Best Hometowns 2025: Yellow Springs

The ancient Roman coin hangs from a chain adorned with small beads. It has made a trip across hundreds of years and thousands of miles to end up here, displayed alongside a variety of coins from other cultures and countries that have been turned into necklaces, rings, bracelets and jacket pins. 

The coins range from the out-of-circulation Franc and Drachma to still-relevant currencies such as the Yen and Nepalese Rupee. It seems like there might be hundreds of such creations at Yellow Springs’ Singapore Seahorse Coin Jewelry, but thousands is more like it.

“I’ve always been very fascinated with the world and different people in the world,” says Nicole Mikel-Swani, a lifelong artist who has been transforming coins into jewelry for 11 years and has been collecting them even longer. “The coins, to me, are these little pieces of art and history, and they represent all of these different people and places all over the world. I just feel like all of us have these connections to these other places.”

Singapore Singhouse Coin Jewelry is one of the many arts-focused businesses that call Yellow Springs home. (photo by Matthew Allen)

While the pieces are simple in design, they speak volumes to those who enter Mikel-Swani’s shop along Corry Street in downtown Yellow Springs. Although she didn’t grow up in town, Mikel-Swani has found the creativity, connection and community for which the 2.75-square-mile village located about 20 miles east of Dayton is well known. She grew up in nearby Tipp City and recalls visiting the village soon after she was able to drive. Mikel-Swani moved to Yellow Springs in 2016, first renting an outdoor spot from another vendor in the downtown for four years before she settled into her own shop.

It’s just one of the many arts-focused businesses visitors find in Yellow Springs. Take a stroll and you’ll make other discoveries, like Yellow Springs Pottery, Rose & Sal Vintage Shop, Bonadies Glass Studio, Wildflower Boutique and Asanda Imports. 

With a population of approximately 3,700 residents, the village oozes creativity from every corner. A storefront isn’t just a storefront. It’s a vibrant and colorful statement. A wall isn’t just a wall. It’s a canvas for one of Yellow Springs’ many public murals. A trashcan isn’t just a trashcan. It’s a sculpture project by Yellow Springs Pottery, which transformed the village’s receptacles into works of art. 

Yellow Springs Pottery is a creative fixture of the community and is involved with local efforts to beautify the village. (photo by Matthew Allen)

Phillip O’Rourke, executive director of the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce, says the village is defined by its open artistic expression, allowing creative people to take ideas and run with them in public spaces.

“There’s permission here to explore creativity,” he says. “There’s permission here to not be confined by the contemporary box. And all of that has always been part of the culture.”

Perhaps no one embodies this spirit more than hometown legend Dave Chappelle. The renowned comedian attended middle school in town and returned in 2004 after the success of his career. In 2020, he began hosting comedy shows in nearby cornfields and later purchased the old fire station, transforming it into YS Firehouse, an intimate 140-seat comedy club. This summer, he brought the cornfield shows back again and continues to invest in Yellow Springs with new projects, including a restaurant inside his club called Marco De Ohio, upgrades to the WYSO radio station and a second merchandise shop across the street from YS Firehouse. (The first, The Chappelle Shop, is located on Xenia Avenue.)

“One of the things that I appreciate about [Chappelle’s] presence here is that he’s a community member first,” O’Rourke says.

Ye Olde Trail Tavern (left) has been serving locals since 1827. Asanda Imports (right) stocks unique finds from around the globe. (photos by Matthew Allen) 

Prior to Chappelle’s association with the town, Yellow Springs was largely known for being the home of Antioch College. Founded in 1852 by Horace Mann, Antioch College was known for its early advocation of the liberal arts and placing an emphasis on progressive values. Some of the school’s most prestigious alumni include the likes of Coretta Scott King, future wife to Martin Luther King Jr., and Rod Serling, creator of “The Twilight Zone.”

While the school is still in operation, it’s sizably different, with its most recent graduating class having just 15 people. However, the university continues to be a place of higher learning and carries on its forward-thinking mission, offering personalized degree paths for students to curate their own academic programs. 

Historically, the college helped power the village’s education and industry by bringing young minds into the community, and it played a large role in contributing to Yellow Springs’ reputation as a progressive, forward-thinking place.

While the college was once a large contributor to employment in Yellow Springs, today that role is fulfilled by businesses such as Morris Bean, an aluminum manufacturing company that employs over 100 people, and Xylem, which produces products used for measuring water quality and employs 213 people. 

Yellow Springs Brewery has become a community gathering spot. (photo by Matthew Allen)

The Yellow Springs Exempted School District employs 96 people, and a $67 million project is underway to remodel and reconfigure the district’s elementary, middle and high school buildings, bringing significant upgrades to each facility.

Pam Conine, who worked as an intervention specialist in the Yellow Springs schools and taught at Antioch College and Antioch University Midwest for a combined 42-year career in education, now serves as the village’s mayor, a job she has held since 2018. She even crossed paths with a young Chappelle as one of his teachers at Morgan Middle School. Conine moved to Yellow Springs from Piqua nearly 46 years ago and has never looked back.

“I had friends who lived in Yellow Springs,” she says. “They said, ‘Pam, you’ve got to come check out Yellow Springs.’ And the minute I did, I was sold. This is where I wanted to be. This is where I wanted to live.”

Yellow Springs embodies a self-sustaining community, a unique feat for a village of its size. The town provides its residents with nearly all municipal services, including electric, water, sewer, and police and building departments. There is also a strong drive within the community to preserve forests and green space. A greenbelt surrounds the village, while the Tecumseh Land Trust — a nonprofit conservation group founded by local citizens in 1990 — protects the surrounding farmland. There is also Glen Helen Nature Preserve, located on the village’s east side along the Little Miami Scenic Trail.

Kids take a hike at Glen Helen Nature Preserve in Yellow Springs (photo by Matthew Allen)

Other investments in the village include the Spring Meadows housing development, a 23-acre subdivision that is providing 90 new homes and an additional 4 acres of green space. The groundbreaking was held in June 2023 and the project is about two-thirds complete, with some homes already sold and others up for sale. 

Just 2 miles outside the village, you will find Young’s Jersey Dairy, a family-owned-and-operated dairy farm that offers homemade ice cream and other dairy products in addition to entertainment in the form of batting cages, miniature golf, animal visits and a play space for kids.

With creatively charged businesses, dedicated citizens like O’Rourke and Conine, and a history of being forward-thinking and welcoming, Yellow Springs brings a shared sense of belonging to not only its own residents but all who visit.

“People come here to be kind,” O’Rourke says. “They come here to be nice. And that’s the reputation that the community has set, and that’s what people want to come and emulate.” 

More Best Hometowns 2025-26: Ashland | Barnesville | Green | Mount Vernon | Yellow Springs

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