Big cities are falling out of fashion for decades and decades, many Americans had to make their home
in cities just to earn a living in the last few years more of us are waking up and realizing if
we could swing it there could be a better life in a small town. most the time you'll
find small towns have less crime better schools a lower cost of living and affordable real estate
before you do stop typing sure you have small towns near lakes ski resorts in the ocean that are
very expensive but those are few and far between this country is filled with great small towns that
are affordable and nice this is a new series i've been planning since i don't know since about the
beginning of the pandemic i want to profile small towns in america this is just the first
video in the series and it's sort of a rough cut of what i want it be i'd like to interview
locals in future episodes things like that small towns in america offer different vibes you might
not want to buy a home in any of these but that doesn't mean you can't take a weekend trip and
have some fun have some lunch meet some people and maybe change your mind about living there
today i drove out to carlton oregon you've been looking at the drive out
carlton is in wine country about an hour southwest of portland and about 30 minutes away from my home
carlton is a city in yamhill county oregon with a population of a little over 2 000 that was in
the 2020 census might be a little bit more now i heard some people have been moving in there
this town started off as a stagecoach stop with a blacksmith and you know place to water the horses
but eventually a train station showed up and to train obviously and the city was growing it is
surrounded by farms and vineyards with the north yam hill river flowing just west of downtown in
case you don't know this is on the western side of oregon the eastern side is more brown than green
so just
hmm
so
so this is one of the residential neighborhoods of Carleton and they're all
fairly similar to this one not like they have a bunch of neighborhoods to choose from but
typical homes here start around 300 000 and work their way up to about 450 and of course,
you're gonna have some really nice ones that get into the six hundred thousand to seven hundred
thousand areas these are decent neighborhoods the schools are ranked pretty good they get a b
minus which is not too shabby and the crime rate gets a plus 38 percent below the national
average that's not bad their violent crime rate is a hundred percent below the national average
the actual downtown main street is really about three blocks long and there's a very unique thing
about this town it is filled with wine places you know they've got all these vineyards around here
and a lot of them have like little restaurants and tasting rooms you want to do wine tasting
you could do a lot of it right here you don't have to go to each individual vineyard they got
one really cool one called ken wright sellers they took over the old train station and turned
it into like a winery place ken wright cellars that is a pretty cool building you know it looks
like it used to be a train station and I bet it is but that's exactly what's going on with this one
my wife ate at barrel 47 it's not a wine place it's like a pub they have really good food it used
to be a bank they got this really cool door look at that thing inside this place very rustic and
really cool right here I walked up and down the main street like I said not that big it's a couple
block and you notice there's just nothing but wine places all over this town is like grape central
so
so i didn't know this when i first moved to oregon but the willamette valley is one of the best
wine areas in the nation i always thought napa and things like that i thought napa was
the end-all be-all but apparently the willamette valley is right up
there with napa i i'd say almost napa is like the pinnacle but they're pretty close
finger lakes region of new york i understand is really good too i'm not a wine guy but still so
that was carlton oregon it's a pretty interesting little town i kind of like it it might be worth a
look if you're in the area and you're looking for a small town now like i said this is the first
in a series we're going to be doing these and i'm hoping to travel all around the country not
just oregon and washington i did stop at yam hill oregon on the way back thought i'd you know make
it two small towns in one day it's just down the road about 15 minutes and this is what i found out
about yam hill i'm in downtown yam hill oregon there's nothing to see here folks move along