Onancock,
VA winner of Budget Travel Magazine Contest
ONANCOCK,
VA – Onancock wins the title of #1 Coolest Small Town in the South and
#6 in the nation.
Bigger is not always better as proven
by the more than 5,000 people who voted for Onancock, the smallest of
the towns (pop. 1500) in the top ten list. Budget Travel Magazine was
looking for Main Street, U.S.A. -- places where you find real people.
But also organizers of the contest were looking for towns with an
“edge”, where you would see more art galleries than country stores. To
qualify, the towns had to have populations of less than 10,000.
Onancock sits on the longest stretch
of natural coastline on the east coast, Virginia's Eastern Shore. With
a petite harbor, rows of gingerbread porches, clapboard steeples and
old-fashioned glass storefronts, it’s hard not to be smitten. Onancock
Creek weaves around the town connecting it to the great Chesapeake Bay.
Boating, especially kayaking, can lead you to secret marshes where sea
and sky provide a private haven.
"...Heaven and earth never agreed
better to frame a place for man's habitation..." Capt John Smith,
founder of Onancock, Virginia 1608
Onancock has been a cool small town
for almost 400 hundred years. Chartered in 1680, the town boasts an
1800 Federal Style house museum, an array of restaurants from gourmet
to an Irish Pub, a live theater and vintage movie house showing
international films monthly as well as galleries, boutiques and
B&Bs. Even the early colonists would come just outside of Onancock
to see the first play performed in North America. "Ye Bear & Ye
Cubbe" was performed in 1665 in a tavern just outside of town.
While in Onancock, visitors can take
the ferry to Tangier Island, a small fishing village where language
experts say one can pick up hints of pure Elizabethan accents, a gift
from the colonists who settled the island in the early 1600s.
But Onancock isn’t focused on the
past. It was the first town in Virginia to have all green certified
lodging, pet-friendly lodging and businesses, cutting-edge art
galleries, award-winning restaurants, nationally recognized artists,
sculptors, authors, craftsmen and artisans. And where else can you find
the House of Deals, an old-fashioned hardware store where you can buy
everything from nails to fresh seaside clams to coffee machines, and
yes, the boys still play cards in the back.