16+ hour, 23+ min ago   (728+ words) Marietta began on April 7, 1788, when it became the first permanent American settlement in the Northwest Territory and the territory’s first government seat. It sits where the Ohio and Muskingum rivers meet, about 11.2 miles northeast of Parkersburg, West Virginia. But it…...

1+ day, 7+ hour ago   (739+ words) Prescott was the Arizona Territory’s capital until Phoenix took over in 1889. At about 100 miles north of Phoenix, it sits at 5,200-5,400 feet, where pine-dotted hills soften Arizona’s usual desert story. You can still read that change downtown, where the courthouse plaza…...

1+ week, 1+ day ago   (631+ words) Two utopias, one town, and both of them tried before the Civil War. That’s the improbable record of New Harmony, a quiet village on the Wabash River in southwest Indiana. And you can still walk the streets where both experiments…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (687+ words) Udo is called Cow Island because, from the sea, its outline is said to resemble a cow lying down. That sounds like a small detail until you approach by ferry and start looking for the long, low shape against the…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago   (678+ words) Boulder, Utah, sat apart from the rest of southern Utah for so long that a year-round road arrived only in 1939. The route north across Boulder Mountain stayed unpaved until 1985, which explains why this tiny town still feels like a pause…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago   (613+ words) Lake Placid hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and 1980, and the latter included the “Miracle on Ice.” That history gives this Adirondack village more pull than its small size suggests. You come for the mountain-town mood, but the Olympic story is…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (693+ words) Virginia City, Montana, has only 219 residents, yet it once ran the Montana Territory. From 1865 to 1875, this compact town was its capital, a role that feels almost absurd when you stand on its wooden sidewalks today. People still live here, and…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (708+ words) Bruny Island sits south of Hobart, and its headline bird is no small claim: this Tasmanian island holds the world’s largest population of the threatened forty-spotted pardalote. You come for the coast, sure. But the birds give the place its…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (718+ words) Bluff has about 240 residents, but its history is bigger than its population. This southeastern Utah outpost is home to Bluff Fort Historic Site, a free reconstruction tied to the pioneers of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition who founded the fort in 1880. And…...

3+ week, 8+ hour ago   (741+ words) Port Townsend makes its case before you have finished the first block of Water Street. Late-19th-century Victorian commercial buildings still face the waterfront, while Victorian homes climb the bluff above town. This is no decorative historic district. It is…...