Berkshire County, MA City Is The 9th Best Small Town In America

I'm so proud of this beautiful corner of Massachusetts that we live in. And I must say that anytime a Berkshire County city or town(or towns!) gets mentioned in a positive way in some nationwide study, ranking, or poll, it makes me incredibly happy!

And it makes me even happier to be able to share the news with my fellow residents of the Beautiful Berkshires! And I thought this little item was definitely well worth sharing with you folks.

Recently USA Today asked their readers to name the best small towns in the northeast for USA Today's "10 Best Reader's Choice Awards". Their readers responded(boy did they ever) and the results were announced.

As always, some of the results were quite unexpected. Consider this: Not only did a Berkshire County town make the top 10 but it was the only Massachusetts town to make the top 10!

Also, out of the 10 best Northeastern towns, 7 of them are located in New England. There is one city each for New York(Akwesasne, #10), Pennsylvania(New Hope, #6), and New Jersey(Cape May, #1).

The lone Top 10 Massachusetts town is located right here in Berkshire County. Hitting the list at #9 is one of the "Gateways to the Berkshires"--Lee, Massachusetts! And again, this is according to USA Today readers. I think that is an honor that is well deserved.

According to USA Today's "10Best" website:

Lee’s many historic sites are fascinating, while the gardens found all around the town are famous for their beauty and landscape design. Add in extensive outdoor adventure possibilities, fine dining venues, local wineries, breweries and distilleries and convivial bars that welcome out-of-towners, and Lee’s got something for everyone.

Here is the official list of the 10 Best Northeastern Small Towns in 2023 as part of USA Today's 10 Best Reader's Choice Awards:

Cape May, New Jersey
Montpelier, Vermont
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Bar Harbor, Maine
Stowe, Vermont
New Hope, Pennsylvania
Camden, Maine
Woodstock, Vermont
Lee, Massachusetts
Akwesasne, New York

Nice job! Big props to Lee, Massachusetts for making the cut! To find out more about the reader's poll and more specifics about why each town was chosen, visit USA Today's website here.

LOOK: Here are the 50 best beach towns in America

Every beach town has its share of pluses and minuses, which got us thinking about what makes a beach town the best one to live in. To find out, Stacker consulted data from WalletHub, released June 17, 2020, that compares U.S. beach towns. Ratings are based on six categories: affordability, weather, safety, economy, education and health, and quality of life. The cities ranged in population from 10,000 to 150,000, but they had to have at least one local beach listed on TripAdvisor. Read the full methodology here. From those rankings, we selected the top 50. Readers who live in California and Florida will be unsurprised to learn that many of towns featured here are in one of those two states.

Keep reading to see if your favorite beach town made the cut.