Pick out the Old Town buildings that became Disneyland's Main Street
Where Main Street U.S.A. was drawn from
A handful of blocks of late-Victorian brick around Old Town Square, including the former firehouse at 232 Walnut Street, now a bookshop.
Why it's unique
Harper Goff, the Disney art director who designed Main Street U.S.A., was born here in 1911 and came back in the 1950s to photograph the buildings of his childhood as the model for it. Walt Disney never visited Fort Collins; he worked from Goff's photographs and descriptions. The Old Town firehouse is the building behind the Disneyland Fire Station.
The honest version of the claim is that this is one of two American towns Main Street was patterned on, alongside Disney's own Marceline, Missouri. It is the one Goff actually photographed, and the city's history archive holds his sketches next to the buildings they came from, which is what makes the comparison something you can stand in front of and check.
Before you go
Look up. The shopfronts have all turned over and tell you nothing, but the upper storeys, the brick facades and the corner towers are what Goff photographed and what carried across. The old firehouse is the single clearest match and it is now Old Firehouse Books, so you can go inside it.
Read the city's own history archive page before you walk it. It reproduces Goff's sketches alongside the buildings, and without that the walk is just a pleasant square. This is a comparison rather than a marked trail, and nothing on the street signposts it.