Mountain Chatter
Wellsboro 101
By JOHN FULMER

“Unspoiled Places to Visit, Live & Play,” is the subtitle of 101 Best Outdoor Towns, arecently published guidebook from Countryman Press. Wellsboro residents can be proud their burg made this exclusive list, which includes two other PA town: Milford, in the Delaware Water Gap area, and Ohiopyle, which sits on the Youghiogheny River in the commonwealth’s southwest corner.
 Authors Sarah Tuff and Greg Melville point out the proximity of Pine Creek Gorge, talk about the Laurel Festival and the lovely fall foliage, yak about Main Street’s attractions, and give props to the area’s abundance of fishing, canoeing, kayaking, and hiking.
They also claim Wellsboro gets its small-town, New England look because it was part of the Connecticut Grant and use the “Grand Canyon of the East,” and nearby abandoned mining and lumber towns—they call them “ghost towns”—as a way to link Wellsboro to the Rocky Mountains and the West.
For example: “After a day that begins with a ninety-nine cent cup of coffee at an authentic diner and ends with rolling out the Primaloft in a lakeside yurt, you may feel you’re closer to the Wild West than New England.”
We’re not sure about the yurts and Primaloft sounds suspiciously like an anti-depressant, which people don’t use much around here, but we’re pretty sure you can guess which diner they’re talking about.
Each entry includes a “Local Legend,” which in Wellsboro’s case is the 1874 First National Bank robbery. Bank president John Robinson and his family, the authors say, were abducted at home and taken to the bank where Robinson opened the vault. The seven culprits took $50,000 and, though two of the men were later captured, the rest escaped for good.

Northeast towns on the list:
Connecticut: Cornwall
Maine: Bethel, Kingfield, and Southwest Harbor
Massachusetts: Lenox and Williamstown
New Hampshire: Jackson, Peterborough, and Wolfeboro
New York: Lake Placid and New Platz
Rhode Island: Tiverton
Vermont: East Burke, Middlebury, Montpelier, and Newport