There’s a place in mid-western NSW (Australia) about 5 miles from a town called Gundagai. Now Gundagai isn’t famous for anything much, and the spot 5 miles out of town is famous for even less. Except for a dog, perched on a tuckerbox.
A certain pedestrian road crossing in North London.
Of all things, a phone booth:
And there WAS “The Tree of Tenere”.
This is one reason why U2 have never said exactly where in the Joshua Tree National Park they shot the cover for that iconic album.
Yeah, for this reason I would need more clarification from the OP. Does the site have to be one that people would travel long distances solely or primarily for that purpose? Do the streets have to be bustling with tourist trap crap?
Because the Wright Brothers Park (excellent, btw) is a sideshow from a week at the beach. You go there to take a break from drinking and getting sunburned. Also, mentioned above, Shanksville, PA might fit the bill, but apart from the visitor’s center, gift shop, and the memorial, there is nothing there and it is in the middle of nowhere, PA. Maybe if you are driving by you pop off the turnpike and drive several miles to see it, but it isn’t really a destination.
I’m looking for places (especially small towns like Gettysburg) where the local economy depends significantly on tourism and it’s only because something happened there (or maybe was the inspiration for something, like Mt. Airy and Mayberry). People would still visit the Outer Banks even if the Wright Brothers didn’t have their first flight there.
Was Scranton, Pennsylvania much of a tourist destination before the American version of “The Office”?
So does Shanksville, PA count?
Is it now? I don’t consider packing up the station wagon and taking the family to Scranton for my recreational needs.
You might not, but many people do.
No, because it’s more of a stop on the way to somewhere else rather than, at the very least, a day trip. Once you’ve visited the Flight 93 Memorial what are you going to do but continue on your way to or from Pittsburgh?
Long after the show was done, we stopped there and it was delightful. The Roslyn Cafe (In the show, an apostrophe was stuck on the mural outside to make it Roslyn’s), The Brick, the storefront that still has “Dr. Joel Fleischman” stenciled on the window… AND it’s right up the road from the diner where Agent Cooper had pie in Twin Peaks.
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My example would be a road trip we begged my parents to take us on when we were little: Hannibal, Missouri. We loved it! The whitewashed fence, the scary “Injun Joe” cave…
But I’m betting it wouldn’t be much of anything without Tom Sawyer (or his pal Samuel) having lived there.
It’s been a local tourist spot for a while - if you only live a few hours away (and millions of people do), you might take a day- or weekend-trip to Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton.
We drove by Shanksville on our way to a friend’s property for camping weekends. Shawnee Park is nearby, as was the Ship Hotel.
After 9/11 I drove by five or six times, but never stopped at the memorial.
Has anyone mentioned the “Four Corners”, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet? The only place in the Union where four states meet at one point.
The phone booth is gone, sadly.
There is Hollister, but not really:Hollister, Calif., is at odds with Abercrombie over name
Cooperstown is best known for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it’s not the sole reason for its existence, or for tourism. It’s a historic town at the foot of Otsego Lake that was founded by (and named for) the Cooper family (as in James Fenimore, noted American novelist). The Hotel there would have existed and been popular even without baseball. It’s also home to the sprawling Farmer’s Museum and a nearby Art museum. Being a resort on a NY lake alone would’ve made it a prime site.
Speaking of phone booths as tourist destinations
A Maryland Best Buy has become a destination for people seeking a fairly obsolete piece of technology: a pay phone.
They’re looking for one pay phone in particular, the one that plays a key role in the wildly popular podcast “Serial,” which chronicles a reporter’s investigation into the 1999 murder of Baltimore-area teenager Hae Min Lee.
West Wendover, Nevada, on the other hand, exists for one reason, and one reason only.
It’s the closest point in Nevada to Salt Lake City.
Wendover doesn’t even have a local source of water. The only people go there is because it’s a 2-hour drive across the Salt Flats from Salt Lake City, an almost straight shot west along I-80. Once you get there, you have legalized gambling and a plethora of liquor stores. The latter isn’t as big now as it was years ago. Things have loosened up in the Beehive State in the past few decades, but even when I was there in the 1980s there were few liquor stores in town, and if you wanted anything stronger than 3.2 beer you had to join a “private club”.
Prostitution isn’t legal there, although I’m sure you can get the illicit kind. For legal brothels you have to travel farther west into Nevada to Wells or Elko or Carlin.
Being Zimbabwean, the Victoria Falls springs to mind.
There are a few small game reserves nearby, and a huge one (Hwange) a bit down the road - 100km - but no one goes there for anything but the falls.
If you happen to be nearby in the rainy season, I’d recommend it, though the last 2 or 3 times I went were in drought years and could not compare with the full rains.
And speaking of that, do tourists go to Niagara Falls for anything other than the falls? I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were other touristy things in that area now, but I would argue that the only reason those other touristy things were built was because tourists were already going there for the falls.