opening battles of the French and Indian War. The brick Mount Washington Tavern, built in the 1820s along the National Road, stands on the same property. Two Frank Lloyd Wright houses are a short drive away: Kentuck Knob, a Usonian design completed in 1956, and Fallingwater, built over the falls of Bear Run in 1936 and 1937. Ohiopyle State Park covers more than 20,000 acres of the Youghiogheny River gorge, and in winter its trails are open for cross-country skiing, sledding, snowmobiling, and snowshoeing.
Nemacolin is the resort on the edge of town. Its lodging includes The Chateau, the Grand Lodge, Falling Rock, and a collection of private homes, and the property has more than a dozen bars and restaurants. The Peak, its four-season activity area, has ski slopes and snow tubing in winter, and guests can book treatments at the Woodlands Spa.
Mount Pleasant Township
Mount Pleasant Township covers a stretch of Washington County farm country about 25 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, with the village of Hickory at its center. At Red Fox Winery, on Red Fox Road in the Hickory section of the township, visitors can taste the house wines alongside a rotating lineup of craft beers brewed on site, and live music is on the schedule throughout the year. A short drive west, Cross Creek County Park is the largest county park in Washington County, with roughly 2,000 acres of woods and fields around the 244-acre Cross Creek Lake. Anglers, boaters, hikers, and wildlife watchers all make use of it. In neighboring Avella, visitors can book an appointment to tour the alpaca herd at The Crafty Alpaca and browse alpaca-fiber socks and knitwear in the farm store.
Hickory House Bed & Breakfast is set in a restored Civil War-era home on Main Street in Hickory. Guests get a breakfast with a hot dish each morning, and the cottage has a hot tub on its rear deck.
Lake City
Lake City is a small borough near the Lake Erie shore, about 15 miles west of Erie, and its biggest asset is a long stretch of undeveloped bluffs just outside town. Erie Bluffs State Park covers 587 acres of bluffs and woodland along the lake and is open year-round. Winter visitors can go ice fishing, iceboating, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing there. Farther west toward the Ohio line, State Game Lands 314 is a tract of roughly 3,500 acres where licensed hunters pursue deer, turkeys, foxes, and squirrels.
Back in town, Twisted Elk Brewery on Route 5 has a rotating tap list of small-batch beers and a menu of pub food built on locally sourced ingredients.
Warren
Warren sits on the Allegheny River in the Pennsylvania Wilds, and its downtown is home to a theater with more than 140 years of history. Local businessman Thomas Struthers gave Warren the building that became the Struthers Library Theatre, completed in 1883, and the restored venue was named an Outstanding Historic Theatre by the League of Historic American Theatres in 2018. Southeast of town, Chapman State Park has a 68-acre lake for ice fishing, ice skating, and iceboating, plus a lighted sledding hill and snowmobile trails that connect to the national forest. Beyond the park, the Allegheny National Forest is the only national forest in Pennsylvania and covers more than 500,000 acres. Most of it is second-growth woodland that regrew after heavy logging around the turn of the 20th century, but old-growth stands survive at Hearts Content and the Tionesta Scenic Area, and the forest's remote corners have dark night skies for stargazing.
Back in town, the Hazeltine Boutique Hotel has guest rooms inside a buff-brick Jacobean mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue West, completed in 1907.
Austin
Austin is a Potter County borough of a few hundred residents in the Freeman Run valley, surrounded by state forest and state park land in the Pennsylvania Wilds. Its defining landmark is Austin Dam Memorial Park, about a mile north of town. Broken sections of the concrete dam, which failed on September 30, 1911, still stand there beside Freeman Run. The flood killed 78 people, and the site is now a public park with picnic grounds and a memorial to the victims. About 10 miles west, Sizerville State Park has two miles of snowmobile trail that connect to 66 miles of groomed routes in Elk State Forest, along with trails for cross-country skiing. Sinnemahoning State Park sits about 15 miles south on Route 872. Its trails are open for snowshoeing, and its wildlife includes elk, bald eagles, and bobcats.
Along the same route, First Fork Lodge is a bed-and-breakfast in the village of Costello, south of Austin, with a homemade breakfast served each morning in the dining room.
Mount Pocono
Mount Pocono is a borough on the Pocono Plateau at the junction of routes 611 and 940, and it is a practical base for winter trips into the Pocono Mountains. South of town, Camelback Mountain in Tannersville has 39 trails across 166 skiable acres, plus a large snow tubing park, and the ski season there usually starts in December. North of town, Tobyhanna State Park covers about 5,440 acres, with a lake for ice fishing and trails for snowmobiling and snowshoeing. Just east of the borough, the Pocono Heritage Land Trust's 52-acre Fieldstone Farm Tank Creek Nature Preserve has walking trails through mixed habitat and the stone remains of a farmhouse built in the 1910s.
