Most Popular
Based on Countries Been user data.
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1
New York
New York State contains one of the great cities in human history and enough room beyond it for an entirely different experience of America. New York City is an engine of global culture, commerce, and immigration that has been reshaping itself for four centuries, but Upstate New York is a separate world of Finger Lakes wineries, Adirondack wilderness, Niagara Falls, and Hudson Valley artists' communities that offers some of the most beautiful and least crowded scenery in the eastern United States.
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2
California
California is as much an idea as a place — a state of restless reinvention that has reshaped global entertainment, technology, and agriculture in turn. Its geography is equally ambitious, ranging from Central Valley farms that feed much of the nation to the Sierra Nevada's granite peaks, the Mojave's alien salt flats, and nearly 900 miles of Pacific coastline, all populated by one of the most culturally diverse concentrations of people anywhere on earth.
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3
Florida
Florida is defined by water — the flat peninsula is surrounded on three sides by ocean, riddled with lakes and springs, and anchored by the vast sawgrass wilderness of the Everglades. Miami has become one of the hemisphere's most cosmopolitan cities, its Latin American influences creating a distinct bilingual culture of art and cuisine, while the state attracts more visitors than almost anywhere on earth, drawn by reliably warm weather, extraordinary natural diversity, and beaches ranging from the Panhandle's white sugar sand to the coral reefs of the Keys.
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4
Nevada
Nevada is a state of dramatic contrasts: the surreal neon spectacle of Las Vegas rising from the Mojave Desert, and vast stretches of empty basin-and-range wilderness where you can drive for hours without seeing another car. The Strip is one of the most concentrated entertainment corridors on earth — casinos, residency concerts, Michelin-starred restaurants — yet the surrounding landscape of Red Rock Canyon and the Valley of Fire offers some of the most dramatic desert scenery in the American West, minutes from the casino floor.
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5
Washington D.C.
The American capital functions on two registers simultaneously: the official city of government buildings, marble monuments, and political theater, and the actual city of neighborhoods, restaurants, and culture that residents inhabit daily. The National Mall's free Smithsonian museums — seventeen of them — represent one of the most generous public gifts in the world, while the performing arts scene and the diverse restaurant culture of neighborhoods like Shaw and Adams Morgan have made D.C. a genuine culinary and cultural destination.
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6
Texas
Texas occupies a category of its own among American states — large enough to contain multitudes, with a fierce independent identity forged in the era of the Republic of Texas and sustained through a culture of cattle ranching, oil, and frontier mythology. Its cities tell different stories: Austin's live music scene and tech boom, Houston's remarkable culinary diversity and NASA culture, Dallas's gleaming arts district, and San Antonio's Spanish colonial heritage along the River Walk.
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7
Arizona
Arizona's high desert landscapes have shaped human civilizations for thousands of years, from Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings to the Navajo and Hopi nations whose cultures continue today. The Grand Canyon remains the state's defining sight — a mile-deep geological time machine carved by the Colorado River — while Sedona's red rock formations and the White Sands dunes offer further proof that Arizona's landscapes can stop a traveler cold.
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8
Massachusetts
Massachusetts packs an extraordinary range into a small New England package — Boston anchors the state with centuries of revolutionary history and one of the world's greatest concentrations of universities, while the Cape Cod peninsula stretches into the Atlantic with its shingled villages and sand dunes. Inland, the Berkshire Hills draw artists and musicians to a landscape of old mill towns and brilliant autumn foliage.
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9
Illinois
Illinois is Chicago writ large — the city dominates the state's culture and identity to a degree unusual even for major American metros. Chicago earned its towering reputation through architecture (it effectively invented the skyscraper), music (electric blues and house music both incubated here), and food (deep-dish pizza, Italian beef, the legendary Chicago hot dog), while its lakefront, lined with museums and beaches, gives it a quality of life that keeps drawing people despite the winters.
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10
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania carries the weight of American founding more than any other state — the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both drafted in Philadelphia, and the Gettysburg battlefields mark the turning point of the Civil War. Philadelphia itself is in the middle of a culinary and cultural renaissance, its Reading Terminal Market and vibrant neighborhoods drawing national attention, while Lancaster County's Amish farmland, the Pocono Mountains, and the gritty, authentic character of Pittsburgh reveal a state with far more depth than it gets credit for.
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11
Georgia
Georgia holds the deep contradictions of the American South with unusual grace — Atlanta has evolved into one of the nation's most economically dynamic cities and a global hub for media and film, while remaining a center of African American culture and civil rights history. Beyond the capital, the haunting beauty of coastal Savannah with its Spanish moss-draped squares, and the mountain towns of the Blue Ridge in the north, reveal a state of remarkable depth and variety.
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12
Washington
Washington State divides into two distinct worlds along the spine of the Cascades. The wet western side holds Seattle — a port city that gave the world Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks — along with ancient temperate rainforests and rugged island archipelagos; east of the mountains the landscape opens into arid wine country and wheat-covered hills, creating a state of remarkable geographic variety.
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13
Louisiana
Louisiana is unlike anywhere else in the United States — its unique Creole and Cajun cultures, shaped by French, Spanish, African, and Native American influences, produced a cuisine, music, and way of life that the rest of the country has spent decades trying to imitate. New Orleans is the jewel: a city of peeling grandeur and exuberant street life where jazz was born, Mardi Gras shuts down the city for weeks, and the food remains some of the best on the continent.
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14
Hawaii
The only US state composed entirely of islands, Hawaii sits at a crossroads of Polynesian, Asian, and American cultures that blends into something genuinely unlike anywhere else on earth. Volcanic forces are still actively at work — the Big Island's lava flows stand just miles from ancient black-sand beaches and fish ponds — and the islands reward slow exploration, from Waikiki's famous surf to Maui's Road to Hana.
