Switzerland in USA? 20 U.S. Destinations That Look Like the Swiss Alps
We live in Colorado, so we have a slightly unfair advantage when it comes to knowing what American mountain scenery looks like at its best.
But even we were surprised by some of these destinations.
Some of these places have literally been nicknamed after Switzerland for over a century. Others you’ve probably never heard of.
A few are the kind of places where you pull over on the side of the road, look up, and feel confused about what continent you’re on.
The best part is that no passport is required. And some of them don’t require Swiss prices either (some do 😬).
Here are 20 places in the U.S. that earn the comparison.
#20: New Glarus, WI
Back in 1845, about 100 Swiss immigrants packed up and settled in southern Wisconsin. They built it the way they knew how.. Swiss style.
New Glarus is as close to an actual Swiss village as you’ll find in America.
The buildings are done in Helvetia style, the festivals are genuinely Swiss (they still do a Wilhelm Tell performance every September), and the New Glarus Brewing Company makes some of the best craft beer in the Midwest and refuses to sell outside Wisconsin borders.
That last part is legendary, so we had to include it.
People drive across state lines just to bring the beer home. The surrounding hills are rolling, not jagged, so this isn’t a scenic lookalike. But as a Swiss cultural experience, it’s one of the most authentic in the country, in my opinion.
#19: Helen, GA
A mountain town in the north Georgia foothills that decided, in 1969, to go full Bavarian and never look back.
Helen is a little kitschy, I’ll admit. But with the Chattahoochee River running through, the Blue Ridge backdrop, and the architecture.. it’s pretty convincing.
Oktoberfest here runs from mid-September through early November, which makes it one of the longest-running in the country.
Where To Stay Near Helen: Holiday Inn Express & Suites Helen
#18: Talkeetna, AK
The thing about Alaska that no photo captures is the scale.
Talkeetna sits at the center of three rivers, about two hours north of Anchorage. On clear days you can see the Alaska Range rising to the north, including Denali, the highest peak in North America, at just over 20,000 feet.
The Swiss Alps top out around 15,000.
The whole culture of Talkeetna is alpine in the truest sense. Climbers use it as base camp for Denali expeditions. Bush pilots run glacier-landing flights. Mountain guides hang around the coffee shops. It’s weird and wonderful and like nowhere else on this list!
Highly recommend going in summer when Denali is visible, which is not always a given.
Where To Stay Near Talkeetna: Lodge Suites at Susitna River Lodge
#17: Wallowa Lake, OR
Northeastern Oregon doesn’t come up in a lot of “looks like Switzerland” conversations, and that’s a shame.
Wallowa Lake is a glacially carved lake at the foot of the Eagle Cap Wilderness, with the Wallowa Mountains rising behind it. Locals and visitors have been calling this area “Oregon’s Alps” for decades, and it earns the name.
The Wallowa Lake Tramway is the steepest four-person gondola in North America. It gains 3,700 feet in one ride and tops out on Mount Howard at over 8,200 feet. The views up there are jaw-dropping!
It’s about five to five and a half hours from Portland, which keeps it off most people’s radar. Off mine too, honestly. We still haven’t made it, which I can’t fully justify.
Where To Stay Near Wallowa Lake: Eagle Cap Chalets
#16: Mineral King Valley, CA
There is a valley in the southern Sierra Nevada where the marmots will destroy your car.
Mineral King is a dead-end alpine basin inside Sequoia National Park. Twenty-five miles of winding one-lane road to get there, no amenities, and a valley floor sitting at about 7,400 feet with granite walls rising thousands of feet above. It looks nothing like the crowded parts of Sequoia.
The marmot thing isn’t a joke. The Park Service warns you to wrap your car in protective covers overnight. The marmots chew through radiator hoses and engine wiring. They have been doing this for years. Our travel community is full of people with stories.
The valley itself is worth every inch of that marmot-risk.
Where To Stay Near Mineral King: Soleil Luna
#15: Lake Chelan, WA
Fifty miles long, never more than two miles wide, and cut into the eastern Cascades like a fjord. Lake Chelan truly doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
It’s the third deepest lake in the United States, behind only Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe. The lower end has wineries and resort towns.
Stehekin sits at the far northern tip, accessible only by ferry or floatplane. About 75 people live there year-round. No roads connect it to the rest of Washington. You take the ferry the full length of the lake, step off, and you’re there.
We haven’t done the full ferry trip yet, but it’s one of my most-wanted experiences in the Pacific Northwest.
Where To Stay Near Lake Chelan: Driftin Cabanas
#14: Index, WA
Most people driving Highway 2 from Seattle toward Stevens Pass never stop in Index, and that’s a mistake.
It’s a town of about 200 people at the base of some of the most dramatic granite in the Cascades. Index Wall is a legitimate big-wall climbing area. The Skykomish River runs alongside town.
