Best Old-Fashioned Downtown

There are plenty of charming mountain towns in the area, but none as close to Denver as Golden. Washington Avenue, the main drag, features a justly famous welcome sign ("Howdy folks!") and numerous noteworthy attractions, including the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, the Foothills Art Center and Foss Drug, a sprawling general store stocked with everything from novelty toilet paper to restored gas pumps. As an added bonus, there's also Old Capitol Grill, a watering hole and eatery on the site of what was once Colorado's pre-statehood territorial capitol; it's among the handful of places in the country that serves Barmen Pilsner, an authentic German-style golden pilsner by Coors.