Pacanów, Poland, once a majority Jewish market town, built the European Fairy Tale Centre on a comic strip joke and opened it in 2010.

In 1928 Kit Carson County bought a 1905 Denver carousel for $1,200. Restored from 1976 to 2001, it still turns in Burlington, Colorado.

Real de Catorce, San Luis Potosi, a town of 1,395 at the 2020 census, was named a Pueblo Magico in 2001 and sells its ruins as the attraction.

Rühstädt, Germany became Germany’s only European Stork Village in 1996, decades after residents began building nests for wild storks.

In March 1985 Riverside, Iowa’s council voted itself the future birthplace of Captain Kirk. The claim became a festival, a museum and a monument.

Matjiesfontein, South Africa became a Victorian spa town from a Karoo railway stop, and the state declared the village a national monument in 1975.

Lemmon, South Dakota is known for Petrified Wood Park, about 100 towers and cones built from 1930 to 1933 of petrified wood found within 25 miles.

Kennebunkport, Maine, a Gilded Age resort village, anchors the Maine Beaches region, where state figures put 2024 visitor spending at $2.5 billion.

Fulton, Missouri heard Churchill’s 1946 iron curtain speech, then moved a London church destroyed in the Blitz to its campus, stone by stone, as memorial.

Alice Springs, Northern Territory staged its first Henley-on-Todd regatta in 1962, a boat race run on the sand of a dry riverbed.