Roadside oddities37.6870° N, 89.1753° W
Carbondale, IL
A free public park is filled with dragons, wizards, castles, giant creatures, and fantasy sculptures created in memory of a local young man.
- Access
- Open to visitors
Roadside oddities
Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Roadside oddities2,517
Suggest a stopGiant objects, odd monuments and things built for no clear reason.
- Roadside oddities41.8494° N, 71.7789° W
Foster, RI
At 812 feet, Jerimoth Hill is Rhode Island's highest natural point. It was once notorious among highpointers because access crossed private land whose former owner sharply restricted visitors, but the approach is now publicly accessible. The summit itself is subtle rather than dramatic, making the historical difficulty of reaching it part of the oddity.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities34.7485° N, 112.1143° W
Jerome, AZ
Ground movement from mining caused Jerome's concrete jail building to shift downhill from its original foundation. The displaced structure now sits as a roadside monument to just how unstable the mining town became.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities43.7296° N, 103.8296° W
Custer, SD
Hundreds of miles of mapped passages make Jewel Cave one of the world's longest known cave systems. Guided routes reveal calcite crystals, narrow passages and an underground scale that is almost impossible to appreciate from the surface.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities34.9130° N, 110.1413° W
Holbrook, AZ
Enormous petrified logs, stone displays and dinosaur figures cover the grounds of this long-running Holbrook rock business. The sheer scale of fossilized wood outside makes it function like a free roadside geology museum before visitors enter the shop.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities38.9876° N, 76.9450° W
College Park, MD
A life-size bronze Jim Henson sits on a bench beside Kermit the Frog on the University of Maryland campus, where Henson studied before creating the Muppets. The memorial garden is outdoors and publicly viewable while campus access is open.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities32.0314° N, 84.3921° W
Plains, GA
A giant grinning peanut with oversized teeth was created during Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign and became an enduring Plains landmark. The National Park Service now interprets the roadside peanut as part of the visual culture surrounding Carter's rise from Georgia farmer to president.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Roadside oddities35.9624° N, 75.6339° W
Nags Head, NC
A huge field of shifting sand rises unexpectedly in the Outer Banks, forming the tallest active natural sand-dune system in the eastern United States. The landscape can feel like a small desert despite sitting between maritime forest and the Atlantic coast.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities45.9417° N, 102.1593° W
Lemmon, SD
Sculptor John Lopez turns scrap iron, discarded machinery and other metal into detailed Western animals and figures. His studio gives travelers a chance to see the strange mechanical textures behind sculptures found elsewhere around northwestern South Dakota.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities25.1241° N, 80.4057° W
Key Largo, FL
America's first undersea park, including reefs, wrecks, and underwater statues.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.3348° N, 94.0139° W
Winterset, IA
John Wayne was born Marion Morrison in this small Winterset house. The adjacent museum displays costumes, posters and memorabilia tied to one of Hollywood's most recognizable screen figures.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities40.9890° N, 94.7386° W
Corning, IA
Late-night television host Johnny Carson was born in this modest Corning house. The property has been preserved by a local foundation and opens on scheduled dates rather than operating as an unrestricted attraction.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities35.9534° N, 87.3270° W
Bon Aqua, TN
The Storytellers Museum displays a bizarre Cadillac assembled in the spirit of Johnny Cash's song 'One Piece at a Time.' Its mismatched body parts turn a novelty-song premise into a real, drivable-looking object tied to Cash's former farm area.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities37.5391° N, 90.8381° W
Middle Brook, MO
The East Fork of the Black River is squeezed through resistant volcanic rock here, creating chutes, potholes and cascades known as shut-ins. Designated public access makes this one of Missouri's most dramatic routeable geological stops.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities43.6507° N, 94.0957° W
Blue Earth, MN
The 55-foot Jolly Green Giant stands in a public park as an enormous reminder of southern Minnesota's connection to the Green Giant brand. Travelers can walk directly to the pedestal rather than viewing the advertising icon from a highway shoulder.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities36.8960° N, 94.0703° W
Pierce City, MO
Jolly Mill survives from the vanished community of Jollification and has served at different times as a mill and distillery. The restored mill stands inside a public park with seasonal grinding demonstrations and an unusual local history tied to Civil War-era violence and Ozark folklore.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities33.1241° N, 117.0794° W
Escondido, CA
A classic fiberglass Muffler Man with a mustache has stood outside an Escondido auto business since the late 1960s.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Roadside oddities27.9618° N, 82.4391° W
Tampa, FL
Tiny park whose land was deeded to the Republic of Cuba, making it a unique symbolic enclave.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities41.2617° N, 95.9718° W
Omaha, NE
This massive Scottish Baronial-style mansion was built for George and Sarah Joslyn and is filled with elaborate woodwork, stone, stained glass and unusual rooms. Guided access lets visitors explore a piece of Gilded Age architecture that looks strikingly out of place on the Plains.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities41.6806° N, 81.3299° W
Mentor, OH
Judy's Jungle is a collection of large fiberglass animals gathered outside an industrial property in Mentor, including elephants, giraffes and other oversized creatures. The quirky display is intentionally visible to passersby and visitors can stop to see the figures without entering restricted industrial areas.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities38.6759° N, 86.7972° W
Shoals, IN
Jug Rock is an isolated sandstone formation shaped like a giant stone vessel and is one of the largest free-standing table-rock formations east of the Mississippi River. It sits beside a short public access trail near Shoals, giving OddWay a natural oddity that can be visited without a major hike.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities25.0966° N, 80.4383° W
Key Largo, FL
Underwater hotel reached by scuba diving into a former marine research habitat.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Roadside oddities42.4666° N, 90.6637° W
Dubuque, IA
A stone tower resembling a small castle crowns a Mississippi River bluff above the burial place associated with trader Julien Dubuque. The monument is one of the most dramatic overlooks in eastern Iowa.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Roadside oddities42.4078° N, 71.1206° W
Medford, MA
A bronze Jumbo stands on the Tufts University campus honoring the enormous circus elephant that became the school's mascot. After Jumbo died in an 1885 train collision, P.T. Barnum donated his hide to Tufts; the original specimen was destroyed by fire in 1975, leaving the statue as the campus's most visible elephant memorial.
- Access
- Open to visitors