What is the most obscure, locally famous, place that you have been?

Especially as you travel across America, there are these local places that everyone in town knows, but that are hardly world-famous. Or maybe they are more famous than they seem.

When I was a teenager my family stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell South Dakota. It was crazy – an entire museum / shrine dedicated to corn. As we walked around it, we couldn’t get over the feeling that this place must be unique in all the world – surely there couldn’t be two Corn Palaces. On that same trip, we stopped at Wall Drug in Wall South Dakota – and had the same feeling.

Year’s later I overheard someone discussing Mitchell South Dakota. I asked them if they went to the Corn Palace – and they had! It was a strange sort of bonding that occurred instantly, from a shared experience and a shared sense of bewilderment over that unusual landmark.

There are no shortage of these places. A few years back while on a business trip in Texas, my colleagues wanted to stop at the Madisonville Buc-ee’s. It is a truck stop, but a truck stop of the kind that only seems to exist in Texas. The store was huge, and they had the largest selection of beef jerky I have ever seen. I looked around the store and wondered what a visitor from Europe, the Caribbean, or South Asia would think about this place.

While drafting this post, I came upon a website - http://www.bigthings.ca/. It turns out that Canada has so many comically large snowmen, fish, and coins that an entire web site has been set up to guide us on our way. What possesses a town to erect a 39’ cowboy boot (Edmonton AB) is beyond me. But when you find yourself heading to someplace new, take a minute to find out if they have any special, odd, but famous attractions. You too can belong to the secret club of people who have debated buying a mounted rabbit’s head with antlers, known to all who visit the town of Wall, SD as a Jackalope.