Having a look around at a few tourism sites, I noticed a consistent player in the top 5 for town/state.
This Wonderful Under the Ground weather info site seems to have the spread of keywords and links right across its site.
LHS Links appear mostly the same for each page, Title etc for the individual town plus a few links of text with town name.
Pick an obscure town and a state & see what happens for you.
Cant always be #1, but they have something going for them....must be heaps of links back.
Any theories