And the peaks above go vertical so fast, and so completely, that the whole scene feels more like the Swiss Alps than anything you’d expect to find 45 minutes from an Everett freeway on-ramp.
There’s not a lot to do in Index beyond stare at it. Honestly, fine with me.
Where To Stay Near Index: Riverfront Retreat
#13: Durango, CO
The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad winds through the San Juan Mountains on a route that would make a Swiss train conductor nervous. We haven’t ridden it yet, which feels like a crime given how close we’ve been. The scenery from the photos alone is enough.
Durango itself sits in the Animas River Valley at the southern edge of the San Juans. The mountains here aren’t the jagged 13,000-foot walls you get farther north, but the combination of river access, historic character, and mountain backdrop is alpine in spirit.
Good base for the southern San Juans too. Silverton and Ouray are both within striking distance.
Where to stay in Durango: SpringHill Suites Durango
#12: Lake Placid, NY
The Adirondacks get overlooked in these conversations because the scale is smaller than the Rockies or Cascades. Lake Placid specifically, though, hits different.
Two Winter Olympics. And a main street that runs alongside Mirror Lake, surrounded by a town whose entire identity is built around alpine sport: bobsled, ski jumping, biathlon, cross-country, etc. etc.
The Olympic Training Center is still active and you can watch athletes train in the summer.
It’s the most European-feeling mountain town in the eastern U.S., and not because of any architectural gimmick. It’s because the whole reason the town exists is mountain sport. That’s Swiss in the truest sense, if you ask me.
Where to Stay in Lake Placid: Lake Placid Inn Boutique Hotel
#11: Stowe, VT
Here’s a fun one.. the von Trapp family from The Sound of Music ended up in Stowe.
After fleeing Austria, they settled in Vermont, found the landscape familiar, and built the Trapp Family Lodge on a hillside above town. It’s still there and you can stay in it. Mike and I have talked about doing that trip for years and somehow never pulled the trigger.
Stowe is Vermont’s most alpine resort town, with Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, anchoring the skyline behind covered bridges and white church steeples.
The gondola ride up Mansfield gives you views that could pass for central Europe without the language barrier. Especially in fall.
Where to Stay in Stowe: Green Mountain Inn
#10: Sun Valley, ID
Ernest Hemingway spent the last years of his life in Ketchum, Idaho, just outside Sun Valley. He hunted, he fished. He’s buried there.
The Wood River Valley sits between the Pioneer and Boulder Mountains and has a polished, understated quality that most ski resorts never quite manage. Sun Valley Resort opened in 1936 and the whole valley has a quiet grandeur that feels more European than most American mountain towns I’ve been to.
Not flashy, and not trying to be. Just really, really good mountain scenery with a sophisticated small-town feel to back it up.
Where to Stay in Sun Valley, ID: Sun Valley Resort
#9: Silverton, CO
Silverton is the most enclosed town in Colorado. The mountains don’t surround it. They swallow it.
At 9,318 feet, it sits in a high alpine bowl in the San Juans, completely ringed by peaks above 13,000 feet. Population is somewhere around 730. There’s one main road in from the south and one over the pass to the north, the Million Dollar Highway connecting Silverton to Ouray, which is one of the most famous mountain drives in the country for very good reason.
We’ve driven that trip through the San Juans many times, and there’s nothing quite like arriving in Silverton for the first time. It’s a disorienting experience. You’ve wound through high mountain passes and then suddenly there’s a whole town sitting in a bowl in the middle of all of it.
How is this real?
Quick Tip: If you’re into camping, book a spot at Molas Lake Campground. It might just be your best camping experience ever thanks to the views.
#8: North Cascades, WA
The North Cascades have been called “the American Alps” by enough people, for enough decades, that it’s basically official.
More than 300 glaciers, jagged snow-capped peaks that look nothing at all like the rest of the Cascades, and Diablo Lake sitting in the middle of it all in a color of turquoise that doesn’t seem possible until you see it. The hue comes from glacial flour suspended in the water, the same process behind those impossibly blue Swiss and Austrian alpine lakes.
North Cascades is also the least-visited national park in the contiguous U.S. If that seems impossible for a place this beautiful, well. Now we know where we’re going next summer.
#7: Crested Butte, CO
In 1990, the Colorado state legislature officially designated Crested Butte the “Wildflower Capital of Colorado.” That title is earned!
By mid-July, the meadows above town carpet themselves in over 114 wildflower species. Mike and I have been to a lot of Colorado mountain towns, and nothing compares to Crested Butte in July. It’s the kind of display that stops conversations mid-sentence.