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15
New Jersey
New Jersey suffers from its proximity to New York — perpetually treated as a punchline by those who have never actually explored it. In reality the state contains some of the mid-Atlantic's finest beaches, the wild and preserved Pinelands National Reserve (one of the largest undeveloped tracts on the East Coast), and a culinary scene enriched by one of the most diverse immigrant populations in the country, from the Asbury Park boardwalk to the farm stands of Hunterdon County.
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Tennessee
Tennessee's cultural contributions to American music are almost impossible to overstate — Nashville gave the world country music, Memphis gave it the blues and rock-and-roll (Elvis recorded at Sun Studio here), and the Appalachian mountains nurtured old-time and bluegrass traditions. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited in the entire country, drawing tens of millions to its old-growth forests and wildlife, while Nashville has transformed in recent years into one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
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17
Colorado
Colorado's defining feature is altitude — with 53 peaks above 14,000 feet, the Rocky Mountain terrain shapes everything from its climate to its culture. World-class skiing at Aspen and Breckenridge draws millions, but the mountains also offer superb hiking, mountain biking, and fly fishing, while Denver has evolved from a frontier cow town into a sophisticated city known for its craft beer scene, arts districts, and outdoor-obsessed population.
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18
Oregon
Oregon occupies a special place in the American imagination as a destination for reinvention — the western terminus of the Oregon Trail, it continues to attract people seeking something different. Portland is famous for its independent food culture and progressive character, while outside the city the landscape shifts dramatically from rain-soaked old-growth rainforests to volcanic Cascades peaks and high desert east of the mountains.
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19
Michigan
Michigan is defined by water — almost completely surrounded by four of the five Great Lakes, it has more freshwater coastline than any other state in the country. The Upper Peninsula is one of the least-known wilderness areas in the Midwest, a land of waterfalls and old-growth forest separated from the more populous Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, while Detroit — the city that built America's 20th century on an assembly line — has undergone a dramatic revival that has drawn national attention to a city that never lost its gritty, authentic character.
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20
Utah
Utah contains a concentration of dramatic red-rock scenery unmatched anywhere in North America — five national parks within a few hours of each other, each showcasing a different expression of the Colorado Plateau's sculpted geology. The landscape is so otherworldly that NASA has used it as a Mars analog, and the hoodoos of Bryce Canyon and the arches of Arches National Park feel genuinely extraterrestrial against a backdrop of ancient silence.
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21
Maryland
Maryland is one of America's most geographically compact yet remarkably diverse states, its narrow wedge encompassing mountain ridges in the west, the sprawling Chesapeake Bay estuary at its center, and a short Atlantic coastline in the east. The Chesapeake is the state's soul — blue crabs steamed with Old Bay seasoning are practically a state religion — and Baltimore offers a city of strong neighborhoods and working-class character, while Annapolis, the colonial capital, still radiates the graceful maritime culture of the 18th century.
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South Carolina
South Carolina rewards slow travel — the pace slows perceptibly east of the Appalachians, and the state's greatest pleasures are quiet ones: a meal of shrimp and grits in Charleston, a kayak through a tidal creek marsh, or a walk through ancient live oaks. Charleston is consistently ranked among the most beautiful cities in America, and the Gullah Geechee culture of the Sea Islands represents one of the most intact African-descended cultural traditions anywhere in the United States.
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North Carolina
North Carolina spans an extraordinary geographic range — from the Outer Banks barrier islands that jut into the Atlantic to the crest of the Appalachians where Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, rises above the clouds. The Research Triangle of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill has made the state a center of technology, medicine, and education, while the Blue Ridge Parkway weaving along the mountain ridgeline for nearly 500 miles is widely considered the most beautiful drive in America.
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24
Virginia
Virginia carries more American history per square mile than perhaps any other state — Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement; Colonial Williamsburg; Monticello, Jefferson's mountaintop home; and the Shenandoah Valley battlefields where the Civil War's outcome was largely decided. Richmond has emerged as an unexpectedly vibrant culinary and arts city, while the state's Eastern Shore, Chesapeake Bay islands, and Appalachian valleys preserve a more traditional agricultural character.
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25
Missouri
Missouri sits at the crossroads of American geography and history — the Gateway Arch in St. Louis marks the symbolic starting point of westward expansion, while Kansas City emerged as a crossroads of jazz and barbecue traditions that shaped American culture. The state is divided between the urbane culture of its two major cities and the largely rural Ozark Plateau, a region of rolling hills, clear streams, and a distinct Appalachian-derived folk heritage.
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26
New Mexico
New Mexico carries one of the most layered cultural histories of any American state — a collision of Indigenous, Spanish colonial, and Anglo traditions that shows up in the architecture, cuisine, and art of every town. The Land of Enchantment earns its nickname through landscapes of extraordinary variety: the Chihuahuan Desert, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Rio Grande gorge, and the blindingly white gypsum dunes of White Sands, drawing artists here for over a century.
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27
Minnesota
Minnesota's identity is shaped by water — the state holds over 10,000 lakes, a vast canoe wilderness bordering Canada, and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. Minneapolis has emerged as one of America's most culturally vibrant mid-size cities, with a thriving theater scene and a deeply Scandinavian heritage, while the long winters forge a resilient character celebrated with outdoor festivals and legendary comfort food.
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28
Indiana
Indiana's Midwestern character runs deep — a state of family farms, small manufacturing cities, college basketball rivalries, and a genuine heartland pride. Indianapolis has quietly developed into a sophisticated city with a renowned motorsport culture anchored by the Indianapolis 500, one of the world's most famous sporting events, while the southern part of the state, with its covered bridges and wooded hills of Brown County, offers scenic beauty that surprises first-time visitors.