26 Small American Towns With Secret Celebrity Connections

20. Cooperstown, New York: James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Landscape

While baseball pilgrims flock here, Cooperstown owes its name and literary fame to author James Fenimore Cooper. Founded by his father, the town and surrounding Otsego Lake region became the vivid setting for his Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans. These novels romanticized the American frontier and shaped global perceptions of wilderness and Native American life. Explore the Fenimore Art Museum or simply gaze upon Glimmerglass lake (as Cooper called it) to connect with the foundational legacy that imbued this now-famous village with its initial layer of American myth-making.