Welcome to Brainstuff, production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, It's safe to say the Atlanta is a fairly American place. It's the home of Coca Cola, the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Preached, and the house where Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone with the Wind. The city is both the gateway to the South and
itself a big old hunk of Americana pie. And just a ninety minute drive north in the Chattahoochee National Forest section of the Appalachians sits another Georgia town, teeming with a certain distinct national aesthetic. Helen Georgia is more of a nod to the German Alps than a testament to the Red, white, and Blue. But it's sprouted up as a result of a very American instinct capitalism. We spoke with one Matt Getney, the author of the Story of
Helen Georgia, a book chronicling the town's history. He said, we have basically no cultural authenticity. When the thing was started, it was purely a marketing scheme. Okay, So this little Alpine town, complete with pretzel shops, beer halls, and blacksmiths did not rise from the Appalachians on the facts of Northern European immigrants who wanted to celebrate their Old World
heritage and culture. Instead, it was a couple of local entrepreneurs and a creative sketch artist who dreamed up the village as a way to create some buzz and draw in some tourist dollars. Still, this faux Bavarian village looks enough like the real thing, thanks to a smartly appointed
mountain esthetic that was decades in the making. Annual German inspired events like Octoberfest and a European car show also helped, and perhaps that's why every year, under normal circumstances, hordes of visitors wander their way into White County, Georgia for a little slice of Bavaria. And weirdly, Helen is not the only town in the United States that aims to
recreate the Old Country. There are at least a handful of European replica towns spanning the US, from Leavenworth, Washington's Bavarian vibe to Little Switzerland, North Carolina's Swiss Alpine esthetic. Each has its own unique story, but all of them
have been attracting tourists for decades. They all go for a nostalgic take on Northern European nations, perhaps because they are also located in mountainous areas, and also because of the timing of immigrant waves intersecting with the new found love of travel in the nineteen fifties, thanks to America's burgeoning car culture. Take Solvang, California, which draws inspiration from
the North Sea nations. The Danish inspired village and its assortment of windmills popped up near the southern California coast after three Danish teachers struck out to establish a community for their compatriots in nineteen eleven. They also created a folk school to teach area kids about reading, writing, and arithmetic, as well as the basics of Danish culture. Solvang remained fairly insulated until the nineteen forties, when the media began to take notice. In the Saturday Evening Post ran a
feature boasting about the town's annual Danish Days celebration. We also spoke with Ester Jacobson Bates, the executive director of Solvang's Elvar Joy Museum. She said people started coming looking for that Danish culture, so the local businessmen decided to come together collectively and create this plan that the downtown area would have new buildings built in a Danish style and existing buildings would transition from Western to Danish fronts.
Like Helen. Solvang's provincial look may have been developed in response to business interests, but Bates says the town is still rooted in Danish culture and that the cultural links to Denmark remain strong. That includes regular visits from Danish royalty and ambassadors, as well as a student exchange program. Wine lovers and sinophiles alike may recognize Solvang and the surrounding area as the set for the two thousand four
Academy Award winning film Sideways. Solvings is a similar story to the one behind Franken Muth Michigan, also known by locals as Little Bavaria, a small batch of Lutheran missionaries from Germany established the town in eighteen forty four. The settlement served as a fairly insular community for German immigrants until after World War Two, when interstate highways in the infrastructure boom made it easier to reach the mouth from nearby cities like Detroit. Today, the town welcomes about three
million tourists per year to its German style village. Franken Muth's annual bavarian Fest may be the biggest event on the local calendar, but like any self respecting Alpine town, it also celebrates october Fest each year. Visitors can expect lots and lots of pretzels, if not that many German accents. Today's episode was written by Chris Opfer and produced by Tyler Clang. For more in this lots of other curious top X, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts in my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.