The Crucible probably plays a part in this, but there are several other reasons I would say are important for the place Salem has in popular consciousness.

Firstly, I say it is worth considering the nature of witch hunts in the English speaking early-modern world compared with mainland Europe.

Witch trials in the British Isles and Colonial America were actually fairly uncommon, and normally involved at most dozens of people at a time, in contrast to the thousands of victims of such trials in, for example, early modern Germany. Also, the nature of the trials was different, and often involved at least a semblance of due process. Torture was far less common than in continental Europe (though it was sometimes used, most notably in Scottish witch trials personally overseen by James I).

According to this source there were dozens of witch trials in colonial America before Salem, but as you can see many people were actually acquitted, in contrast to the popular image of witch trials as hopeless foregone conclusions for the accused. And, even when found guilty, people were not always put to death.

Thus, the number of people involved and the harsh punishments they recieved already marks Salem out as unusual for the Anglophone polity that the town of Salem was part of.

Also, some of the worst witch trials occurred in situations of chaos and war, when local law and order broke down, see for example the German witch trials during the 30 Years War, or the Matthew Hopkins trials during the English Civil Wars. There is something of this context to Salem, with wars with the French and Native Americans going on around this time, and the fractious context of the 1688 Revolution and its aftermath in metropolitan Britain, but compared to many witch hunts, Salem was much more of an inexplicable spontaneous event than an expected consequence of a breakdown in normal order.

Lastly I would make the point that the date the Salem trials occurred added to their impact as the 1690s is actually way beyond the peak of the Early Modern witch hunts. Sporadic witch hunts on a scale far smaller than Salem did occur in the Americas throughout the 17th century, but in metropolitan England such an idea would have been pretty much unthinkable for many people by 1692. The last officially sanctioned major witch trial occurring in Pendle in 1612, with only the Matthew Hopkins trials during the extraordinary circumstances of the Civil Wars occurring after that. By this point many people in the British Isles and the Americas were starting to embrace ideas of religious toleration, and to view witch hunting as a dangerous superstition. The tendency towards religious persecution amongst 'Godly' communities in the Americas was actually quite a worry to authorities in England at times, for example Charles II intervened to prevent hangings of Quakers during his reign.

So yeah, I'd say that the scale of the trials, the circumstances around them, and the fact that they occurred a full 80 years after the last officially sanctioned trial in mainland England made the events shocking even to contemporaries and ensured that they would retain a place in popular consciousnesses as an extraordinary event.