The 5 Most Charming And Walkable Mountain Towns To Visit Across America, According To Reddit

If you want a taste of the mountains but also adore small-town America, this guide has you covered. It's all about sniffing out highland getaways that ooze charm and character, but also remain walkable from top to bottom, and side to side. Using trusty Reddit threads as a source, it peers into the peaks of the stars and stripes to find places where you can stroll the blocks in the shadow of the summits.

One thing is pretty noticeable: The Centennial State of Colorado reigns supreme in this category, claiming four of the five top picks. That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, since Colorado has a mountain region that's six times the size of Switzerland, lays claim to over 50 peaks soaring over 14,000 feet high, and is the state with the absolute best skiing in the United States. Throw in a rich pioneer history and a few mining booms in the 1800s, and those high-up towns promise bags of charm, as well as mountain scenery.

The good news is that there's plenty of variety in Colorado, plus options beyond the home of the Rocky Mountains. Yep, this array of charming and walkable mountain towns offers up a taste of German Bavaria in the Cascades, old mining settlements turned ski resorts, and off-radar adventure hubs slash artist communities.

If you want a walkable highland town with real charm, some of the finest skiing in Colorado, and a plethora of hiking paths that go up monstrous 14,000-foot peaks, then Telluride could be the year-round Rocky Mountain destination you've been looking for.

It garnered four separate mentions across our source Reddit threads, with multiple people picking it out as the finest walking-friendly mountain town of all. They're not wrong about the walkable bit. According to Telluride.com, the whole place spans just 12 blocks across and eight blocks wide, and it's walled in on all sides by steep slabs of rock and stone. Indeed, as one Redditor puts it: "Places like Telluride are pretty walkable because of geography ... In particular, it's in a fairly narrow box canyon, and the town is only about a mile long."

These days, the winter sports and the summer hiking take center stage, but there's oodles of history backing that up. Telluride started life as a mining camp in 1875, and later flourished on the Rio Grande Southern Railroad. Those eras blessed the town with its National Historic downtown core, which comes complete with handsome Victorian facades and old brick buildings. Some of those now host lively après ski spots like the Last Dollar Saloon, a gritty late-night haunt that's been hailed as one of the best skier dive bars on the planet by Snowbrains.com.

The folks over on The Avant Ski, a winter sports travel planning blog, recall Crested Butte's nickname: "The Last Great Colorado Ski Town." They say it's earned that by retaining its raw, real mountain character in a way that other resorts in the Centennial State have failed to do. They cite its friendly locals, offbeat calendar of cultural events, and buzzy nightlife that would be worthy of a much larger town.

On top of all those plaudits, you can rest assured that it's highly walkable. Not only did this one get three individual mentions on our source Reddit threads, but, according to the official Town of Crested Butte transportation guide, it's just one square mile in size, and virtually everything can be accessed on two feet. Nice.

Tempted? Expect a lengthy journey in — Crested Butte is buried deep in the mountains, just shy of four hours out of Colorado Springs. When you do finally get there, you can look forward to yet another downtown designated as a National Historic District that's packed with buildings left over from the silver rushes of the 1800s. You can hit Elk Avenue to discover local art galleries, or grab a bite to eat at one of its many cozy restaurants. The ski lifts await about five minutes' drive up the road from the core downtown, offering access to the 1,547 acres of skiable terrain that make up the Crested Butte Mountain Resort, which, like Telluride before it, has also been hailed as one of the finest in the state.

Three Reddit comments recommended the town of Salida as America's most walk-friendly mountain getaway, which is enough to wedge it between the other Coloradan mainstays in the middle of this list. Sitting at the junction of Highway 50 and the scenic 285 as it shoots into the Rockies, the town is under three hours from Denver, or just a touch over two hours from Colorado Springs. That places it right on the cusp of some of the most altitudinous terrain in the state, with a whole amphitheater of 14ers in attendance — the three Collegiate Peaks of the Sawatch to the northwest, Mount Shavano of the San Isabel National Forest straight to the west.

