I'm on vacation - in Branson, Missouri. It's a big tourist destination, because of this novel written over 100 years ago called Sheperd of the Hills. This started people peeping in on the people who inspired the characters in the book (which was the first novel by a US author to sell over 1 million copies). There have also been four movies and now a place does a play every night to follow the story events.

Think of Gone with the WInd if it didn't have the real backdrop of the Civil War behind it.

Giving us how the real place feels with names and whatever else also puts us in the real setting as much as it creates the story in our minds. We may or may not be familiar with the place, but we'll feel like we know it by the time the story is done.

I would say if you wanted to change things for an alternate universe, make those changes with good reasons that the reader can figure out or understand during the story.