Lots of failed research parks, oil wells, railroads, gold mining operations.
The thing with oil wells, railroads, and gold mining, is that geography/geology matters more than path dependence.
Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and to a lesser extent NYC and London, are more about path dependence. Their dominance in their sectors seem more resulting from, if anything specific to point to, legal factors, than geography or any particular natural resource/phenomenon.
Why make movies and software in California, one in the south and the other a bit more north?
The founding of Hollywood was just as random as the events that "caused" the rise of the Valley. What if Griffith had gone elsewhere? What if Edison hadn't enforced his patents, causing the exodus across the country to make movies out of his purview? Similar climate/environs/affordability elsewhere, why not AZ, NM, TX, GA, FL?
This is a lot different than, say, the reasons for North Carolina to eventually beat New England in textile production, or why the Rust Belt is where it is, or why rail and shipbuilding was big in the Northeast but not so much space and auto manufacturing. It's more like why the appliances that are made in the U.S. are mostly made in the south.
Hollywood is what Hollywood is largely due to its geography. Within a ~4 hour drive of Hollywood its possible to get to an area of california that looks at least passingly (for the purpose of movie making at least) similar to more or less anywhere in the world.
This isn't the map i was looking for, but gives you the basic idea https://brilliantmaps.com/california-filming-map/. The Geographic diversity around Hollywood is absolutely responsible for its initial success.
But what were the first two movies made in Hollywood? Griffith's Western and DeMille's Western. If another genre had been preferred in the 1910s, seems like a movie hub could've landed elsewhere. (Or maybe Westerns were actually made more due to budgetary constraints than preferences.)
