One of America’s Best Small Shopping Towns is Located in Upstate New York

USA Today’s readers’ choice poll released their list of the top small towns in America for shopping, and a quaint Upstate New York spot was ranked among the nation’s best. As a matter of fact, only one town in the country was ranked above this spot in the Empire State.

While we may disagree with that particular decision (New York always = #1 to us), we’ll still begrudgingly tell you which town took home the top spot on USA Today’s list.

USA Today: Only One Small Town is Better for Shopping Than Rhinebeck, NY

The small town of Rhinebeck, New York was named the second-best small town for shopping in all of the United States in USA Today’s readers’ choice poll on the subject. Only Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a pretty coastal town on Biloxi Bay, was considered “better” than Rhinebeck in that category, according to the readers’ choice poll results.

Though the town finished in second place, USA Today’s description of Rhinebeck was an undoubtedly glowing one:

Here are the rest of the small towns in America that were named to this list, according to USA Today:

1. Ocean Springs, Mississippi
2. Rhinebeck, New York
3. Cape May, New Jersey
4. Chagrin Falls, Ohio
5. Highlands, North Carolina
6. Taos, New Mexico
7. Ashland, Oregon
8. Bath, Maine
9. Fairhope, Alabama
10. Northfield, Minnesota

When they used the term small town, they really weren’t kidding around!

The criteria for this list was fairly simple: the town needed to have a population of less than 25,000 to be considered a candidate. From there, USA Today readers nominated towns from across the country that they believed had the most robust downtown shopping atmospheres, and a top-ten list was generated from those votes.

The readers of USA Today have officially spoken, and now, I can imagine many readers will be planning road trips to Rhinebeck in the fall of 2024 to see it for themselves.