Yesterday’s America: 5 Towns Where the Past Comes Alive

Eager to ‘go back in time’ and experience life as it was many years ago—when families could enjoy life at a slightly slower pace, when neighborliness was more the norm, and when people still counted on one another?

There are, indeed, entire communities in America that still operate much the same as they did in the good old days and that you can visit to get a taste of yesterday!

Here are 5 such towns that will take you back in time!

Williamsburg

For a time-traveling glimpse into 18th-century daily life in America, visit Williamsburg, Virginia. This pre-revolutionary colonial city allows visitors to travel back 250 years to 1700s-era Virginia, the seat of its colonial government.

Everything is designed to recreate what life was like here in the Colonial period. You can walk down the main street of the town and see people dressed head to toe in period attire. You might believe you’ve time-traveled to the past! Watch the weavers, the barrel-makers, the printers, and the antique fife and drum bands play classic tunes. Tour the houses of regular colonists and see how they lived with simple furniture.

After dark, the streets are illuminated by gas lamps. A town crier calls out the time. It’s not just for show. These people practice a rare colonial craft and actually do live like this.

Dodge City

If you like to think of yourself as a cowpoke from the Old West, Dodge City, Kansas, is your town. One of the larger towns on the dusty cattle trails and the sin city of the plains in the 1870s, it could best be described today as the Wild West—rising from the grave.

Stroll along the old wood-paneled boardwalks of the historic Front Street and peek inside old saloons sure to remind you of the rowdy Old West. Pop into the Long Branch Saloon where cowboys used to hang around and gamble the night away.

Walk out and continue on to historic Boot Hill cemetery where you can view weathered tombstones dating back to the latter part of the 19th century. It is as if the entire Old West was frozen in time for visitors’ delight. Historically significant stores and buildings have been restored and preserved.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine, founded by the Spanish in the 1560s, is the country’s oldest continually occupied city by Europeans, and its historic district looks not too different from how it did centuries ago. Now that’s a time warp.

Wander along narrow streets running past 1700s-1800s buildings, eyeing massive former Spanish houses, old forts, and convents, wondering what people actually did back then. Tour the Castillo de San Marcos, a centuries-old stone fort that fires real cannons that boom with smoke on a regular basis, or try your hand at genuine colonial trades and cooking at a living history museum.

Galena

It’s like the 1800s hit the brakes in Galena, Illinois. Main Street calls to mind a time machine blinking into the 19th century. An active riverboat and lead-mining center in the mid-1800s, Galena, in the timber and fertile hills of the Midwest, is now a town rooted so firmly in 19th-century charm that it feels ageless.

Look at those pristinely restored brick buildings now filled with gaily painted gift shops and cozy tobacco-scented taverns. Sidle into an old-fashioned perfumery and a general store where the jars display an array of yesterday’s necessities. Stay the night in a Victorian B&B.

There’s something here about a preservation of the spirit of the 1800s—if such a collection of clichés and commercialism can even be called ‘a spirit’—but it all lies in such gorgeous period character and antique shops galore.

Leavenworth

Washington has a small village called Leavenworth. And this charming hamlet has an incredible history.

In the 1960s, the hamlet was almost a ghost town, and its leaders were desperate to do something to revitalize it. So they decided to turn it into a Bavarian village. People embraced the transformation.

Leavenworth is now straight out of the Bavarian countryside! Lodges and shops and thousands of signs all display a faux-alpine Bavarian flair.