Small Towns in the South

Small Towns in the South Worth the Detour

Southern small towns trade on history, hospitality and food: courthouse squares, antebellum streets, barbecue and front porches. Here are towns across the region with a clear reason to visit. North Carolina has so many that it gets its own page.

Tennessee: the Smokies and beyond

Gatlinburg sits at the main entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park; its busy main street of shops and attractions leads straight to the mountains. For something calmer, Townsend is the gateway to Cades Cove. Jonesborough, founded in 1779, hosts the National Storytelling Festival every October, and Franklin, south of Nashville, has a lively historic main street and Civil War sites such as the Carter House and Carnton.

Texas Hill Country

Fredericksburg was founded by German settlers in 1846, and you still see it in the stone buildings and bakeries. It is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War, honoring native son Admiral Chester Nimitz, and surrounded by wineries, peach orchards and lavender farms. Nearby Luckenbach is little more than a general store and a dance hall, made famous in song. See and Do Texas covers the rest of the state.

Coastal and river towns

St. Augustine, Florida, founded in 1565, is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the continental United States, guarded by the Castillo de San Marcos. Beaufort, South Carolina, is all live oaks, Spanish moss and antebellum houses on the water. On Mobile Bay, Fairhope, Alabama, is known for its flower-lined downtown and long pier (Best in Alabama covers the Gulf Coast). Natchez, Mississippi, high on a bluff above the Mississippi River, is famous for its historic mansions.

Mountains and gold

In north Georgia, Dahlonega was the site of one of the country’s first gold rushes in 1829; the Dahlonega Gold Museum fills the old courthouse on the square. In Arkansas, Eureka Springs climbs a hillside of Victorian buildings, and in Virginia, Williamsburg is home to Colonial Williamsburg, the living-history museum of the 18th-century capital.