Your Idea of the Best Small Town

Hey, just realized that many folks chimed in for the mid west (I think that would include TX and MT wouldn't it?) but no-one came up with places either eastcoast or westcoast. Anyone want to talk about towns in those regions?

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Not terribly tiny, but Prescott, Arizona is a wonderful town. Friendly, sunny, but not too hot. In the mountains surrounded by pine forests. Has a great college and a beautiful town square. It would be a great place to homestead and then open up a B&B.

?????????!

Of course I lived in Michigan up 'til last month, so I don't have much to compare it to (LOL) but I can't remember it EVER being cloudy for weeks on end ...

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"I love all of this mud," said no one, ever.

There is so many small towns all across the country that are just awsome.They are hid off the Interstate,some not that far.Some that have no WalMart,but still have all they need.

Some are true to their region.Some are better in the Winter,some the Summer,seems all are good in the Spring and Fall.Some close to the Ocean,some in the Mountains,some in the Desert.

But what I know after traveling all over there is good in any Town or City just have to look harder in some.Even New York City

big rockpile

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Check out Poplar Bluff, MO. It isn't all that big and has a college. Amtrak stops through there. It has in city transportation. We have to drive to it to shop at the bigger stores, like J C Penneys and Wal Mart.

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mayberry RFD with a wal-mart at one end and a lowes at the other.

Bob and I both grew up near Flint, so the SE area of MI - it was rare there to have a clear sky and in the winter it was always a low grey cloud cover, in other words lake effect weather. It wasn't until we moved to near Philly that we experienced a winter with almost constant clear, sunny skies. Here in the upper piedmont the winters are also very clear. I'll do a cllimate data search on western MI to see how the areas differ.

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Very tru words Rockpile.

Poplar Buff, MO; thanks Bee Free. It sure is nice to see everyone in MO writing in about their state, never been there but it looks like we ought to make an effort to check things out...you know, like when all the fencing is done, etc! Well, it's 6:30am, time to get out and ...fence, LOL, actually feed then fence; oh me , oh my.

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Oh wow! My ex grew up in Durand and lived most of his adult life in Flint. Tough town! I'm from Mt. Clemens originally.

WINTER ... yeah, it is pretty gray in winter. I had forgotten about that, or actually, I thought it was like that everywhere? Really! LOL

For almost a year and a half, DBF and I compared the weather daily, and it seems NW Michigan gets a lot more sun and just nice weather in general than does Pittsburgh.

I can't believe how much it rains here!

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That sounds quite lovely. We haven't look at AZ, NV or NM for a couple of reasons 1. seems like the real estate has gotten too hot from all the boomers retiring in those states and 2. with so many people moving in we felt that the enviroment, especially water, might becoming stretched beyond capacity. After living/sailing on a boat and having to be very (fresh) water conscience and then living in SE FL where again fresh water conservation is becoming a very important issue we find ourselves talking/thinking about resources in that way. Of course, being from the eastern Midwest, now the Mideast we do not know much about those states so perhaps we are making some rather broad assumptions. However Barbara Kingsolver in her newest book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" also writes about the water issues in the Phoenix (?) area.

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Great little town (island). Population 500 +/- , cars are banned. having a little B&B (for summer tourists) would be an added income to retirement funds.

Of course, not for you, but then again, it's in UP Mi...........................
http://www.city-data.com/city/Mackin...-Michigan.html

.

Nope, I understand completely. It's part of the reason we left AZ 5 years ago to settle here. Sandpoint, ID is everything you would want but the prices have gone sky high and there is no college yet. There will be a U of I satellite in a few years.
Moscow, ID would be well worth looking into. It's where the main campus of the University of Idaho is and it's a lovely town in the rolling hills of the Palouse, with forests all around. I think land is still affordable down there and the climate is more temperate than where we are farther north.

It's also on the border of WA, Washington State University is just a few miles away and WA has no taxes on groceries.

I guess that our town is small. We lost our incorporated status in the 1930s, due to a falling population.

Census says that in 2000 we had 130 families, about 9 people per square mile.

The state fish and game folks say that they tag about 50 deer each year from within our township. I imagine that tagging accounts for maybe a third of the deer taken.

We have one road running straight through, from Old Town in the South, to Howland in the North. They are twenty miles apart.

