The person who coined the phrase “getting there is half the fun” must have been the owner of a roadside attraction.

The World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Nut Lady, Leatherman, and Wall Drug—the kinds of bizarre attractions that adorn highways and interstates across the United States and draw millions of
visitors each year.

For decades, these quirky oddities along our nation’s highways, street corners, and front yards have become welcome diversions on any trip, providing ample reasons for people to stretch their legs, snap a picture or two, and, perhaps, give them a story to tell.

“In true mosey mode, you can find a roadside attraction anywhere,” says Mark Sedenquist, co-creator of the web site roadtripamerica.com. “We’ve actually found that some of the most amazing places aren’t in any tourist- or guidebook.” Finding these gems is usually accidental, or happenstance, as their locations are often as obscure as their reasons for being.

The laws that govern roadside attractions aren’t as strict as, let’s say, those that preside over quantum physics. It seems the only rule that applies is: A roadside attraction must be something that compels travelers to stop and sneak a peak to break up the monotony of the road.

Roadside attractions can vary in basically every detail, i.e., size, shape, location, reason for being, longevity, etc.

“Some of them are truly of the moment,” says Megan Edwards, co-creator of roadtripamerica.com and author of Roads from the Ashes: An Odyssey in Real Life on the Virtual Frontier. “I remember driving in Northern California once and we saw an elephant standing on the side of the road. We had to get off and take a look. It ended up it was the camping place for a circus that was coming into town.”

In fact, most attractions seem to have a shelf life that rivals a carton of eggs.

Many times a roadside attraction is the brainchild of one person, and when that individual dies, so does the vision, says Doug Kirby, co-editor of roadsideamerica.com and co-author of the book The New Roadside America: The Modern Traveler’s Guide to the Wild and Wonderful America’s Tourist Attractions.

“A month after you drive through an area, a couple will go out of business and a couple will start,” he says. However, some attractions do leave a more enduring impression on our country’s landscape simply based on their peculiar identities.

Ice Water Saves All

Back in the 1930s, Wall Drug, an enclosed collection of shops in Wall, S.D., felt the economic crunch of the Depression, as did most stores and businesses during the time period. Fortunately, the owners came up with an idea to quench their financial woes.

Out on the highway they made signs offering thirsty travelers free ice water if they stopped by the store. Soon, the cars began rumbling in and people spent money once inside, which ultimately saved the business and sparked a nationwide trend toward roadside attractions.

Wall Drug now encompasses a pharmacy museum, a chapel, a huge cafe, and an animated T. Rex, and brings in a significant income each season. From rattlesnake paperweights and bucking horses to plush “jackalope” dolls, Wall Drug continues to sell its western wares today, and, of course, customers still can get that complimentary ice water.

A Dollar and a Dream

The heyday of roadside attractions started not too long after the birth of Wall Drug. Kirby says, “We put it at post-World War II. It was an era of cheap gas, and the roads and cars were built well enough that you actually could make a family trip without taking your life in your hands.”

Sturdy billboards and garish neon spread the word of such attractions, and the promise of an American dream. Farmers, store owners, and entrepreneurs interested in making some extra money soon realized they might have something that people would pay to see, Kirby says.

But in the end, only a select few had the inspiration or the time to advertise and cultivate these impromptu rest stops. The first requirement of a roadside attraction is having something unusual to draw people off course. “If you’re talking about something like a gator farm, it’s a business [that already existed],” Kirby says. “But you also have these places where people are making an artistic statement, building some kind of crazy tower out of junk.”

Other folks seem to have more divine reasons for their creations. Kirby cites a spot in Lake Arthur, N.M., as one such locale. At this spot 40 minutes south of Roswell, a woman discovered that the face of Jesus appeared on a burrito, so she created the Shrine of the Miracle Tortilla on the side of her house in its honor. The attraction still stands more than 25 years later, but the image has faded beyond recognition.

Gopher It

Edwards notes another place where an entire area united to put together an attraction. In 1995 the townspeople of Torrington, in Alberta, Canada, an idyllic prairie town an hour northeast of Calgary, created a committee to find a solution to their population and economic shortfall. Their tiny “town” had been demoted to a “hamlet,” and the residents decided they needed some reason for travelers to stop there. A recent gopher infestation problem led to the idea of creating the Gopher Hole Museum.

Inside, real stuffed gophers are posed to resemble the townspeople. Exhibits include gophers dressed as a priest, bank robber, RCMP officer, duck hunter, firefighter, and beautician, among others. From miners to farmers the gophers imitate the townspeople.

“That alone probably wouldn’t have catapulted them into world fame,” Edwards says, “but the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals found out about it.” The ensuing publicity—even negative—fueled the museum’s purpose, she says. “Now, they get tons of visitors.”

The plan that propels roadside attractions into stardom generally isn’t complicated. A small attraction may get some notice from the local media, and as the word spreads they may break out from neighborhood fame into regional notoriety. “Then, maybe they’ll climb to the point where tour groups are flying in from Japan,” Kirby says.

