Roadside oddities37.6880° N, 119.0058° W
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Two water-filled explosion craters mark a relatively recent volcanic event along the Mono-Inyo chain and are reached by a short forest trail.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
Roadside oddities
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Roadside oddities2,517
Suggest a stopGiant objects, odd monuments and things built for no clear reason.
- Roadside oddities41.6178° N, 90.7803° W
Walcott, IA
What began as a small truck stop in 1964 has expanded into a sprawling roadside complex with restaurants, shops, services, displays and truck-focused attractions. Its enormous scale has made it a destination rather than merely a fuel stop.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.5912° N, 93.6038° W
Des Moines, IA
Iowa's capitol is crowned by a huge 23-karat gold-leaf central dome and four smaller domes, creating one of the Midwest's most extravagant statehouses. Interior tours reveal ornate staircases, mosaics and a vast law library.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.5954° N, 93.5568° W
Des Moines, IA
Each Iowa State Fair features a life-size cow sculpted from hundreds of pounds of butter inside a refrigerated display case. The temporary sculpture is one of the state's strangest and most enduring annual traditions.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities41.5956° N, 93.5547° W
Des Moines, IA
The giant yellow fair slide has carried generations of visitors down its steep lanes on burlap sacks. It operates only during the Iowa State Fair but has become a visual icon of the grounds.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities47.4814° N, 92.8958° W
Chisholm, MN
A towering miner rises above the Iron Range landscape as a memorial to the people who built the region's mining industry. Its scale and industrial subject make it feel more like a colossus than a conventional civic statue.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities43.8694° N, 103.4356° W
Keystone, SD
Wooden bridges and looping road segments allow Iron Mountain Road to curl back over itself while climbing through the Black Hills. These so-called pigtail bridges are a deliberately theatrical piece of highway engineering designed to make the drive part of the attraction.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Roadside oddities42.1997° N, 123.6509° W
Kerby, OR
A woodworking compound and gallery turns giant burls into furniture, carvings and eccentric outdoor structures, creating a roadside environment that feels part workshop and part folk-art maze.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities38.7006° N, 90.1513° W
Granite City, IL
Three recreated historic business signs glow after dark alongside murals and interpretive displays celebrating Granite City's Route 66-era commercial history.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.5695° N, 71.4885° W
North Kingstown, RI
Iver Mudslider joined Rhode Island's Thomas Dambo Troll Trail in 2025 and hides along a short walk in Ryan Park. Like Dambo's other giant trolls, Iver is constructed largely from discarded and reclaimed wood and is intended to draw visitors into the landscape rather than simply sit beside a road.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities31.8481° N, 102.3677° W
Odessa, TX
A giant jackrabbit statue celebrating the long-running local jackrabbit-roping legend and Odessa's fondness for oversized public art.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Roadside oddities34.9545° N, 110.4488° W
Joseph City, AZ
A giant jackrabbit and the famous 'HERE IT IS' sign mark one of Route 66's classic trading-post survivors. Decades of billboards turned the rabbit into a roadside destination long before travelers reached the store itself.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities42.9612° N, 122.7031° W
Shady Cove, OR
This is a natural giant sugar pine in the southern Oregon forest rather than a man-made attraction, so there is no construction date; the famous tree is several centuries old. The Jackson Creek-area specimen long carried a “world’s tallest” reputation but newer measurements have identified taller living sugar pines elsewhere, and reaching this one requires forest roads and a woodland approach rather than a simple highway pull-off.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities38.3353° N, 92.8358° W
Versailles, MO
Jacob's Cave offers guided walking tours through a large Ozark cavern filled with reflective pools, columns and other formations. The cave has operated as a tourist attraction for decades and remains a dependable central-Missouri subterranean stop.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities40.6473° N, 82.5407° W
Bellville, OH
Jacques is a roughly 35-foot-tall fiberglass chef standing outside the Buckeye Express Diner along Route 97. The giant figure was restored after weather damage and remains an easy public-facing stop on the diner property.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities47.5242° N, 122.0325° W
Issaquah, WA
Thomas Dambo's giant recycled-wood troll hides along a public trail near downtown Issaquah. The sculpture combines Pacific Northwest forest imagery with Scandinavian troll folklore.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities42.3170° N, 71.1172° W
Boston, MA
A professor secretly installed a U-shaped, two-backed bench beside Jamaica Pond as a guerrilla-art prank. Parks officials removed it, reconsidered, and ultimately allowed the strange seat to return, transforming unauthorized furniture into permanent public art.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities44.9450° N, 93.1089° W
Saint Paul, MN
Railroad magnate James J. Hill's enormous Richardsonian Romanesque mansion contains heavy stonework, complex mechanical systems and extravagantly scaled rooms. Guided access reveals the infrastructure behind a Gilded Age home built almost like a private institution.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities43.6897° N, 87.7088° W
Sheboygan, WI
James Tellen filled his wooded property with hand-built concrete people, animals and religious scenes. The figures emerge between trees like a homemade storybook and are now preserved for public viewing.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.2649° N, 95.9905° W
Omaha, NE
A marker documents a Japanese Fu-Go balloon bomb that exploded in Omaha during World War II. Japan launched thousands of these high-altitude weapons toward North America, making the Nebraska incident an unusual local trace of a little-known wartime campaign.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Roadside oddities46.4856° N, 87.6566° W
Ishpeming, MI
This small rocky hill overlooking Ishpeming is composed largely of ancient banded iron formation, preserving geology tied directly to the region's mining history. A short trail and stair access let visitors climb onto some of the oldest exposed rock found in Michigan.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.4161° N, 70.5487° W
Edgartown, MA
The small bridge between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs became famous through Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws.' Fans still recognize it as the location of a shark-attack sequence, making an otherwise ordinary Martha's Vineyard bridge a horror-film pilgrimage stop.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities34.1607° N, 94.7515° W
Broken Bow, OK
A giant Muffler Man named Jeb watches over an Old West-themed miniature-golf course north of Broken Bow. He is part roadside giant, part attraction prop and part deliberately fabricated frontier character.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities40.0151° N, 79.0758° W
Somerset, PA
A huge rotating fiberglass globe has stood outside Jenny Products since the late 1960s, built to celebrate the company's growth as a maker of pressure-washing equipment. It resembles a water tower but is actually a giant spinning advertisement, with parking available at the business for visitors who want a closer look.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry