10 Bizarre, Uncommon, and Attention-grabbing Locations in America

Each traveler has heard of Route 66, the Grand Canyon, or the French Quarter. However America is stuffed with locations that inform stranger, darker, or extra stunning tales.

These locations don’t prime bucket lists, but they pull you into tales of haunted inns, burning ghost cities, desert oases, and small cities that reinvented themselves in sudden methods.

Listed here are ten bizarre, uncommon, and fascinating locations in the US.

1. Centralia, Pennsylvania: A Ghost City Nonetheless on Fireplace

Since 1962, an underground coal hearth has burned beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania, forcing almost each resident to go away.

The streets are cracked, some fenced off, with plumes of smoke nonetheless rising from the bottom. Only a few folks stay, residing in a near-empty grid of a city. For many years, one in every of its most well-known remnants was Graffiti Freeway, a stretch of Route 61 the place guests coated the deserted pavement in murals and spray paint earlier than it was buried in 2020.

2. Crescent Lodge, Arkansas: Luxurious Resort Turned Haunted Hospital

Within the Victorian spa city of Eureka Springs, the Crescent Lodge sits, a grand 1886 resort that later grew to become a fraudulent most cancers hospital. Sufferers had been promised cures however left with tragedy, and as we speak the lodge markets itself as “America’s Most Haunted.”

Visitors come for the structure and ghost excursions, however the deeper story is how a luxurious retreat grew to become a monument to medical quackery.

3. Salton Sea, California: From Sinatra’s Playground to Poisonous Desert

The Salton Sea as soon as drew celebrities like Frank Sinatra and the Seaside Boys to its resorts and yacht golf equipment. By the Nineteen Seventies, water ranges dropped, salinity rose, and fish die-offs started.

What’s left as we speak is a shoreline of deserted marinas, skeletal fish, and new outsider artwork communities at Salvation Mountain and East Jesus.

4. Nice Basin Nationwide Park, Nevada: The Park No one Visits

Nationwide parks are usually well-liked locations. But, Nice Basin stays one of many quietest within the U.S. Discovered alongside the Utah border, it affords Lehman Caves, historical bristlecone pine groves, and a few of the darkest evening skies in America.

It’s Wheeler Peak Scenic Drive climbs to 10,000 ft, however most days you’ll see extra mule deer than you’ll folks.

On the sting of Santa Rosa, a superbly spherical, sapphire-blue pool drops 81 ft into the earth. Fed by a pure spring, The Blue Gap refills itself each few hours, and temperatures hover round 62 levels all 12 months.

Scuba divers practice right here for deep certification, whereas vacationers come to see a swimming spot that appears misplaced in the midst of the desert.

6. Solvang, California: A Danish Village in Wine Nation

Based in 1911 by Danish immigrants, Solvang determined to embrace its heritage full-tilt. Right this moment, the Santa Ynez Valley city appears to be like like a storybook: windmills, half-timbered homes, and bakeries turning out aebleskivers and kringles.

You’ll be able to discover Danish museums, store for imported items, or just sip wine in tasting rooms that mix California vintages with Scandinavian attraction.

7. Whittier, Alaska: The City that Lives in One Constructing

Most of Whittier’s 300 residents dwell in Begich Towers, a Chilly Conflict-era high-rise that comprises residences, a put up workplace, outlets, and even a college. With Alaska’s fierce winters, funneling the city into one constructing made sense.

For guests, it’s an eerie but fascinating have a look at communal residing, the place neighbors share not simply partitions however almost each facet of day by day life.

8. Carhenge, Nebraska: Stonehenge of Automobiles

Within the city of Alliance, 39 classic automobiles are stacked and spray-painted grey to copy England’s Stonehenge. Constructed as an artwork undertaking by Jim Reinders in 1987, Carhenge has grow to be a beloved roadside attraction.

It combines kitsch with creativity, proving that typically the strangest monuments appeal to essentially the most loyal followers.

9. Leavenworth, Washington: A Bavarian City within the Cascades

When timber jobs dried up within the Sixties, Leavenworth reinvented itself as a Bavarian alpine village. The makeover labored. Right this moment, vacationers discover bratwurst, beer gardens, and Christmas markets.

Whereas touristy, Leavenworth’s full-commitment transformation makes it one in every of America’s most uncommon success tales in small-town survival.

10. Mammoth Website, South Dakota: A Fossil Dig in Motion

In Sizzling Springs, paleontologists are nonetheless uncovering Ice Age bones on the Mammoth Website, the world’s largest focus of mammoth fossils.

You’ll be able to stroll catwalks above the dig and watch scientists excavate tusks and skulls in actual time. It’s a uncommon likelihood to see science unfolding in a spot the place the previous is actually being unearthed.