Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Omaha, NE
The zoo occupies land that once held Rosenblatt Stadium, and the former baseball infield has been preserved as a recognizable patch within the grounds. It creates the odd experience of finding a vanished College World Series ballpark embedded inside a major zoo.
Miami, FL
Historic tropical estate of plant explorer David Fairchild with rare specimens and unusual botanical history.
Ossining, NY
The mysterious wanderer known as the Leatherman repeatedly walked a roughly 365-mile circuit through New York and Connecticut in the 1880s while wearing a handmade suit of heavy leather. He died in 1889 and is buried in Ossining, where a Legends & Lore marker records one of New York's strangest real-life folk figures.
Montgomery, AL
Equal Justice Initiative’s museum examines enslavement, racial terror lynching, segregation and mass incarceration through documents, artifacts, art and immersive interpretation. It connects multiple periods of American racial injustice within a single museum experience.
Bryson City, NC
The remains of Proctor sit in one of the more isolated sections of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Once a logging and settlement community, the town declined after the creation of the park and the construction of Fontana Dam; scattered foundations and remnants now require a substantial backcountry journey to reach.
Hot Springs, SD
More than 60 mammoths and many other Ice Age animals have been uncovered in an ancient sinkhole preserved inside a working research facility. Visitors walk around the active bone bed rather than seeing fossils removed into a conventional display case.
Las Vegas, NV
Housed in the former federal courthouse, this museum traces organized crime, law enforcement, Prohibition, and the mob’s long connection to Las Vegas.
Prescott, AZ
A long-running Whiskey Row saloon preserves an elaborate historic bar and legends from Prescott's frontier period. The building was reconstructed after the 1900 fire, when patrons famously carried the bar to safety across the street.
Salem, MA
Game-company founders George, Charles and Edward Parker are buried in Salem, linking the city to the company behind generations of American board games. Parker Brothers later published titles ranging from Monopoly and Clue to the Ouija talking board, giving the family plot an appropriately game-filled legacy.
Louisville, KY
Installed in 1907, this 14-foot granite sphinx guards the Peaslee family plot in Cave Hill Cemetery. Its Egyptian styling was unusually exotic for Kentucky cemetery art at the time and remains one of the cemetery's most conspicuous monuments.
Bryson City, NC
A mountain road built after the creation of Great Smoky Mountains National Park ends abruptly at a long tunnel through the mountain. Construction was abandoned before the promised route was completed, leaving a paved road and dark pedestrian-access tunnel that literally lead nowhere.
Dallas, TX
The former Texas School Book Depository preserves exhibits about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the investigation that followed.
Bridgewater Township, NJ
A small plaque marks the location where a local false report of the armistice triggered an early celebration on November 7, 1918, four days before the actual end of fighting. The episode became one of the strangest American footnotes to the close of World War I.
Williamstown, MA
A former mobile-home community devastated by flooding was cleared and transformed into a public park. Roads, plantings and other subtle traces of the vanished neighborhood remain, giving the open landscape the feel of a community erased without being completely forgotten.
Lincoln, NM
This round stone defensive tower is one of Lincoln's oldest surviving structures and was used by residents as a refuge during raids. Its compact fortified form is a stark contrast to the adobe commercial buildings along the main street.
Salem, MA
The seventeenth-century home of Judge Jonathan Corwin is the only surviving building in Salem with direct ties to the 1692 witch trials. Corwin participated in the proceedings, and the preserved house now interprets the trials, colonial life and the beliefs that helped fuel the panic.
Islamorada, FL
Old Florida marine attraction built into former railroad quarries.
Isle La Motte, VT
A marker identifies the Fisk home where Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting when word arrived that President William McKinley had been shot in 1901. Roosevelt soon left Vermont as the national crisis deepened, eventually becoming president after McKinley's death.
Charleston, WV
A single 18th-century grave sits by itself inside a modern Charleston park, the burial place of colonial-era surveyor and soldier Thomas Bullitt. The isolated stone is an unusual survival from a much earlier landscape and can be visited from the park during public hours.
Bangor, ME
Built in 1897, this enormous wooden water tank is enclosed by a shingled structure that looks more like an oversized lighthouse than municipal infrastructure. Its exterior is easy to see, while interior access is limited to occasional public open houses.
Columbia, MO
Thomas Jefferson's original gravestone was given to the University of Missouri by his descendants in the nineteenth century and now stands on Francis Quadrangle. The odd relocation puts a major presidential funerary artifact hundreds of miles from Jefferson's actual grave at Monticello.
Pioche, NV
An 1870s theater survives on Pioche’s main street and still hosts occasional events, making it a rare remnant of entertainment in a remote mining boomtown.
Kirksville, MO
A protected shelter displays Native American petroglyphs carved into exposed rock as many as roughly 1,500 years ago. The site is open for self-guided viewing during park hours, and visitors must remain on the observation walkway.
Glenns Ferry, ID
State park interpreting one of the Snake River crossings used by Oregon Trail emigrants. Museum exhibits and designated viewpoints explain the hazardous crossing without routing visitors onto unmarked trail or archaeological areas.
