The 15 Best Small Towns to Visit in 2021
Goshen, New York (pop. 5,344)
This summer, Goshen welcomes the opening of LEGOLAND New York, a combined theme park and resort where you can construct, climb, ride and splash, and then bed down in a LEGO-themed hotel. However, the town itself has a much larger history.
Goshen sits among the East Coast’s black dirt farming region, with roughly 26,000 acres of extremely fertile soil left over from an ancient glacier lake. It’s also a part of New York’s scenic Hudson Valley and the seat of Orange County: an area ripe with rolling hills, orchards, and farmland, not to mention one steeped in equine culture.
In fact, Goshen is known as the “Trotting Capital of the World.” The town’s historic half-mile harness racing track, opened in 1838, is the oldest active horse trotting track on the planet, as well as the oldest continuously operated horse racing track in the country. Informal horse races even took place along Goshen’s Main Street as early as the mid-1700s.
The local Harness Racing Museum offers a deep dive into local harness-racing history with tens of thousands of associated artifacts, including a vast collection of Currier and Ives trotting prints. Its Hall of Fame is a who’s who among the sport, including those like Artsplace, the fifth-leading money-winning pacing sire of all time, and racetrack designer Charles E. “Chuck” Coon, whose innovative ideas helped increase both safety and speed.
Goshen is home to a charming Main Street where you’ll find family-owned businesses like Joe Fix Its, a bicycle and ice skating shop that's been a fixture since 1946. The downtown area also has ample spots to snack and eat, including the casual Howell's Café, Café Yen (where cups of iced caramel macchiatos are the norm), and Catherine’s Restaurant, an American eatery that offers both a more formal white-cloth dining experience and a low-key, brick-walled pub. The Stagecoach Inn—a former 18th-century stagecoach stop that’s been fully renovated into a five-star inn and tavern-style restaurant—is Goshen’s de facto place for special occasions.
Visitors and locals alike can pick up bottles of kombucha and homemade beef jerky at the weekly Goshen Farmers Market, Fridays late May through October, or set out on foot or bicycle along the Heritage Trail, an 18-mile rail-to-trail connecting various Orange County villages on the converted bed of the former Erie Railroad.
