Solvang Voted “Best Small Town in the West” in 2025 USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice

Solvang Also Lands in Top Five for “Best Small Town Food Scene”

Solvang, affectionately known as “The Danish Capital of America,” has been voted as the number one “Best Small Town in the West” in the 2025 USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Travel Awards, the results for which were publicly announced on April 9.

The unique Southern California destination is joined by second place category winner Astoria, Oregon, and third place winner, Healdsburg, California, in the top three spots, with Healdsburg being the only other California town to place in the list’s “Top 10.”

Solvang also came in at spot number five in the 2025 USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Travel Awards category of “Best Small Town Food Scene.” Solvang was the sole California town represented in that category’s top 10, as well as the only Western town represented among the list’s top 10 winners.

In 2025, Solvang was nominated by a panel of subject matter experts and USA TODAY 10Best editors before being voted on by the public in three different Readers’ Choice Awards travel categories: “Best Small Town in the West,” “Best Small Town Food Scene,” and “Best Main Street.”

The travel awards contest and online voting launched for the “Best Small Town in the West” and “Best Small Town Food Scene” categories on Monday, March 3, 2025 and online, public voting ran through Monday, March 31. Results for the “Best Main Street” awards category will be announced on April 16.

No stranger to the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards, Solvang, the Danish-rooted, California Central Coast getaway spot with a resident population hovering around 6,000, was one of the 10 Best Historic Small Town winners in the 2018 travel contest. Solvang was also one of the 10 Best winners for the same award category in 2016.

In 2017, USA TODAY named Solvang as one of “10 great places to enjoy global Christmas traditions in the USA.” More recently, Solvang was nominated for the 2022 USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards in two different categories, “Best Historic Small Town” and “Best Small Town Cultural Scene,” securing seventh place in the 2022 winners’ listing for the latter category. In 2024, Solvang was voted second “Best Small Town in the West” in the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards.

The fourth through tenth place winners in 2025’s “Best Small Town in the West” category are: Cody, Wyoming; Grants, New Mexico; Sedona, Arizona; Bigfork, Montana; Breckenridge, Colorado; Jackson, Wyoming; and Moab, Utah.

The annual USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice awards feature the top 20 or so nominees in contests covering travel and lifestyle topics such as food, lodging, destinations, travel gear, things to do, seasonal family fun, and more. All nominees are selected by a panel of experts and the 10Best editorial team. The 10Best Readers’ Choice Award contest launches new categories every week, revealing each category’s approximately 20 nominees.

After 28 days of digital voting, the contest closes and the nominated businesses that have received the most eligible votes will be designated as the Readers’ Choice for their respective categories and be awarded a badge of recognition as the 10Best Readers’ Choice. Rules allow the public the right to vote online for one nominee per category, per day. More information about the USA TODAY 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards may be found here.

Dog-friendly and ideal for kids, Solvang, known for its Danish-American vibe, architecture and design details, pastries and bakeries, and array of wine tasting options, also boasts dozens of unique boutiques, restaurants, and gourmet food purveyors. Carefully-curated indie booksellers and high-end home goods suppliers mingle with fairy tale-like children’s stores and museum gift shops. Solvang’s foodie destinations offer everything from elevated street cuisine – like locally-sourced fish tacos on hand-made tortillas, and comforting ramen noodles – to European-style pretzels and sausages, to Italian standbys or iconic Danish dishes, to elevated new-Californian fare in the form of MICHELIN-honored menus. Solvang visitors sip small-batch, locally-roasted coffee, shop for exotic, hand-bottled spice blends, or enjoy Tiki cocktails and craft beer, all part of a playful, indulgent, and one-of-a-kind, year ‘round shopping and playing escape.

Edhat Reader

Written by Edhat Reader

Content submitted to edhat.com by its readers and subscribers

What do you think?

Comments

0 Comments deleted by Administrator

Leave a Review or Comment

14 Comments

  1. All of the hard work has really paid off for Solvang. This honor will translate into continued revenue coming in from domestic and foreign tourists for many years in the future. We love taking our out-of-town guests to the SYV to do “touristy” things. We always end up going to a couple of bakeries and load up on goodies (half of which do not survive the trip back to Santa Barbara). Never been a fan of the aebleskiver, but I hear that a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top works wonders.

  2. It’s a lovely little town, but the obsession with development and tourism are destroying it…and the entire Valley. Yes, people have always visited Solvang, but it was never this overcrowded until recent years, and the relentless development to shove more people into the area is making this even worse.

    It takes an average of 12 minutes to crawl through three blocks through Solvang tourist traffic on any given day. Bumper to bumper traffic, brake lights and people pouring off of the sidewalks and even standing in the streets to take pictures of buildings and landmarks.

    Heaven help you if you have an emergency and need to get from Buellton to our wonderful Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital for treatment and it’s daytime. Nighttime is much better, taking MAYBE a grand TOTAL of 10 minutes…if that.

    Whenever this is mentioned, someone will always run out of brains and suggest “plan better! Leave earlier! Enjoy the drive!”, which of course completely misses the word “emergency”.

    It also makes my point for me. If you have to “leave earlier/plan better” in order to get 4.5 miles in less than 20 minutes, then that should say it all about the short-sighted and very poor planning in the entire Santa Ynez Valley. This is a major quality of life and safety issue on so many levels.

    We all need to do better and focus on the issues which affect all of us now and going forward.

    • There are two viable options to alleviate the congestion and allow for safe/quick passage of emergency vehicles. The first option is to build a bypass road, which goes around all of the mains shops/restaurants. A bypass would be very expensive, but certainly doable. The second option, and cheapest by far, would be to eliminate street parking (not the “cut out” parking spaces like they have in front of Paula’s Pancake House) and create a center lane for emergency vehicles only. The second option would not be that expensive, although a handful of parking spaces would not longer be available.

SpaceX Launches NROL-192 Mission Early Saturday

Fake Student Aid: California Colleges Detect More Fraudsters Stealing Millions