This roadside attraction connoisseur has seen sites on all levels of notability. He personally has visited around 1,500 attractions, and the web site database he has created along with co-editors Ken Smith and Mike Wilkins features about 8,000 different sites. He says many of the attractions in the book and on the web site focus on the lighter side of things.

“We love these places because they make us laugh,” he says. “Also, at some of these places, you get a sense of danger. You get a charge out of spots that are a little more rickety or more of a firetrap than you would expect.”

Kirby says he enjoys some of the more unique attractions, like the Toilet Seat Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. Here, one man takes all the milestones in his life, such as wedding anniversaries or his travels around the world, and makes a piece of art about each event on a toilet seat.

He also recommends one of the country’s best-known attractions—South of the Border in Dillon, S.C. People love the Mexican theme world for its over-the-top billboards that start hundreds of miles away, and the cluster of restaurants and numerous fireworks shops, Kirby says.

Others, however, try to stay away because they don’t want to fall into the famous tourist trap—a reasoning that he doesn’t quite understand. “Why wouldn’t you pull off for 20 minutes of amusement and buy a milkshake?” he asks.

Mysterious Meccas

This country is filled with hot spots where roadside attractions seem to set up shop, says the husband and wife team of Sedenquist and Edwards. The West has Route 66, Route 1 up the Pacific coast, and the entire city of Las Vegas. On the East Coast there are Pigeon Forge, Tenn., Niagara Falls on the Canadian border, and Orlando, Fla. as the major roadside attraction hubs.

Kirby says many times attractions migrate toward major amusement parks and sightseeing capitals. “You can call them parasites,” he says, “the places that seem to benefit from the volume of people looking to see how they’re going to spend that extra half day when they’re not going to the big parks. That’s smart business. They don’t hurt the attendance of the larger parks, and they add to the character of each area.”

While not exactly near any meccas of entertainment, the Herr’s Snack Factory tour out in rural Nottingham, Pa., does provide visitors with a couple-hour diversion. Herr’s, the regional manufacturer of potato chips, popcorn, cheese curls, and other assorted salty snacks, allows visitors to stop by for a free tour of its facilities.

On a recent weekday, groups of families came with their children for an up-close look at the nuances of nosh making, from seeing the pretzel dough roll across the assembly line to the packaging process.

Richard Ross, of Malvern, Pa., brought his son and a friend for the self-proclaimed “tastiest tour in town.” “You just need to have a kid along to make it work,” he jokes.

David and Betty Eigenrauch, of Cherry Hill, N.J., also had some company. They came with their two grandchildren. “The location is so rural, but the equipment is so sophisticated,” says Betty, as the tour guide describes the high-tech camera used to detect and weed out the bad (brown, green, or burnt) chips.

Definitely not as technologically advanced but just as interesting for visitors is the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, Calif. At the Mystery Spot, people appear to change heights on level surfaces and seem to lean on one side of the boundary and not the other.

“It’s a place where things don’t appear to work very well as far as physics and gravity are concerned,” says Randall Fertig, manager of the Mystery Spot. “A lot of it has to do with human perspective, of what we think we see and what we expect to see as opposed to what we really do see. It gives you the chance to see a world that you’ve never seen before.”

The optical illusion has attracted visitors since in 1939, and about 400 people stop by daily during the summer months. Customers flock there because they like to play with their perception of reality and see what’s possible and what’s not, Fertig says. “People are very attracted to things that would be regarded as a mystery.”

He hears a wide assortment of explanations that try to unravel the unknown.

Some say alien spacecrafts have landed at the Mystery Spot. Others claim a large amount of gas is venting from the earth and that distorts people’s vision.

“One gentleman comes back on a monthly basis because he needs a gravitational vortex to make his time machine work,” Fertig says wryly.

The future of roadside attractions, especially the Mystery Spot, should remain strong, he says, attributing the success to the “most bang for your buck” factor. “We give you a 45-minute tour that not only plays with your mind, but it plays with the world of physics and perceptual psychology,” he says. “Where else can you get that for $5?”

Sedenquist worries about longevity for some of these historical sites. Casting value and entertainment aside, some local governments might interfere with many attractions’ chance to flourish, he says. Similar to Ladybird Johnson’s campaign in the 1960s to beautify America by taking down the billboards that helped bring in many roadside attraction customers, Sedenquist is concerned that the same might occur today with what some local officials may consider dilapidated eyesores as opposed to entertainment to be preserved.

He says some communities may develop tougher sign ordinances and get more restrictive on how their areas look.

“Some of these attractions may disappear because it’s hard to maintain them under that system,” Sedenquist says. “But certainly, anything that can be tied into moneymaking can be around for awhile.”

Edwards shared a similar optimism.

“As long as there are roads, they’ll be roadside attractions,” she says. “People just count on them being there.”