Bisbee has a reputation as an artsy, upscale small town with fine dining and boutique hotels, all of which is accurate. But Bisbee's most essential experiences cost nothing. The staircase streets, the canyon views, the gallery windows on First Friday evenings, the Lavender Pit at sunset, the street-level life of Brewery Gulch on a Saturday afternoon, these are free,...
Bisbee is a remarkably good destination for dog travelers. The canyon streets, staircase neighborhoods, and outdoor dining culture of this small Arizona arts community make it a natural fit for well-behaved dogs whose owners don't mind a few logistical considerations specific to a hillside town.
This Bisbee AZ Pet Friendly Guide covers the pet-friendly hotels, dog-welcoming restaurants, hiking options, practical...
Washington State is more than Seattle and Mount Rainier. Beyond the Space Needle and the ferry terminals, beyond the coffee shops and the tech campuses, Washington holds a remarkable collection of small towns that most visitors never find, and most Seattle residents have never visited despite living within two or three hours of them.
This guide of best small towns...
Looking for the Best Things to Do in Tubac AZ? Tubac has a legitimate claim to being the most historically significant small community in Arizona. Established in 1752 as a Spanish colonial presidio, a military garrison protecting the missions and settlers of the Pimería Alta, Tubac predates Tucson by more than 20 years and stands as Arizona's first European...
America has a small-town problem. Not the problem people usually talk about, economic decline, population loss, lack of opportunity. The other problem: the best small towns in the country are so systematically overlooked by mainstream travel coverage that millions of people drive past them every year on the way to the same crowded destinations.
This guide exists to fix that.
What...
Southern Arizona gets flattened by its own famous landmarks. The Grand Canyon is five hours north. Sedona gets its own category. Tucson is the major city. Tombstone earns its famous name. Everything in between, the wine country, the sky island mountain ranges, the birding preserves, the border towns with extraordinary history, the art colonies older than Scottsdale's gallery district,...
Two Towns, 25 Miles Apart, Completely Different Worlds
Most visitors to southern Arizona know Tombstone. Fewer know Bisbee.
Both sit along AZ-80 in Cochise County, about 25 miles apart. Both were born in Arizona's mining boom years. Both survived the collapse of their mines. And both draw visitors from across the country.
But that is where the similarities end.
Tombstone and Bisbee went...
I have driven every inch of Virginia's back roads over three decades of travel writing. I've stood on the rim of the Blue Ridge, eaten oysters in the Northern Neck, and watched the sun rise over Chincoteague. But Staunton, Virginia caught me off guard.
I didn't expect world-class theater in a town of 25,000 people. I didn't expect six historic districts...
In 1877, a cavalry scout named Jack Dunn was chasing Apache raiders through the Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona Territory when he noticed something glinting in the rock. He reported the discovery to his commanding officer, whose contact list happened to include a San Francisco attorney named DeWitt Bisbee.
Within months, the land was claimed, a company formed, and...
Virginia is listed in one of the Hidden Gems USA & America's most historically layered states, more than 400 years of documented European settlement compressed into a geography that ranges from tidewater coastline to mountain ridgeline, from the colonial Tidewater to the Appalachian frontier.
Within that landscape, Virginia's small towns carry history the way other places carry scenery: as...