Markets, distilleries, factory floors and counters the Highway Heads guides stop at: a brewery inside a bathhouse, another inside a church, a public market trading since 1852, and the diner that says it invented the corn dog.
25 stops across 15 states, taken from the Highway Heads city guides.
Arkansas
Superior Bathhouse Brewery
A working brewery inside the old Superior Bathhouse, which says its beers are brewed with Hot Springs’ thermal spring water — the brewery describes itself as the only brewery in a U.S. national park.
California
Original Farmers Market
What started in the early 1930s as truck farmers renting parking-lot space for 50 cents a day at Fairfax and 3rd is now a permanent, open-air market with more than 100 stalls, opened in 1934 and still standing beside a mall built decades later.
Anaheim Packing House
A 1919 Sunkist citrus packing house, built in Spanish Colonial Revival style, that sat vacant for decades before reopening as a 42,000-square-foot food hall in 2014; it made the National Register of Historic Places the following year.
Illinois
Cozy Dog Drive In
The Route 66 diner that claims to have invented the corn dog on a stick; its founder started selling them in 1946, and the family still runs it. The restaurant’s own site gives its address as 2935 S. 6th St. in Springfield “on Old Route 66” and says it has been on Route 66 since 1949.
Kentucky
Chaney's Dairy Barn
A working dairy farm where the Chaney family has milked Jersey cows on the same site since 1942; the farm processes its own milk, and the Dairy Barn, established in 2003, makes its ice cream with milk and cream from those cows.
Buffalo Trace Distillery
Distilling has happened on this site since the 1770s, and the current operation kept running straight through Prohibition on a rare government license for medicinal whiskey. All of its tours are free, but require a reservation.
Town Branch Distillery
The first distillery built in Lexington in over a hundred years, named for the creek that still runs beneath downtown and once powered the city’s original bourbon industry.
Woodford Reserve, Versailles
Bourbon has been distilled on this site since 1812, in a stone distillery building dating to 1838, one of the oldest in the state and a National Historic Landmark since 2000.
Maryland
Market House
An 1858 market building at City Dock that Historic Annapolis says it rallied public support to rescue from demolition plans. Today the Annapolis Market House operates in the building at 25 Market Space, featuring seafood, American cuisine, catering, an events hall and live music, according to its own site.
Lexington Market
A public market in downtown Baltimore with roots in 1782. Baltimore Public Markets, which runs it, describes the city's public markets as the oldest continuously operating public market system in the United States.
Michigan
Eastern Market
A public market district that the City of Detroit formally designated in 1891, according to the market's own history page, which also says Eastern Market Saturdays were flourishing as early as 1899. The Saturday Market runs 6 am to 4 pm year round, and the market's visitor FAQ lists a Murals in the Market art tour, on foot or by bike.
Frankenmuth Brewery
Frankenmuth Brewery, at 425 South Main St., says its beers are brewed on site and traces its history to the Cass River Brewery, which the brewery's history page says was founded in 1862. The brewery's FAQ says its outdoor patio, with river views, typically opens in early May and stays open through mid-October, depending on weather.
New Jersey
Saltwater taffy shops on the Boardwalk
The candy was first sold in Atlantic City starting in the 1880s, and the story told about how it got its name — either an assistant's mistake with seawater, or a storm that washed the ocean over a candy stand — has never been confirmed either way.
North Carolina
Videri Chocolate Factory
A working bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Warehouse District with a free self-guided tour past the production floor — you can watch the equipment run before buying anything.
Ohio
Findlay Market
Ohio's oldest continuously operated public market, open six days a week since 1852, with a separate outdoor farmers market on weekends.
West Side Market
Opened in 1912, this is Cleveland's largest and oldest public market, a Neo-Classical brick hall in Ohio City where many stalls have stayed in the same families for generations.
North Market
A downtown food hall and public market established in 1876, the second of four public markets the city once had.
Oregon
Tillamook Cheese Factory
A working creamery that makes more than 170,000 pounds of cheese a day, with a self-guided viewing gallery over the production floor.
Pennsylvania
The Church Brew Works
A working brewery inside a deconsecrated 1903 Catholic church in Lawrenceville, brewing tanks on the altar where a congregation used to sit.
Tennessee
Ole Smoky Distillery, Gatlinburg
Tennessee's first legal moonshine operation, opened July 4, 2010 after a change in state law; it went on to become, briefly, the most-visited distillery on Earth.
Goo Goo Cluster shop
Home of a Nashville-invented candy bar — caramel, marshmallow nougat, roasted peanuts and milk chocolate — that its maker dates to 1912, eighteen years before the Snickers bar launched in 1930.
Jack Daniel's Distillery, Lynchburg
The oldest registered distillery in the U.S., sitting in a dry county where it's legal to make whiskey but not to buy it — one commemorative bottle a visitor is the state's carve-out.
Vermont
Ben & Jerry's factory tour
The only Ben & Jerry's production facility open to the public, running tours since 1986 and producing more than 350,000 pints of ice cream daily.
Wisconsin
Milwaukee Public Market
A 2005 food hall in the Third Ward with three dozen local vendors under one roof: cheese counter, fish smoker, coffee, tacos, a mezzanine to sit and eat. Easier than picking one restaurant when the group can’t agree.
Wyoming
Jackson Drug
A 1919 soda-fountain counter a block off the square, still serving house-made ice cream, milkshakes, and burgers from beef off the same family’s cattle ranch. It closed for years and reopened under the founder’s great-granddaughters.