The town itself helps. Unlike most Colorado resort towns where the ski resort and the historic downtown blur together, Crested Butte keeps them separate. The Victorian main street has its own identity, colorful, walkable, not overwhelmed by ski infrastructure. It’s the most visually charming alpine town in the state, and I’ll stand by that.
Where to stay in Crested Butte: Elk Mountain Lodge (our favorite, we’ve stayed here twice)
#6: Estes Park / Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
Most people come to Rocky Mountain National Park for Trail Ridge Road and the elk. What they don’t always expect is the high alpine tundra.
At over 12,000 feet, the landscape looks nothing like the dense forests lower down. It looks like the high Alps, open, treeless, enormous sky. The road spends more miles above treeline than just about any other paved road in the country, and the views up there are on another level entirely.
Estes Park is the gateway town, and yes, it gets crowded. Go up high enough, early enough in the morning, and it’s just you and the tundra. Worth it every time, as far as we’re concerned.
Where to Stay in Estes Park: Riversong Inn Retreat
#5: Glacier National Park, MT
Mike and I have been to Glacier twice now, and I still don’t have a good answer for why we don’t go every year. The Going-to-the-Sun Road crosses the Continental Divide on a 50-mile drive that has been called the most scenic in North America, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration.
Glacier has a quality that’s hard to describe. U-shaped glacial valleys, hanging waterfalls, peaks that look like they belong in the Bernese Oberland. In July, the wildflowers along Logan Pass are a “wait, are we in Europe?” moment. We’d go every summer if the drive from Colorado weren’t what it is.
The park now has around 26 named glaciers, down dramatically from over a century ago. That’s a whole separate and sobering conversation. The scenery that remains is still extraordinary.
#4: Jackson Hole / Grand Teton National Park, WY
The Teton Range is geologically unusual. Most mountain ranges ease you in with foothills, then ridgelines, then peaks. The Tetons skip all of that. They punch straight out of the valley floor, vertical from base to summit, with no warm-up whatsoever.
That profile is exactly what makes the Swiss Alps feel so theatrical. The Tetons do it as well as any range in the lower 48.
Jenny Lake at the base of the range, the Snake River winding through the valley, those peaks in the background. It’s a combination that’s hard to believe until you’re standing in front of it. We’ve been to a lot of mountain destinations, and Jackson Hole holds its own against all of them.
Where to Stay in Jackson: Wyoming Inn of Jackson Hole
#3: Telluride, CO
Telluride sits at the end of a box canyon with 14,000-foot peaks on three sides.
From Main Street, you can see Bridal Veil Falls, at 365 feet the tallest free-falling waterfall in Colorado, cascading off the canyon wall. There’s a hydroelectric plant from 1907 sitting right on top of the falls, still generating power for the town.
The Victorian storefronts are intact. A free gondola connects the historic district to the ski mountain. Festivals run nearly every weekend in summer. The combination of setting and culture makes Telluride the most complete alpine experience in Colorado, and I will argue that with anyone who disagrees.
Where to Stay in Telluride: The Hotel Telluride
#2: Leavenworth, WA
In 1962, a struggling logging town in the Cascades formed a committee to figure out how to survive. The landscape looked like Bavaria. Someone had been to Bavaria. The rest, as they say, is history.
Leavenworth went Bavarian, and it worked in a way that most theme-town attempts don’t, because the setting actually holds up. The Wenatchee River runs through the valley, the Cascades rise above the rooflines, and the whole package feels coherent.
It’s not a facade in front of strip malls. The mountains are truly spectacular.
3.4 million people visited in 2024. The Christmas season specifically, when the entire town lights up for the holiday market, has become a Pacific Northwest tradition.
About two and a half hours from Seattle. Mike and I have made our fair share of visits to this magical town.
Where to Stay in Leavenworth: Bavarian Lodge
#1: Ouray, CO
People have been calling Ouray the “Switzerland of America” since at least the Victorian era, when wealthy visitors arrived at the hot springs, looked up at the peaks, and didn’t have a better word for it.
The nickname is earned. Ouray sits in a box canyon at around 7,800 feet, completely enclosed by peaks above 13,000 feet. The Ouray Hot Springs Pool, fed by seven natural springs, sits right in the middle of town and has been there, more or less unchanged, since 1927. Still the best hot springs experience in Colorado, in our experience.
The Ouray Ice Park draws climbers from around the world every winter. The jeep trails into the high country are some of the most dramatic four-wheel-drive routes in the Rockies. And the Main Street Victorian downtown is still intact, not overrun, not turned into a strip of chain stores.
Ouray is our pick for the most Swiss town in America. Go!
Where to Stay in Ouray: Hot Springs Inn
Switzerland is incredible, and if you get the chance, go. But if you’ve been waiting for the Alps and haven’t found a window in the budget or the calendar, start here. Work your way up the list.
By the time you get to Ouray, you might not need the passport after all!
