When you think of major movies, the chances are you think of Hollywood with its powerful studios, or even the bright lights of New York. But some of the finest films have been shot in the most unexpected places. Here, we bring you 20 small US towns that have made it big in the movies.

In the summer of 2012 Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and the crew from Walt Disney Studios descended on this small Colorado town to film The Lone Ranger. The surrounding desert and canyons provided the perfect backdrop for the blockbuster, which follows the story of Tonto (Depp) and John Reid (Hammer), who join forces to bring down the outlaw Butch Cavendish.

It took Disney 11 weeks to construct the set and three weeks to film, during which the crew spent a whopping $7 million in the area. Mines and Memories General Store enjoyed a shopping visit from Johnny Depp and locals met Armie Hammer. Much of the shoot took place along Highway 149, between mile markers 10-14, and on the railway line in the canyon above Creede. Scenes were also shot at night, with several locals playing railway workers and cavalry soldiers.

This pretty waterside town, set on Alabama’s Mobile Bay, was one of the main filming locations for Oscar-winning horror movie Get Out. Starring Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington and Allison Williams as Rose Armitage, it tells the story of a young African-American who visits his white girlfriend’s parents only to make a series of disturbing discoveries.

The film’s interiors and exteriors were primarily shot in Fairhope and nearby Mobile. It's said you'll spot the Armitage house, where Chris goes to stay, at 6892 Heathcroft Lane in Fairhope. Many of the cast were rumoured to have stayed at the Grand Hotel Marriott Resort, Golf Club & Spa during production. Williams, who rented a house, said on her Instagram that she “fell totally in love with” Fairhope and raved about the doughnuts from Warehouse Bakery & Donuts. You'll find it on Nichols Ave.

Tybee Island got camera ready for the recent Baywatch movie, starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Zac Efron and David Hasselhoff. While the TV series was famously set in Malibu, the blockbuster is set in a fictional Emerald Bay in Florida. 

Tread the stunning sands on Tybee Beach, where the north and south ends of the waterfront were both used for filming. Producers also shot near the Walter Parker Pier and Pavilion, while the jet ski chase scenes were created near Estill Hammock Marina.

The chances are, when you imagine the American West, you’re actually picturing the desert around Kanab. This quiet town in Utah has been dubbed “Little Hollywood”, because it has been used as the filming location for over 100 films and TV series since 1924. The desert location has made it a big hit for Westerns, such as Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales and El Dorado, starring John Wayne.

Other films shot in and around Kanab include Nicolas Cage’s Looking Glass, Broken Arrow, Maverick and even scenes from Point Break. Many of the original Western sets used in movies have been preserved in the town’s Little Hollywood Movie Set Museum.

The tiny town of Bodega, in Sonoma County, California, was the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. Head to Bodega Lane, where you’ll find the St. Teresa of Avila Church, which featured in the creepy film. Film buffs will enjoy Sonoma County Tourism’s two-day guided movie location tour.

Visit the Old Potter School House (pictured), where some of the films most terrifying scenes took place, then head on to nearby Bodega Bay. Here, the site of the Tides Wharf Restaurant and Bar was used for scenes in the film. Further north on the coastal road, you’ll find Schoolhouse Beach, which was used during filming for 1997 movie I Know What You Did Last Summer. The film, starring Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr, might have been spine-tingling, but the beach is best known for rock pooling.

This pretty waterfront town has provided the location for a series of movies, including romantic classic An Officer and a Gentleman and Snow Falling on Cedars. The scene where Richard Gere carried Debra Winger across the parade ground was filmed at Fort Worden state park, while other locations include the Tides Inn and The Town Tavern, now Water St. Brew Pub. 

Scenes from Snow Falling on Cedars, starring Ethan Hawke, were shot near the old ferry landing in downtown Port Townsend, next to the old cannery building at Quincy Dock. The area was even temporarily stripped of all the power and telephone lines to make for authentic scenes.

The Twilight novels may be set in Forks, Washington, but much of the original movie was filmed in Oregon. Head to St. Helens, where you can tread in the footsteps of Bella and Edward.

