Decorah finishes runner-up in Greatest Midwest Town contest

Traverse City, Michigan has won Midwest Living's contest to choose the "Greatest Midwest Town" in on-line voting.

Decorah has finished as runner-up in the contest, earning the respect of the Traverse City Tourism organization in the process: "Traverse City's strongest challenger, however, turned out to be the plucky Iowa town of Decorah, a college community along the Upper Iowa River with a strong Norwegian-American flavor. For weeks it was a close contest between the two towns, but fans and residents of Traverse City eventually mustered the votes to prevail."

The news release (click on the link) from the Meredith Corporation, which publishes Midwest Living, said nearly 150,000 votes were cast on-line in the contest.

Meredith Corporation had originally said it would announce the winner of the contest on June 24th, when its summer issue hits the newsstands.  However, several Michigan news websites announced last Monday that they had learned Traverse City had won the contest.  That led Meredith to issue a news release on Wednesday, followed later Wednesday by a news release from Traverse City Tourism.

Twelve communities were chosen as possible winners of the contest--one from each Midwestern state.  Decorah's finish as runner-up in the contest means it ranked higher than all but one community in the Midwest.