The 10 Best Places to Live The GOOD Life

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The aptly-named towns of Mountain Home (pop., approx. 9,000) and Mountain View (pop., approx. 2,000) bracket the Buffalo National River preserve and Ozark National Forest in northern Arkansas and are the center of a little-known paradise for Mother-Earth types. As Mountain View's Sandra Sutton says. "Our area rings with ... mountain music and people really enjoying the simple life .... You can't leave without wanting to come back [to] the natural beauty and friendly people."

Colorado, with a few reservations
There may be no more beautiful expanse of land in the nation than the one which is divided by the Rockies, but you won't be elated in the increasingly crowded, often smog-plagued (if economically booming) strip of cities running up the middle of Colorado along the foot of the mountains. The plains to the east also received mixed reviews among MOTHER readers. But another of our "Ten Best" locations is found in the mountains at the southwest corner of the state where the continental divide meanders through Saguache, Hinsdale, and Mineral counties and the San Juan and Los Caritas mountain ranges. Hidden away among the Gunniston, San Juan and Rio Grande National Forests is a scattering of hamlets where pass-closing winter snows demand a high degree of self-reliance and interdependence unknown in a city or flatland town. Our own favorite is the town of Creede in Mineral County, located up-grade beyond South Fork on Rt. 149. Bob Ford — "the dirty little coward who shot Mister Howard" ( Jesse James' false name) as it goes in the song — fled to the mountains after an irate public threatened to lynch him for his dastardly deed. Little Bob ran a bar in Creede, but got what most folks thought was too long in coming to him a few years later. There's a plaque on the spot where an unknown avenger walked in, unloaded both barrels of a 12-gauge into Ford's treacherous hide, turned heel and left, never to surface again.

Today, a less violent breed of folks hangs onto a hard but fulfilling existence in the mountains. As Lance Grolla of Crestone (Saguache County) says. "Three hundred family homes ... a dozen spiritual centers ... an eco-village ... a nature preserve that happens to have people in it ... Fifty strawbale homes ("Strawbale House Capital of North America") ... plus an earthship ... sandbag homes proposed ... do fine just bartering and sharing...." The town's motto is "Crestone, Colo., where inconvenience is a virtue."

Upper Mississippi River Valley towns get plaudits all around. The river may need a few more decades of dedicated cleanup, but the small towns around Davenport/Bettendorf, Iowa and Moline/Rock Island, Ill. stand out. Marva Venhuizen says of her town. "Albany [Ill.] is on the banks of the mighty, wonderful Mississippi River ... [with] Indian mounds, beautiful bluffs ... recreation year-round ... great gardening ... security and [fine] education for a small town."

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