You’ll find the car park, where Edward rescues Bella from the boys who follow her, on St. Helens Street and Second Street. Bella’s shopping trip to Port Angeles was also filmed in St. Helens – the dress shop, The Petite Jolie, is actually a hair salon opposite the Columbia County Courthouse (pictured).

The dramatic desert scenery and staggering views over the glassy expanse of Lake Powell have firmly put Page on the filmmaker’s map. The desert trek in Charlton Heston’s original Planet of the Apes was filmed here, but the searing heat caused two of the actors playing astronauts to pass out. 

The scenes where the spaceship crash-lands were also filmed on nearby Lake Powell, at Lone Rock. The vast man-made reservoir, created by a dam on the Colorado River, provided the perfect backdrop of an alien world.

Voted the best small town in the USA, Park City sits in the Wasatch mountain range. It’s also the home of the Sundance Film Festival and, as you might expect, is a popular spot for location scouts.

Park City featured in Daddy Day Camp, but it’s perhaps best known as playing ‘Aspen’ in hit road trip comedy Dumb and Dumber, starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. Visit the town’s Main Street – it's here where Lloyd and Harry arrive into Aspen on a moped.

This tiny town just off the Blue Ridge Parkway found fame as Ebbing in dark comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The double Oscar-winning film stars Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes, a grieving mother who rents three billboards to draw attention to her daughter’s unsolved murder. 

Explore Sylva’s Main Street, where Sassy Frass interiors store was transformed into Ebbing’s police station. From the pavement outside Jackson’s General Store you can see Red Welby's office window, which he's thrown out of in the film. Grab a coffee at City Lights Café, which was popular with the cast, then head to In Your Ear Music Emporium. It’s said Woody Harrelson gave an impromptu performance of “Hallelujah” here.

This tiny desert settlement on the Extraterrestrial Highway may have few inhabitants, but it’s popular with tourists and UFO fanatics due to its proximity to Area 51, where numerous alien encounters have been reported. It’s also where the trailer park scene from sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day was filmed.

The road through Rachel was officially designated the Extraterrestrial Highway in 1996, the year of the film’s release. Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman even attended the official opening and there’s even a time capsule monument. A gift from Twentieth Century Fox, it’s dedicated to visitors from distant stars, with an inscription saying it’s “to be opened in the year 2050 AD, by which time interplanetary travelers shall be regular guests of our planet Earth.”

Berlin, Maryland was recently dubbed America’s coolest small town for its tree-lined streets and pretty Victorian town centre with red brick buildings. In 1998 the main street and outlying areas were used as the location for Runaway Bride, starring Julia Roberts. Berlin was transformed into Roberts' character's fictional hometown of Hale, Maryland. 

Many of Berlin’s downtown shops featured in the romantic comedy, as well as hundreds of locals, who appeared as extras. Berlin had a second star turn in 2001, when it became “Treegap”, the fictional setting for Tuck Everlasting starring Ben Kingsley and William Hurt. Downtown Berlin was taken back to the turn of the century, with horse-drawn carriages, dirt roads and period costumes. 

This quiet town on Martha’s Vineyard was plucked from relative obscurity in 1974, when it became the fictional town of Amity for Steven Spielberg’s terrifying shark movie Jaws. The shallow seabed provided the perfect location for Spielberg to film his vast, mechanised great white. Legend dictates the shark was named Bruce during filming after his lawyer. But it kept malfunctioning, and a planned 55-day shoot became a 159-day marathon. 

See the Town Hall and the Chappy Ferry, where the mayor browbeats Brody into keeping the beaches open, despite the risk of shark attack. Visit “Jaws Bridge” – otherwise known as the American Legion Memorial Bridge – which links Edgartown to nearby Oak Bluffs. Here you’ll find the stone quay where Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) fled from Jaws. A one-hour walking tour with the Edgartown Tour Company will take you around the major locations.