So, there are plenty of views, but what about the town itself? Salida is a quaint, under-the-radar mountain town with artistic flair. The Salida Studio Tour, an annual forum of the town's painters, printmakers, and crafters, currently lists over 25 creatives working in the town. Meanwhile, the central district is now an official Creative District, which has studios, workshops, and concept stores occupying 100-year-old buildings.

The other defining feature is the Arkansas River, which skirts the western side of the center. It's a haven for adrenaline junkies and lazy types alike. Choose between the Town Run's Class II rapids or an artificial surf wave if you want to get the energy going. Or simply chill out on one of the summertime beaches that line Whitewater Park if you want some rest and relaxation.

The fourth and final walkable mountain town in Colorado on this list comes in the form of the fabled ski town of Breckenridge. This one boasts one of the longest ski seasons in the whole country (November to April most years), along with the highest chairlift on the continent (the Imperial Express Superchair at 12,840 feet above sea level, no less).

So, it's a doozy for snow-loving travelers who like to whizz down the mountains, but it's also no one-trick pony. These days, Breckenridge is marketed as, in the words of the official tourism portal Gobreck.com, "a year-round playground." When the summer comes, it's a hiking haven, offering routes through evergreen forests to vibrant alpine flower meadows. As fall approaches, Breckenridge has leaf peeping aplenty, with aspen woods turning yellow and orange all over the place.

Officially, Breckenridge sprawls across 5.5 square miles of land, but the truth is that most of the action is centered on Main Street, a vibrant thoroughfare where hundreds of shops and bars sit in the shadow of the snow-capped mountains. In fact, walking the whole length of that from top to bottom will only take about 25 minutes. Of course, that's provided you don't get caught up at Highside Brewing & BBQ, where seasonal craft beers and Coloradan grills are the order of the day.

Last, but most certainly not least, comes Washington's Bavarian village of Leavenworth. Step onto Front Street — which has been named the 56th most charming street in the entire United States — and you might just think you'd been transported straight from American soil to the heart of the German Alps. Yep, Leavenworth's downtown has half-timbered buildings and balcony-fronted chalets that are Europe through and through. It also tastes the part — beer halls like the highly-rated München Haus serve up original Hofbräu brews and over 10 variations of traditional Bavarian sausages.

The topography of the surrounding area means that Leavenworth has had to remain rather small. The peaks and troughs of the South Cascade Range swirl on the peripheries. They herald ski hills and more hiking routes than you can shake a bratwurst at, but also keep the town tucked into the flatter valley bottom, under the shadow of summits that rise to over 8,000 feet. Indeed, official U.S. Census data confirms that Leavenworth spans just 1.4 square miles in all, which is no doubt why it was recommended by three separate comments on our source Reddit threads.

If you did happen to want to stretch the legs a little more than what the walkable downtown allows, then know that Leavenworth is a fine base for some pretty hardcore hikes. The global hiking tracker app AllTrails lists the "hard" 8.8-mile Colchuck Lake Trail as one of the best in the area, which is backed up by the hike's write-up by the Washington Trails Association, which compares those first views of the lake and its surrounding trees to a "religious experience."

We picked two Reddit threads to be our primary sources for this article: A discussion on the r/SameGrassButGreener subreddit entitled "Walkable Mountain Town?" and another on the r/urbanplanning subreddit called "Walkable mountain towns."

We trawled through both of those, awarding a single point to every place that got a positive mention, and adding extra points for every subsequent positive mention that was made by another user in the same thread. We then cross-referenced all those picks with online maps data and official town tourism sites to check that they were all, indeed, small enough to navigate entirely on foot.

We ended up with a long shortlist of over 20 destinations that fit the walkable mountain town bill, but only five that received three or more recommendations from Reddit users. Those are the towns listed above.