Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Small, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
Cincinnati, OH
The Lucky Cat Museum contains thousands of maneki-neko, the Japanese beckoning-cat figures associated with good fortune, inside Cincinnati's Essex Studios. The collection moved into its current first-floor space in 2016 and is free to visit, but current visits are by appointment during limited afternoon hours.
Columbus, GA
A private collection of vintage metal lunch boxes, thermoses and related pop-culture memorabilia fills part of the River Market Antique Mall complex. The museum turns decades of disposable school-day objects into a dense visual history of television, movies and advertising.
Hilo, HI
A 1930s museum and an 1839 mission house share one Hilo site, combining volcanic geology, shells, minerals, Hawaiian artifacts, art, and missionary history. The dense natural-history collections and preserved domestic building make it far stranger than a standard town museum.
Shawnee, OK
This university museum contains an unexpectedly strong collection of Egyptian antiquities, including a mummy, alongside art and archaeological material from around the world. The Egyptian galleries give it a much stranger profile than a typical regional art museum.
Charleston, SC
MUSC's dental-history museum contains historic tools, dental chairs, a nineteenth-century dental-office display and a traveling dentist's chest from the Civil War era. Among its stranger artifacts is an instrument attributed to silversmith and Revolutionary War figure Paul Revere. The museum is accessed through the Waring Historical Library; appointments are strongly encouraged and required for larger groups.
Taylors, SC
This eccentric studio and folk-art environment mixes oddities, preserved specimens, found-object sculptures, fairy-garden spaces, interactive art and a collection that deliberately blurs the line between museum and backyard art project. Visitors have been encouraged to make or add art to the environment rather than simply look at it. It is run by local artists at a residential-scale property, so OddWay visitors should check ahead before arriving. Secondary source: https://www.scartshub.com/venues/mad-century-studios-and-the-house-of-the-improbable/
White River Junction, VT
This small museum operates more like a cabinet of curiosities than a conventional historical collection. Its eclectic holdings mix local artifacts, natural-history specimens, odd objects, ephemera and items whose significance comes largely from the stories attached to them.
Arundel, ME
This museum displays an eclectic collection of restored automobiles, motorcycles, automobilia, and unusual vehicles rather than focusing on a single make or era. Its highly visual collection makes it an easy OddWay stop even for travelers who are not dedicated car enthusiasts.
Jonesport, ME
This small Downeast museum preserves the vanished world of Maine’s sardine canneries through old tins, labels, photographs, machinery, packing tables, workers’ tools, and other industrial artifacts. One especially personal display preserves scissors once used by individual cannery workers.
Bethel, ME
This museum combines Maine mining history with an unusually strong meteorite collection, including material from the Moon and Mars. Its mix of gemstones, space rocks, and geological specimens makes it much stranger than a standard local-history museum.
Portland, ME
Historic two-foot-gauge railway equipment still operates along Portland’s waterfront, preserving a form of railroading once unusually common in Maine. The museum runs scheduled passenger trips in restored equipment rather than displaying the collection only as static artifacts.
Presque Isle, ME
The Sun inside Folsom Hall at the University of Maine at Presque Isle anchors a huge scale model of the solar system whose planetary installations stretch along roads through Aroostook County. Travelers can turn the model into its own multi-stop OddWay route.
Mammoth Spring, AR
A restored Frisco railroad depot inside Mammoth Spring State Park contains transportation exhibits and regional artifacts. Its location beside the massive spring makes it a compact double OddWay stop.
Manitou Springs, CO
This commercial museum complex contains Ancestral Puebloan masonry that was dismantled from a site in southwest Colorado and reconstructed in Manitou Springs in the early 1900s. Its relocation history makes it an unusual, sometimes controversial archaeology stop rather than an intact original village.
Marathon, FL
Small volunteer-run aviation museum inside a hangar at Marathon's airport.
New Orleans, LA
Blaine Kern's working float facility lets visitors walk among oversized parade props and see how Mardi Gras floats are built and painted. Because it is both workshop and attraction, displays can change substantially between visits.
Biloxi, MS
A museum covering more than three centuries of Gulf Coast shipbuilding, seafood work, storms and maritime culture. It also houses the Hurricane Camille Memorial, linking everyday coastal industry with one of the region's most destructive disasters.
Batesville, AR
A free museum devoted to Arkansas-born NASCAR driver Mark Martin displays race cars, trophies, uniforms, helmets and other memorabilia from his career. It sits inside the Mark Martin Automotive complex.
Long Beach, WA
This classic roadside museum-shop mixes shells, taxidermy, arcade machines, curiosities, and the famous preserved 'Jake the Alligator Man.' It is one of Washington's strongest old-school cabinet-of-curiosities stops.
Yorklyn, DE
The Marshall Steam Museum preserves what it describes as the world’s largest operating collection of Stanley steam cars along with other antique automobiles. Auburn Valley also operates a miniature live-steam railroad on selected event days, making the site part museum and part functioning mechanical time capsule.
Washington, DC
The preserved remains of Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, are held by the Smithsonian and have been displayed as a stark extinction artifact; verify current display status.
Angier, NC
A room inside the Angier Public Library contains hundreds of gourds collected and decorated by Marvin Johnson, including vessels, instruments, carvings, and unusually shaped natural specimens. Ask library staff for access when the room is not otherwise in use.
Goldendale, WA
A grand mansion-turned-museum in a remote Columbia Gorge setting holds an eclectic mix of art, chess sets, Indigenous material, and objects associated with Queen Marie of Romania. Its collection is as unexpected as its location.
Newfield, NJ
Collector Everett Marshall has assembled an enormous private museum devoted to Matchbox vehicles, with thousands of miniature cars and related material displayed behind his home. Visits are by appointment, making this a legitimate but deliberately limited OddWay stop.
