ONLY IN PA: Here’s the next part of the Bradford article from Only In Your State. 

“Bradford even had one of the first monorails, which feels oddly futuristic for a town where the coffee shops still look like they’ve been passed down through several generations.

“And the arts scene surprised me. The Bradford Creative and Performing Arts Center pulls in performers all season, and Pitt-Bradford’s Bromeley Theater hosts authors, musicians, and traveling shows. 

“The Marilyn Horne Museum downtown adds another completely unexpected layer — opera history in a small Pennsylvania city surrounded by forest? Sure. Why not? It somehow works.

“But Bradford really leans into its moment during Old Fashioned Christmas. The whole downtown transforms into something that feels handcrafted rather than performed. Lights everywhere. Actual greenery hung on actual buildings. There’s cider in steaming cups, music drifting from doorways and this sense that the town collectively decided to pause everything else to enjoy being cold and festive together. It isn’t shiny-perfect…There are mismatched mittens, someone inevitably spills cocoa, and the wind does whatever it wants, but that’s the charm. It feels lived-in, not staged.

“Nature wraps around the town in a way that’s almost dramatic. So if you’re looking for a place where holiday lights, forest trails and small-town charm coexist without feeling manufactured, Bradford deserves a spot on your list. Visit Pennsylvania, visit Bradford, and let yourself enjoy a town that doesn’t perform magic, because it doesn’t have to. It just has it, in that quiet, steady way real places do. And if you catch yourself feeling a little sentimental while sipping a warm drink downtown…well, look at that. Maybe Hallmark has been onto something this whole time.”