What makes a small town up-and-coming? Usually the same handful of things: a downtown worth walking, a few stubborn local businesses, a natural or historical hook, and a festival calendar that gives people a reason to keep coming back. Get the mix right and the visitors arrive, the money follows, and the town starts to climb. The ten towns below have that mix in wildly different forms. One was a dying coal port that reinvented itself as a mountain-tourism magnet. One runs on bourbon. One sits on a lake so clean a city drinks straight from it. Here are ten of the best up-and-coming small towns in the United States.
Bisbee, Arizona
Bisbee is what happens when a copper-mining boomtown refuses to become a ghost town. Carved into the steep Mule Mountains of southern Arizona, this old mining camp of about 5,000 reinvented itself as an artists’ and bohemian haven once the mines wound down, and that turnaround is the whole up-and-coming story. The Copper Queen Mine still runs underground tours led by former miners, the enormous Lavender Pit gapes at the edge of town, and the staircases climbing the hillsides are so numerous the town holds an annual 1,000-stair race up them. Victorian houses cling to the slopes above a downtown of galleries, cafes, and the historic Copper Queen Hotel.