World Most Unusual Town

World Most Unusual Town

10

The Villages Florida

  Photo credit: Ebyabe

The Villages is a town in Florida that was built for retired people. It covers an area larger than Manhattan, and has over 100,000 inhabitants—most of

whom move around
in golf carts. In fact, it holds the Guinness World Record for assembling the longest golf cart parade in the world, with 3,321 total golf carts. The town—where children are forbidden—is also home to controversies and scandals. Old men and women have been caught making out in golf carts, and the men are known to fight over women. There is also a black market for Viagra, which costs about $12 for a single pill.

9Busingen Am Hochrhein
Germany

Photo credit: Davidmoerike

Busingen am Hochrhein is a German town in Switzerland. The town is separated from mainland Germany by a narrow strip of land, which measures about 700 meters (765 yards) at its narrowest point. Considering its unusual location, Busingen am Hochrhein is more of a Swiss town than a German one. It also enjoys public services from both Switzerland and Germany. It has a Swiss postal code (8238 Busingen) and a German postal code (78266 Busingen). It also has two telephone codes: +49 7734 (for Germany) and +41 52 (for Switzerland).

8Whittier
Alaska

Photo credit: Jessica Spengler

Almost all of the 200-plus inhabitants of Whittier, Alaska live inside a single 14-story building called Begich Towers. The rest live in their vehicles, boats, or another, similar building. Begich Towers was built in 1956. Back then, it served as an army barracks, but today, it is a town complete with a police station, post office, store, church, video rental shop, playground, and health center—all located inside the building.

7Colma
California

Photo credit: Seattleretro

The town of Colma, California has more dead people than living people, with 1,500 living inhabitants and over 1.5 million dead inhabitants. The history of the town can be traced back to the Gold Rush of 1849 which led hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to nearby San Francisco. They brought diseases and, subsequently, death. By the 1880s, the 26 cemeteries in the town had been almost filled and, by the late 1880s, cemetery owners began constructing cemeteries in southern Colma because it was easily accessible.

6Monowi
Nebraska

Monowi was founded by Czech migrants in northeast Nebraska, and it has only one resident: 77-year-old Elsie Eller. Population-wise, Monowi is the smallest jurisdiction in the US. Elsie runs the town’s only tavern and library, which is made up of about 5,000 books owned by her late husband, Rudy. 

5Ordos
China

Photo credit: Uday Phalgun

The city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, has been called the largest ghost town in China. It was built to accommodate more than a million people, but only 2 percent of it was ever occupied

4Longyearbyen
Norway

Photo credit: Mateusz War

Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen in Norway is the northernmost city in the world. It contains the world’s northernmost church, ATM, museum, post office, airport, and university. In Longyearbyen, dying is forbidden. Anyone found ill or dying is immediately flown by airplane or ship to another part of Norway before he or she passes away. And, if someone suddenly dies there, they would not be buried.

3Asymmetric Warfare Training Center (AWTC)
Virginia

The Asymmetric Warfare Training Center (AWTC) in Virginia is an uninhabited town built by the US Army to train its soldiers. The town is complete with a school, church, mosque, train station, and a five-story embassy that’s likely the tallest building in Virginia’s Caroline County, where it is located. It also has a gas station, football field, bank, subway, and bridge. The school is built to replicate schools in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the subway resembles that of Washington, D.C. The trains even have the same logo as those found on trains in Washington. Costing $90.1 million to build, it is run by the US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group.

2Marloth Park
South Africa

Photo credit: Bougnat87

Marloth Park is close to the Kruger National Park, which is filled with wildlife including lions, hippopotamuses, and crocodiles. What makes the town unique is that, despite the dangers of having these wild animals close by, residents are not allowed to build fences around their houses. The only fence that separates the townspeople from the park is a small 1.2-meter (4 ft) fence that was built more to keep humans out of the park than to keep the animals in.

1Hallstat
China

Photo credit: Hanno Bock

The real Hallstat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Austria. The Chinese Hallstat is a similar mock-up town built in Guangdong province, China. The town, which cost about $940 million to build, looks like the real Hallstat, including its roads, church tower, and wooden houses. The town’s construction was sponsored by a Chinese millionaire, and it caused quite a stir among residents of the real Hallstat who were not aware of the project.