Grange Valley is a lakeside property on Grange Road with ranch-style suites, cabins, and cottages for overnight stays, and The Water's Edge restaurant sits on the same grounds. The Grange Valley Estate Winery tasting room is a short distance away on Dutch Farm Road, a good stop for anyone who doesn't associate the Poconos with wine.
Sellersville
Sellersville is an upper Bucks County borough on Route 309, between Philadelphia and Allentown, and its best-known address is the Sellersville Theater. The theater building went up in 1894 as a stable for guests of the hotel next door, later operated as a movie house, and has been a live music and comedy venue since 2002. The Sellersville Museum on East Church Street holds local history collections, including material on Sellersville-born painter Walter Emerson Baum. In neighboring Perkasie, potters Matt and Betsy Zimmerman sell wood-fired pieces from a roadside stand at their Walnut Street Pottery home studio.
Next door to the theater, The Washington House Hotel & Restaurant has 11 guest rooms and suites, so a dinner reservation and a show can end with a room upstairs.
Lancaster
Lancaster is the only city on this list, with about 58,000 residents, and most of its historic core sits within a few blocks of Penn Square. On September 27, 1777, the Continental Congress met for a single day in the county courthouse that stood on the square, which is the basis for the city's claim to have been the nation's capital for a day. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, dedicated in 1874, now marks the courthouse site. Just off the square, Lancaster Central Market is billed as the oldest continuously operated public market in America, with a market on the site since 1730 and vendors filling the 1889 Romanesque Revival market house every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday. On North Prince Street, the Fulton Theatre dates to 1852 and is one of the oldest continuously operating theaters in the United States, and the galleries along Gallery Row on the same street stay open late for First Friday each month.
About a mile and a half west of Penn Square, Wheatland, the 1828 home of President James Buchanan, is open for guided tours Monday through Saturday between late January and mid-November. On the southern edge of the city, Lancaster County Central Park covers 544 acres along the Conestoga River, with trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding, plus cross-country skiing in winter. For an overnight stay, the Lancaster Arts Hotel is set in an 1881 tobacco warehouse on Harrisburg Avenue, and the 93-room Cork Factory Hotel on New Holland Avenue is set in a converted industrial complex that dates to 1865.
Kennett Square
Kennett Square is known as the Mushroom Capital of the World, and growers in the surrounding area produce about half of the mushrooms harvested in the United States. A Mushroom Festival takes place downtown each September. Just east of the borough, Longwood Gardens has fountain shows and concerts, and its fine-dining restaurant, 1906, overlooks the Main Fountain Garden from a new building that opened in 2024. The Creamery of Kennett Square is set in a 1902 building that once canned condensed milk and later mushrooms, and it is now a beer garden with live music and food. On State Street, The Market at Liberty Place is a food hall with a full bar, Liberty Place Pub, inside.
Strasburg
Strasburg is a Lancaster County borough often called Train Town USA, a nickname earned by the cluster of rail attractions within a few miles of Main Street. Chartered in 1832, the Strasburg Rail Road is the oldest continuously operating standard-gauge railroad in the Western Hemisphere, and its steam trains make a 45-minute, nine-mile round trip through Amish farmland to Paradise. Across Route 741 from the station, the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania has an extensive collection of historic locomotives and rail cars. On Paradise Lane, the National Toy Train Museum is the headquarters of the Train Collectors Association and has collections of toy trains both antique and modern.
Next door, The Red Caboose Motel at Paradise Station has 38 converted cabooses for overnight stays, and meals at Casey Jones' Restaurant are served in a pair of dining cars.
New Freedom
New Freedom sits just above the Maryland line in southern York County, between Harrisburg and Baltimore, and its former railroad station stands near the center of town. The Heritage Rail Trail County Park begins at the Mason-Dixon Line just south of town and runs 21 miles north to York, with a path open to hikers, cyclists, snowshoers, and cross-country skiers. Excursion trains operated by the Northern Central Railway of York depart New Freedom behind No. 17, the "York," a replica 4-4-0 steam locomotive. At Vortex Brewing Company, beside the trail, the house beers come with pizza made in-house.
About 1.5 miles north in the village of Railroad, the Jackson House Bed & Breakfast sits directly on the rail trail, with a hot breakfast served daily and a shared hot tub in the terraced gardens.
Small Towns Beside Pennsylvania's Big Names
Several of these towns sit within a few miles of a landmark with far larger crowds than the town itself, among them Fallingwater, Longwood Gardens, Ohiopyle State Park, and the Allegheny National Forest. An overnight stay in Farmington or Kennett Square means reaching those sites when the gates first open, then spending the evening at a local restaurant or brewery. In quieter places on the list, such as Austin and Lake City, the appeal is state park trails and frozen lakes with few other visitors in winter. In both cases, the reward in 2026 is an unhurried weekend in a place that still has room to spare.
