Small, old towns in USA? (farm, houses, horse, electricity)

[ladahdah!]

So recently I've been doing a lot of research on some old fashioned towns in the US that don't use cars (only horse and buggy) and live simply. The only town I've come up with so far is Amish, PA. Anyone know any others?

[slowlane]

I have been to the heavily Amish country of eastern Lancaster County, PA, many times. Amish is NOT the name of a town, it's the name of a Christian religion and lifestyle. There are sizable Amish communities in many U.S. States, the largest populations being near Lancaster Penn, Ashtabula Ohio, Wooster Ohio, and Elkhart Indiana, but their population is increasing and they are migrating into other states of the interior U.S. as well, such as Kentucky and Wisconsin, as well as into northern Penn. I'm sure you can find plenty of information about the Amish, as well as the related Mennonite culture, on Wikipedia Also, you can watch the movie "Witness" sometime on Cable TV. While most of them farmed in the past, nowadays many Amish instead do carpentry, construct small buildings, make furniture, patterned quilts, canned preserves, craft and handmade novelty items. In you are ever in Lancaster PA, you can arrange through the visitors' bureau to have home-cooked dinner and a farm tour with Amish families in their homes.

Mennonites are culturally similar to Amish, but generally are more open to using cars, electricity, and other modern conveniences (although some certain sects known as "Old Order Mennonites" are just as strict as the Amish). Mennonites are very numerous around Lancaster Penn where they are interspersed with Amish. There is even a Mennonite colony in the nation of Paraguay, as well as southern Ontario Canada, and they have their own colleges in Harrisonburg Virginia and Newton Kansas. Mennonites are very gentle, pacifistic, Christian people who are generous in doing overseas missionary service, and fostering refugees in their homes.

In numerous places within the prairie provinces of Canada, as well as Montana, are another cultural group called "Hutterites". Their lifestyle can be compared with the Amish. National Geographic magazine did an illustrated article on the "Hutterites" in June 2006, which you can read here http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com
Hutterites were depicted in the 1941, suspense war movie called "49th Parallel" .

[slowlane]

I wouldn't exactly say there are "TOWNS" per se, where only horse and buggies are used. Everywhere Amish live in America, they have to mingle with regular, modern people when they go to "towns" to make business dealings, and market their products. Towns are usually on highways.

However, tucked away in the country, the Amish do have their own tiny school houses, and their own general stores (that sell plain bolts of cloth, among other things), blacksmiths, furniture workshops, and horse-supply "tack" shops. I have been in some of them here in southern Maryland, they are located way off the public road, completely hidden on farm property on lanes (Well, actually the schools are directly on country roads). No churches, since worship is normally done in their homes. Sometimes they will have old-fashioned outdoor phone booths, for their members to use strictly for business dealings, to call doctors, etc. but their culture discourages routine use of phones for frivolous reasons/ gossip.

You can always tell when you're in an Amish neighborhood, by the horse manure frequently dropped on the road, and by the windmills on farms, and lack of electrical poles (power lines).

[Giesela]

They don't live simply but Macinaw Island doesn't allow cars.

[skinem]

I know of some towns that you can't drive to, and only have a couple of miles of road around them...

...but other than the above, I don't know of any that don't use cars.

[slowlane]

Smith Island Maryland, and Tangier Island Virginia, (next to it) are small self-contained fishing communities. You can read about them on Wikipedia