A series of imposing mountain peaks, carpeted in snow, made the area around this former mining town the ideal location for Quentin Tarantino’s recent Western epic The Hateful Eight. When filming began in early 2015 the cast, which includes Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth and Jennifer Jason Leigh, were spotted skating on the town’s ice rink and dining at local restaurants. 

Throughout The Hateful Eight, which tells the story of a group of bounty hunters trying to survive during a blizzard, you’ll see the San Miguel River and towering Rocky Mountains that surround Telluride. The majority of filming was done at the family-owned Schmid Ranch, where the production crew built a set for the two-month shoot. Visit Telluride Elks Park where Samuel L. Jackson and Tarantino are said to have taken part in a ceremonial burning of skis, a local ritual where old skis are stacked up and set ablaze to bring powder to the slopes.

This tiny Maine fishing town offers clapboard houses, an art gallery and boundless opportunities to kayak, then fill up on crab rolls and ice cream. You can also follow in the footsteps of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, with a visit to Marshall Point lighthouse, at the end of Marshall Point Road. 

Forrest (Hanks) runs across the lighthouse bridge on his epic journey across America and today you can retrace his steps across the long wooden runway to the Keeper’s House. There’s also a museum, where you can see photographs and documents from filming.

Jim Carrey fans will delight in a visit to Jamestown, on Conanicut Island. Scenes from his 2000 blockbuster Me Myself and Irene, also starring Renee Zellweger, were filmed here, largely on Narragansett Avenue. Carrey plays a mild-mannered police officer with a split personality, who erupts into his aggressive alter ego, Hank Evans. 

Head to Main Street, where the Conanicut Marine Services store was transformed into a law office and ‘Freddie the Barber’ for filming. It was named Freddie’s after Fred Bingell, the owner of the pizza restaurant across Main Street. Jamestown is also seen in Wes Anderson’s 2012 Moonrise Kingdom starring Bruce Willis.

Even if you’ve never heard of Taos, the chances are you’ve seen it immortalised on film. The dramatic landscape in and around this New Mexico town has appeared in Easy Rider, starring Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, as well as legendary Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Head just out of town to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande River far below. The fifth highest bridge in the USA, it’s had a star turn in Easy Rider, No Country for Old Men and Wild Hoggs. It also features in the epic bridge battle scene in Terminator Salvation, starring Christian Bale. We've listed more epic bridges in America here.

With its quaint ice cream parlours, coffee shops and stunning views over the Miles River, St. Michaels makes a peaceful getaway from the bustle of Washington DC. The chances are you’ll also recognise it from hit romcom Wedding Crashers, starring Owen Wilson, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper and Vince Vaughn.

The film’s famous wedding reception scene was filmed at a beautiful, waterside colonial mansion, which is in fact a hotel. Today, you can stay at the Inn at Perry Cabin – you can even rent a beautiful schooner to sail on the Chesapeake as shown in the film.

More than 40 movies and TV shows have been filmed in Waxahachie, giving it the nickname Little Hollywood in Texas. The town’s charming gingerbread homes, beautiful courthouse (pictured) pretty square and tree-lined streets made it a firm favourite for producers shooting period films.

Scenes from Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, were shot here as well as The Trip to Bountiful, in which Waxahachie became the fictional town of Bountiful. Places of the Heart starring Sally Field was filmed here, with the lobby of what was The Rogers Hotel (now an office building) becoming a bank. It seems Waxahachie is something of a good luck charm, for all three films scored Academy Awards. 

This picture-perfect Connecticut town provided the ideal setting for the 2004 remake of The Stepford Wives, starring Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick and Bette Midler. More than 2,000 locals applied to star as extras in the film, in which high-flying Joanna Eberhart (Kidman) moves to the seemingly idyllic community of Stepford, only to find all is not as it seems.

Head to New Canaan’s Town Hall at 77 Main Street, where several of the movie’s scenes were shot. Look out for the sign that still reads “Town Hall and Offices of Stepford.” While there, visit the library at 151 Main Street and Varnum’s Pharmacy at 91 – both locations were used in Ang Lee’s 1997 hit The Ice Storm, starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver.