There is a city in northern Indiana with about fifty thousand people in it.
Flat land. Cold winters. Corn in every direction. No mountains, no coast, no famous university, no reason at all for you to have heard of it.
The overwhelming majority of recreational vehicles sold in America are built there.
Not most of the American ones. Most of them, period. Hundreds of factories, some enormous, some the size of a repair shop, all making motorhomes, travel trailers, and the thousands of components that go into them.
Why there? Not near the mountains people drive to. Not near the retirees who buy them. Not near a port or a highway hub.
The answer is a small accident that snowballed for eighty years, and it explains something important about why certain towns become impossible to compete with.
Come see.