The hidden charms of Greenwood are no longer a national secret.
According to an article published Friday in the online lifestyle magazine House Method, Greenwood is the most underrated town in Mississippi, ranked alongside 49 other underrated towns from other states.
The point is to draw little-known places out of the rank and file of larger and better-known cities that always show up in those endless listicles touting the best of something-or-other.
Brand Editor Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza, who conducted the research and put together the list, said her team has been working for several weeks, vetting some 500 nominated towns to choose the best 50.
“We were looking for several things,” she said. “Evidence of good commerce, for example. Is there a draw to work there? Was there some tie to the arts, a history of arts and culture in the town? Is it visually appealing? Everyone wants to visit a pretty town.”
If a town met those criteria, alongside other towns that might have been better known, the team looked for an element of surprise.
“We were looking at towns people might not have heard of,” McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza said. “Is there something unexpected about this town based on its location? We tried to find something we thought the general population might not have known about.”
That surprise element knocked out Greenwood’s closest contender among Mississippi nominees — Oxford, whose charms are all too well-known.
A beautiful photograph of the waterfront at Front Street by Thomas Gregory, a former chief administrative officer for the city, graces Greenwood’s page on the scrolling online presentation.
Greenwood’s credentials, while not precisely accurate, a little outdated and somewhat exaggerated, point to its picturesque location “between two rivers” (well, sort of), its quaintness (check), its “phenomenal culinary scene with more than 30 locally owned restaurants” (quality, yes; quantity, hmmmm), its notability as the hometown of Viking Range (check) and a luxury boutique hotel (check), and “the city’s stock of both old and new commercial buildings providing reasonable and attractive options for retail stores, office locations and corporate headquarters.”
The best part of this parcel of good news is that House Method, a beautifully designed home and garden site, boasts over 5 million readers, and those who scroll all the way down to the M’s will now have heard of Greenwood.
In surrounding states, the following towns were ranked the most underrated: El Dorado in Arkansas, Huntsville in Alabama, Shreveport in Louisiana and Franklin in Tennessee.
To see the story, visit www.housemethod.com/lifestyle/most-underrated-towns-in-every-state.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
