Coastal SLO County town lands on another ‘best of’ list. Here’s why
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- Cambria is listed by WorldAtlas among eight California towns with the best downtowns.
- From downtown Cambria, California, visitors access forest, ocean, history, shopping, more
- WorldAtlas highlighted Cambria downtown’s Main Street, businesses, history and more.
A coastal town in San Luis Obispo County has made its way onto another WorldAtlas.com “best of” list.
Cambria and seven other communities showcase what the geography resource described as having the best downtowns in California and providing “perfect destinations for a long weekend.”
While definitions of what a downtown should include can vary drastically from location to location in the Golden State, these eight “stand out as they all have great downtown areas featuring local museums, a vibrant art scene and more,” WorldAtlas said in its recent website posting.
“Each of the eight towns on this list has its own sense of place, making them some of the most distinguished downtowns in California,” the post continued. “These small towns show that the most memorable downtowns are not defined by size, but by how they reflect and incorporate their surroundings and history.”
Among the small California towns that WorldAtlas highlighted were (in the unnumbered order listed): Healdsburg, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Solvang, Nevada City, Three Rivers, Mendocino, Cambria and Avalon on Santa Catalina Island.
It’s not the first time WorldAtlas has shown the North Coast town some love.
In February, Cambria made the site’s list of nine “overlooked towns worth visiting on the Pacific West Coast.”
And in 2023, it made WorldAtlas’ list of the “11 most picturesque small towns in California.”
How the website saw Cambria
WorldAtlas defined Cambria’s downtown area as blending “Main Street with the coastal landscape of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve,” a 437-acre community-owned park that showcases various habitats, such as a rare native Monterey pine forest, and features a blufftop boardwalk and marine-terrace trails that provide stunning views of the Pacific.
Cambria’s East Village section of downtown includes “The Cambria Historical Museum … on Center Street, which is just off Main Street. It is contained inside one of Cambria’s oldest homes, the Guthrie-Bianchini House, built in 1870. Its exhibits and displays narrate the stories of early settlers, the development of the town, and the local industries that shaped it,” the posting said.
Among the attractions of Cambria’s Main Street in the business district are “many galleries, such as Artifacts Gallery, which showcases fine art in mediums ranging from sculpture to paintings produced by some of the nation’s leading artists.,” the website said. “The Main Street Grill is down from Artifacts Gallery, known for its classic barbecue items on the menu.”
The so-called East Ranch portion of Fiscalini Ranch Preserve crosses Highway 1 to snuggle up to downtown Cambria via several access points, and many others from residential areas making it easy for visitors and residents to get there.
How WorldAtlas bills itself
WorldAtlas “is one of the largest publishing resources in geography and other topics it covers, including sociology, demography, environment, economics, politics, and travel.”
The website said that, in 2019 alone, WorldAtlas served over 165 million readers from around the world.
“We are proud to be a resource to both educators and student, and to be a source of information to those who are simply curious about the world they live in,” the site says.
This story was originally published April 15, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
