North Carolina cleans up every time the country hands out small-town honors. Beaufort walked off with the title of America’s Coolest Small Town in 2012. No town in the country makes more pottery by hand than Seagrove. Every July, Saluda turns its main street over to Coon Dog Day, a tradition going back to 1963. Travel writers have crowned Edenton the prettiest small town in the South more than once. The honors pile up for all kinds of reasons here, including pirate harbors, mountain waterfalls, and the dunes where powered flight got off the ground.
Highlands
Highlands earns its name at 4,118 feet, one of the highest incorporated towns east of the Mississippi River. The thin mountain air made it a cool summer retreat more than a century ago. The main street now mixes old inns with galleries and restaurants. The Appalachian Mountains wrap the town on every side. The Highlands Biological Station tends a botanical garden of more than 450 native species at the edge of downtown.
Waterfalls ring the town, several of them right beside the road. Bridal Veil Falls drops in a sheet thin enough that cars once drove behind it on the old highway. A few miles on, Dry Falls lets walkers pass behind the curtain of water without getting soaked. Trails into the surrounding Nantahala National Forest reach quieter cascades deeper in the backcountry.