We're No. 1: USA Today readers pick Carson City as best capital city travel destination

The readers of USA Today have chosen Carson City as the “best travel worthy state capital in the nation,” officials of the 10 Best contest announced this morning.

The win gives Carson City bragging rights, a nice shot in the arm for local tourism, a national and international spotlight and citywide pride that comes with living in the state capital.

“In a well-deserved honor, Carson City was named today as the best travel-worthy state capital in the United States by USA Today,” said Carson City Mayor Bob Crowell. “This is a tribute to our community’s citywide pride and efforts to promote Nevada’s capital city as a tourist destination. Thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this wonderful recognition.”

Carson City tourism officials were thrilled by the news.
“When you look at the grassroots local influence behind this, community tourism bureaus and the Nevada Commission on Tourism supporting us, it really speaks of who we are as the capital city in Nevada,” said Joel Dunn, executive director of the Carson City Visitors Bureau. “It is a great win for us.”

"What a great community effort. Once we were contacted by USA Today with the announcement it didn't take long for the community and the state to pick it up and run with it," said Kyle Horvath, social media manager for the visitors bureau. "It's great to see the community pride! Well deserved Carson City!"

It was citizens like Joe Reinbolt, a lifelong resident of Carson City, who contributed to the effort by doing a crowd source to collect money to sponsor social media pages like Facebook, to get the word out about voting.

“When I first saw the poll we were in third and I thought we will lose because other cities are much bigger than us,” said Reinbolt, the multimedia technician for Carson Lanes. “I thought, we need to do something and so I put my social media and marketing skills to work, encouraging everyone to follow the rules, to vote and to make us No. 1. No one ever remembers No. 2 and that’s how I approached it.”
A lot of people followed Reinbolt’s lead, and Team Carson City was built, including get out the vote efforts by Nevada Live Magazine's Dana Lee Fruend who used her Facebook pages to push for votes.

“It was not only me but the whole town got behind this with a passion and that’s when I noticed the poll began to reflect that and we were taking the lead,” said Reinbolt.

Visitors Bureau director Dunn said the support of people like Reinbolt really helped with the push. “When you take what people like Joe did, and he did a fantastic job, and you tie it to our push and then a statewide effort from outlying bureaus, the focus became a huge pride campaign for Carson City and Nevada.”

Here's what USA Today had to say:
The 50 destinations that serve as state capitals in the USA represent an incredibly diverse assortment of cities -- everything from huge metropolises to tiny towns. We asked USA TODAY 10Best readers to vote for their favorite from a list of 20 nominees, and the winners might surprise you!

Winning by a sizable margin was Carson City, Nevada, a small town of about 50,000 with some excellent historical attractions and a location convenient for exploring nearby Lake Tahoe and Reno.

Runner-up Juneau proves that bigger isn't always better; the Alaskan capital city doesn't even have a road leading in or out, but it does have a glacier within its city limits (and not many cities can claim that!).

Little Rock, Boise and Sacramento also finished in the top five ahead of some pretty heavy hitters — certainly an honor to be proud of.

The winners of 'Best State Capital' category in our USA TODAY 10Best Readers' Choice contest are as follows:

Carson City, Nevada
Juneau, Alaska
Little Rock, Arkansas
Boise, Idaho
Sacramento, California
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Indianapolis, Indiana
Springfield, Illinois
Madison, Wisconsin
Helena, Montana

A big congratulations to all the winners (and keep this list handy for planning your next vacation).