A granite monument set at the convergence of three streets in downtown Dothan proclaims the small triangle to be "the World's Smallest City Block." The modest triangle, formed by Troy, Appletree and Museum streets, is a Dothan tourist attraction, although the city is better known for being the Peanut Capital of the World.

So what's the story behind the small patch of earth decorated with the marker, a stop sign, a yield sign and a street sign?

AL.com File Photo

This patch of land rose to fame in 1964, when the Camellia Garden Club of Dothan honored the site as the "world's smallest" after it was so proclaimed by "Ripley's Believe It or Not," which at the time was a newspaper column listing oddities across the country.

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Kelly Kazek | kkazek@al.com

Today, the sides of the triangle appear to be only a little longer than the length of a car but, at one time, it was about 20 feet by 20 feet by 9 feet, the city's engineering manager Allan Kramner told AL.com in 2009, stretching to Adams Street. Not only that, the site once had a building on it.

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AL.com File Photo

In the 1920s. a snack shop was located in the spot and a two-story building was constructed on the site in 1931. That building had a gas station on the first floor, according to The Dothan Eagle, and a restaurant. It survived at least through the 1940s.

The Ripley's column, which appeared in the early 1960s, gave yet another set of measurements: "The smallest city block in the world, Dothan, Ala., an entire square block that consists of only one building, 38.6 feet long and 26.9 feet wide." The photo above is from 1974.

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AL.com File Photo

So here's the mystery: When was the building on the site demolished and how did the patch of land become so small? Was it due to the widening of streets?

The caption accompanying the aerial photo above from the Birmingham News archives says the circled area is the World's Smallest City Block. There appears to be a building in the triangle. Anyone with further information on the World's Smallest City Block should email me at kkazek@al.com. I would love to see photos of the buildings, as well.

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AL.com File Photo

The Dothan Convention and Visitors Bureau says the block was certified as the smallest by Guinness Records, but no records are available online to support that claim. Dothan is also not the only town to claim to have the smallest city block; Brownwood, Texas, makes the same claim and was also listed in Ripley's Believe It or Not, according to a 2002 article in the Brownwood Bulletin.

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Google Maps

See the World's Smallest City Block on Google Maps here.