Lindsey Willard

The best small towns in the Ozarks lie well off the beaten path. Beaver, Arkansas, has fewer than 100 residents and a one-lane swinging bridge over the White River. Wild horses graze the fields around Eminence, Missouri. In the far corner of Kansas, Baxter Springs claims the state's only miles of Route 66. Each one trades crowds for room to roam. Beaver, Arkansas Historic suspension bridge over the White River in Beaver, Arkansas.

You can read a lakeside town off its main street faster than off any brochure. The best downtowns on the Great Lakes took their shape from whatever the water put within reach. In Saugatuck, a summer art school left behind a street full of working galleries. In Bayfield, growers still cart the apple harvest down the hill to the shops each fall. Across the border in Canada, Niagara-on-the-Lake rebuilt its Queen Street after the War of 1812 burned the town down.

The Pocono Mountains hold the most serene weekend retreats in its smaller towns, where lake water and ridge air do most of the work. Each town keeps the noise low. Hawley wraps around an 1880 silk mill that now holds shops and a coffee house. Jim Thorpe highlights its railroad-baron mansions up on Packer Hill. Delaware Water Gap runs the country's oldest continuously operating jazz club inside a former 19th-century hotel. These eight Pocono towns each take a different approach to a quiet weekend.