1+ hour, 39+ min ago  (838+ words) World Atlas Ancient history continues to fascinate us. This is for good reason. Societies like the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece seem so far removed from our own, yet still offer us crucial lessons. At the same time, their almost…...

4+ hour, 39+ min ago  (895+ words) World Atlas Rock and roll lost three of its brightest stars on a single February night in 1959, and the stage where they played last still stands in Clear Lake. That kind of history hides in plain view across small-town Iowa....

15+ hour, 39+ min ago  (1216+ words) World Atlas Staunton sits in the Shenandoah Valley with a theater company performing in a reconstructed Jacobean playhouse, a presidential library, and a downtown of intact railroad-era brick lined with working offices and shops. It also still costs less than…...

1+ day, 8+ hour ago  (1250+ words) World Atlas Every December in Stockbridge, residents close Main Street to traffic and turn it into a Norman Rockwell painting, parking vintage cars along the curb while carolers work the sidewalks. That instinct to stage something for one another runs…...

1+ day, 9+ hour ago  (976+ words) World Atlas Six evenings a week in Jackson, costumed outlaws stage a gunfight under elk-antler arches on the town square. Solvang answers with six Danish windmills and a bakery that still turns out gingerbread houses. These squares earn their place…...

1+ day, 10+ hour ago  (1099+ words) World Atlas Friendliness in New Jersey shows up on a schedule. Frenchtown has thrown the same Bastille Day party with a server race every July since 1997. Livingston fills its gazebo with movie nights and summer concerts all season long. Collingswood…...

1+ day, 13+ hour ago  (652+ words) Excelsior sits on the southern bay of Lake Minnetonka about a half-hour west of the Twin Cities. Its heart is Water Street, a walkable run of 19th-century storefronts that now hold boutiques, ice cream counters, and breweries. The Water Street…...

1+ day, 16+ hour ago  (1193+ words) World Atlas The Maritimes were building main streets a full century before Confederation. Towns across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick still do business out of those original buildings. A three-masted replica of the ship Hector rises beside downtown Pictou to…...

1+ day, 15+ hour ago  (1007+ words) World Atlas The man buried in a glass-topped coffin in Lucas built his own tomb before he needed it. Abilene keeps a 25-room mansion wired with the first electric lights its town ever saw. Lindsborg throws a festival where volunteers…...

1+ day, 20+ hour ago  (418+ words) The tricky part is that neighborhoods refuse to hold still. They gentrify, they get discovered, they reinvent themselves every few years. So consider this less a definitive ranking and more a passport full of stamps worth collecting, in no particular…...