I’ll reword my thoughts from a previous but similar thread.
In western New York, there’s Perry, Lewiston and East Aurora. East Aurora is often mentioned by planners as the template that inspired contemporary new urbanism development. Perry is mostly intact; Lewiston and East Aurora are gentrified to some extent. None have big box retailers. East Aurora is probably the most “full service” of the three; you can do most day-to-day errands on that village’s Main Street. Of the three, East Aurora probably comes closest to resembling the mythical Bedford Falls.
Ellicottville, New York is probably the nation’s most affordable ski town; it’s as quaint as any Vermont village, yet still very unpretentious – probably because it’s in the Buffalo metropolitan area. No big box retail.
Trinidad, Colorado, a little city in southern Colorado that is quite isolated from major population centes, has a great downtown that was left untouched in the urban renewal craze of the 1950s and 1960s. The city does have Wal-Mart, but for the most part the city’s historic fabric is intact. Across the New Mexico border to the south, tough, the small town of Raton is a mess.
Durango, Colorado has a Wal-Mart south of the city, but its downtown is also very healthy and vibrant, and unlike many resort towns, unpretentious. There are still everyday commercial uses there; appliance stores, furniture stores, and diners.
I’ve heard good things about Sandpoint, Idaho, but I’ve never been there. Perhaps another Doper can enlighten us.
I’ve got to second this one. It’s where I want to move when I retire.
Check out lovely Hemphill, TX (final resting place of most of Columbia & it’s crew:RIP). Asside from the seasonal Bass fishers, and the hoards of NASA people who showed up there, they get basically no “through” traffic, being on the end of a dead end spur. Located in East Texas, right on the border of TX & LA.
Great old architecture in “downtown”. Nice (but a bit wary of outsiders) residents. Population sign says 1100+ residents, but I think they counted the animals in town as well.
It’s a bit far from California, but it’s a great location nestled in the Piny Woods of Texas.
Damn, I just reread that and it sounds like a travel brochure. Meh. It’s still a nice little town.
I’m from West Virginia originally, but live in Baltimore. I have always enjoyed driving back home on US Route 50, which passes through Romney, WV. Romney has gotten a little gentrified as us DC/Baltimore escapees have converged, but it’s still a lovely town.
I occasionally play music in Chestertown, a small town on Maryland’s eastern shore. It’s not that far from the metro region, but it’s surprisingly pristine. The people are very friendly, and there are lots of beautiful, well-tended old buildings.
The county were I live (Rutherford County, TN) has a number of nice small towns. Although you’ll have a requisite number of gun-toting red-necks, you also have close-knit communities where people know each other and hang out together. In Eagleville, the smallest town in the county, there’s still a main street. It has a farm store, a grocery store.a post office, an antique shop, a couple local restaurants. No fast food. No Wal-mart or K-Mart. Every year one family puts on a big chittlin’ dinner. In Readyville, my town, there’s a post office, a sawmill and a general store. This New Year’s the folks that run the general store had an open house, serving traditional foods to anyone who came in. While I was seated with these folks in their overalls and sweats, the conversation turned to travel. The women at my table had travelled to China and South America and Africa. The men’s conversation usually revolved around farming, but the photos on the wall had won local prizes. When I asked about them, this grizzled farmer with long hair and a beard down to the middle of his chest said he’d taken them. He went on about the film he used and the shutter speed and all of that. People really have more depth than they’re often given credit for.
StG
I’ve learned this too. My neighbors are forever surprising me. Just about everyone I know has traveled outside the US.
I like to think that small-town life lends itself more easily to life-enhancing things like travel and creative hobbies. We have more free time (no long commutes), sometimes we have more money (there’s less to spend it on and we know where to find bargains and discounts), and our careers are less likely to be high-powered and super-demanding.
I’m not saying that big city folk don’t do all these things too, in great numbers, but it just seems easier for us.
I grew up in the town of Genoa, Ohio and I would have to say that it matches the vision that you describe, mostly. It is a village of just around 2000 people and Rockwellian in attitude and ambience. The people there are solidly conservative, middle to upper class, industrious and community minded.
From a cinematographic point of view it has a quaint and small downtown block of shopfronts and buildings with typical mid to late 19th. century architecture (The Old Oddfellows hall/bank is pretty interesting inside). There is also a prominent Town Hall that frames the downtown and directly behind the town hall and downtown proper is the large, wooded Veteran’s Memorial park and the Genoa Quarry (the town’s first limestone quarry that is now a swimming and fishing pond in the center of the park.). There is also the visually unique and somewhat surreal Lourdes Grotto at Our lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on the southern edge of town. It is a massive walkthrough grotto constructed of Tufa (fossilized vegetation) extracted from the famed bottomless Castalia Blue Hole.
Nice town overall, still has that oldtown feel.
May I nominate the town where I went to high school? (Being a farm boy, I went to grade school in an even smaller town.) Monticello, Illinois. Population is bigger than you specify - about 4000 -, but lots of neat stuff - at least 2 streets are on some national historic register for the architecture of the houses. Quaint, funky shops, good restaurants, some industrial-type buildings, lots of trees, lots of community spirit, big forest preserve park in town, etc. There was a movie with Ed Asner filmed there a year or two ago, also.
Some info is at http://www.monticello.net/.