We have one intersection. The intersect has no cross-walk, and only the side road has a stop sign. The side-road has no name, though it is paved, it has no center-line or fog-lines. no painting at all.

Our road follows the river, and is heavily forested on both sides. A few places you do get glimpses of the river.

We have no mayor, no town anythings really. The state collects taxes, which are very low since we don't have anyone to be on a salary.

Land sales for $300/acre of forest, $900/acre with river frontage, and taxes run about $1.05 per acre each year.

The state is real good about plowing the roads every time that it snows.

Each surrounding township has it's own school district. So they each send their school buses through our town, in case we want our children to attend their schools.

We have no stores, no gas stations.

If you put out a sign and an ice chest with eggs, folks will stop, pick up eggs and put money in a can for you. Or you can sell veggies, fruit, etc. You don't need any permits.

I am a vendor at a farmer's market, a couple towns away, a college town. I sell eggs and veggies, at about four times the cost the grocery stores charge.

Every week I will see: moose, deer, turkey on our road, and I mean standing on the pavement me honking the horn to chase them off of the pavement.

We keep two kayaks tied up behind the house in the river. Fishing is okay.

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Craft Diva, Do you live on Mackinaw? We have, of course, as good Michiganders gone to visit.

Lisa in ID, Did some looking at Moscow yesterday - very interesting, more affordable than I would have thought - home price wise. How do you think they have handled the growth - is it going in a positive direction?

ET - now I think at 130 people maybe you could say "hamlet"? From looking at the Farmer's Market link I see you aren't very far out from Bangor, how do you like Orono? At zone 5, I am guessing that the Atlantic is giving a good moderating effect. Sailed thru one spring on our way to N.S., it was a cool year and we didn't have the fog problems usually expected but we were wearing turtlenecks in July - a nice memory given that it is already 75* this morning and going into the 90*'s. On the otherside we have very bright winters here in NC, how grim are the winters there?

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Goat milk soap & Wool products
www.littlemeadowsfarm.net
http://littlemeadowsfarms.blogspot.com/

Orono is fine for a college town.

Winters are not bad, I expected worse.

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You might concider one of the Nevada towns along I-80 Amtrack and bus service. easy highway access, most have a hospital,and a walmart or such . All have Casinos which means cheap entertainment and food if ya dont gambol . Many are quite convienantly small. And prices are not out of this world even now in a Boom economy. f anything happens in the mining industry between now and then they might get downright cheep!
Currently you can buy land near most of them cheep in 40 acre blocks, be mindfull of the local water situation where you do cause some have good water 50 feet down and some dont have water at any price!

I looked at some land for sale in Nevada a few years ago, ran out silver mines.

I got the idea that many areas were dry of water.

Most of my family try to farm in areas that are subject to seasonal droughts, so their lives [and their budgets] are very much controlled by the need for water.

Which is a large part of why I settled here. We have lots of water. We even local have peat bogs! I have harvested peat from one of them.

I am curious though, what kind of prices have you seen those 40 acre lots going for?

Here dense forest runs about $350/acre [with no river frontage].

I bought 42 acres of forest with 1/4 mile of river frontage and it cost me $905/acre. I also have two small streams and one large creek running across my land.

I was reading the local daily paper that we get from Poplar Bluff, MO. It had 40 ac of farm land located south of Poplar Bluff in the Qulin area. It was listed for $1795 and ac. That is cheap down there for farm land. Good bottom land that will grow about anything in that area. Lot of people just buy it to rent to the farmers. If I had the extra money, I would purchase it and rent it.

I lived near Qulin for almost 2 yr and I watched the the farmers daily as they planted in fields across the road from my house. Mosquitoes are truly bad down there and the sun shines hot.

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My father farms near Cross timbers Mo. He has been having significant issues with getting water. I think he is on his third well now. That and the land has not entirely recovered from the dust-bowl, cattle eat down the grass but it just does not bounce back.

How is the Qulin area?

So much of Mo land is still played out from the Dust-Bowl, and just has not had enough time to recover yet. My grandfather farmed in Benton County before the Dust-bowl, my father has wanted badly to try and make a go of farming there ever since he left in '31.

My favorite small town in the world is about an hour south of me.

Mineral Point, WI

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