Thinking differently: From Seattle you can take a ferry to places across Puget Sound that are less developed. From the downtown dock you can get to Bainbridge Island in 35 minutes (close). From West Seattle you can get to Vashon Island in 10 minutes but the ferry terminal isn’t quickly accessible from the central area.
Just don’t ask about wait times.
Very familiar with Millburn, used to live there. If Millburn isn’t a suburban town there’s no such thing. It’s a classic nice suburban town of a big city. So also being around an hour (realistically door to door) from jobs in Manhattan it’s become extremely expensive, another thing not typically associated with rural small town. And it has IMO/IME zero personality of its own, again like most suburban bedroom communities, nothing wrong with it necessarily but no way is it a rural town. Nor has it been in our lifetimes. The other two are even closer to Newark, all three single digit miles, another aspect making it a real stretch to call then rural IMO.
There are nice places within 30 minutes of Manhattan though it’s stretch to include Millburn as 30 minutes (~35 if you live at the Millburn train station and work at NY Penn Station). But if willing to consider Millburn’s price range you could afford a nice (smaller of course) place in Hoboken, or someplace in Manhattan itself for that matter. But there are no rural towns anywhere near 30 minutes from Manhattan again unless you’d consider remoter parts of the City itself like the Rockaways or various inhabited islands, some of which the Census actually counts as rural. The literally 30 minutes part would still be difficult though if you have to get from those parts of the City to Manhattan.
I’m thinking ones with a main street and big enough to have a supermarket? Around 2-3K people. Any suggestions?
I have coworkers that have to leave at around 4:00 to avoid a 20 mile commute taking over an hour.
The Seattle area has serious geographic limitations and growth issues right now. Due to infrastructure issues and bodies of water which cause constrictions that have no detour.
I live 5.6 miles away from my office downtime Seattle in a neighborhood called Ballard and right now at 1:02PM Google maps suggests that it will take 38 Min to drive that route. Vashon would take over an hour from my office, and about two hours at 4:30 today.
This story may put some perspective on the current situation.
I’m from Marysville, left in late 80s when there were less than 10K people there. You could smell cow manure at the high school. That’s probably where my small town mentality comes from. It’s run down a bit from what I’ve heard and also quintupled in size, so moving back is a no-go. Love Seattle, have some family there, but don’t want to live there or anywhere near there tbh. Too dreary weather wise.
Cleveland and Cincinnati are old industrial towns that are both going through a bit of a revival at the moment. Between Pittsburgh and Detroit there’s a string of cities (Youngstown, Cleveland, Sandusky, Toledo), so there’s a good deal of sprawl, but I’m sure you could find something. Cincinnati is a bit more isolated.
Columbus was built around the Statehouse and never had the same level of industry. Ohio State is a big employer, and insurance is a big industry. The tech industry is probably a bit stronger, but it’s nowhere near the level of DC, Portland, Seattle, Austin, or anything in the entire state of California.
I’m partial to Columbus myself, I do miss the weather on the east coast (we go from cold to hot to cold) but it’s a good city vibe without being impossible to get around. I know there are cute towns within 30 miles of downtown but I couldn’t name one of them.
Yeah, found some searching the web. Pinkerington looks promising, zillow has some fantastic prices for what you get. Columbus seems to be criticized as being generic compared to the others (esp Cleveland), but I don’t care about that. The only criteria for the “big town” is that it have jobs, not be a s-hole, and have basic big city stuff you can’t get in the small town. It doesn’t have to be particularly cultured. I only willingly go into Philadelphia a couple times a year. Usually for dining or shopping, FWIW. I can really do without big cities 99% of the time, they make me uneasy.
Define charming? Lots of hick towns in Ohio but only a few charming towns IMHO. 
The town I grew up in Ohio was a charming town back in the day, today its a drug infested town due its proximity to Dayton and the heroin epidemic. The quaint hotels are now full of drug addicts just like Dayton was 25 years ago.
Good point. Obviously not any small down hit hard by the opioid epidemic.
Charming is subjective. I can’t really tell you. I can only point to towns I know. Lancaster PA and especially the tiny towns surrounding it, like Strasburg. A main street with some cute shops and restaurants, friendly people, etc. One thing that struck me was everyone was so damn polite. I hadn’t experienced that in a while. Quirky things like horse and buggy’s are a plus but not necessary.
Since the OP appears to be most interested in recommendations for a place to live, let’s move this to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Golden, CO is about 25 minutes from downtown Denver. The metropolitan area of Denver, which does not include Golden is about 2.8 million. Golden’s population is about 21,000. Golden is not however immune to the rising cost of living, especially housing costs that Denver has experienced over the last 7+ years. But Golden is a quaint town with cool downtown area, with the Colorado School of Mines, and the Coors brewery nearby.
Quite a lot of it actually.
I was really thinking about Maplewood, which even has a small grocery store right in the downtown area. It’s certainly suburban, not rural, but it’s pretty charming. The Rockaways are definitely more than 30 minutes from Manhattan by train, although I once did it in 23 minutes from the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge (at 1 or 2 AM, at pretty high speed).
We were in a few charming towns in Jersey when we were there. Very nice.
Milwaukee doesn’t have a million population but it’s overall metro area does. There are several rural towns in neighboring Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, and Racine counties that meet the OP’s description and are 30 minutes or less from downtown Milwaukee.
Again, I think you need to define your terms.
There are only 9 US cities above 1M (NY, LA, Chicago, Houston, Philadephia, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and Dallas. San Jose is close).
But what is a “rural town”? Is it defined by population? density? % of revenue from agriculture?
And by 30 minutes, is that an average (including rush hour?) or is that ~30 miles give or take?
If you look at lists of “Best Small Towns,” most of them are within 2 hours of a major population center - but not necessarily one of the 10 listed above. But they may not be agricultural towns.
Seattle is significantly smaller than 1M people (as specified). And these days, the farms are more than 30 minutes away.
Uh, yeah. It really depends on what the OP means by small town. 60,000 (Lancaster PA) people is twice as many that live in our entire county (Summit County Colorado). Central City is about a half hour from the metro area of Denver. Some would consider it quaint and it is pretty cool.
Nothing in Texas would qualify. To get from one side of Houston, Dallas / Fort Worth, or San Antonio / Austin to the other side takes at least an hour, even in light traffic along the narrowest part of the city. Add in the 30 minutes specified by the OP and the commute is well over an hour one way in good traffic.
San Jose is more accurately huge. It is the southern lobe of a megalopolis of almost eight million. Sure you can get to San Juan Bautista in thirty minutes – at two a.m. Then you can frolic with your cows until it is time to sit in traffic again.
Yes, I just moved far far away and should have done it years ago, how did you guess?
I would guess the less whooped cities and states such as those of the midwest and southeast would be easier to find small rural towns near. Look for stable-population places, not techboom or sunbelt places. Good that you don’t mind cold winters, that gives you a much broader field.
What exactly are you looking for, employment-wise? I get emails for positions every day in Wilmington; there’s lots of financial services, specifically cards there.
Also, what about up 202 to Malvern/Chesterbrook area?
One of the narrow open-grate truss free bridges into PA?