9 Most Welcoming Towns In The Southern United States’ Countryside
"Highlands, North Carolina"
Posted by World Atlas • Image by Cheri Alguire
Nine countryside towns across the American South make a real effort to welcome strangers. Highlands and Blowing Rock keep their porch lights on in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hendersonville and Blue Ridge run their orchards and vineyards open year-round. Eureka Springs has been receiving guests in Victorian boarding houses since the 1880s. Jonesborough hosts the National Storytelling Festival every October and treats it as a town-wide reunion. The nine towns ahead each carry their own kind of Southern welcome.
Highlands, North Carolina
Highlands sits on a 4,118-foot plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains, one of the highest incorporated towns east of the Mississippi River. The elevation keeps summers cooler than just about anywhere else in the South, and the waterfalls draw visitors year-round. Dry Falls, just outside town on the Cullasaja River, is the easy crowd-pleaser. A short paved path leads behind the 75-foot waterfall so you can stand under the rock overhang and look out through the curtain of water.
Glen Falls is the more rewarding hike, a two-mile round trip with three viewing platforms looking out at the triple-tiered waterfall. The Jackson Hole Gem Mine lets visitors sift through buckets of mineral-rich dirt for garnet, ruby, sapphire, and amethyst, with staff on hand to help identify finds. For a slower afternoon, The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts occupies a six-acre campus with rotating exhibitions of regional artists, ongoing art classes, and a gift shop stocked with locally made work.
