Weird history26.4278° N, 80.1580° W
Delray Beach, FL
Japanese museum and gardens rooted in a little-known early-1900s farming colony.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
Weird history
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Weird history2,650
Suggest a stopReal events too strange to have made the textbook.
- Weird history41.6373° N, 91.5981° W
Iowa City, IA
A memorial park marks the staging area where handcart companies organized before beginning the difficult overland journey toward Utah in the 1850s. Interpretive signs connect suburban Iowa City to one of America's strangest migration experiments.
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- Open to visitors
- Weird history45.7796° N, 108.5160° W
Billings, MT
A 1903 mansion designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, preserved with original family furnishings, decorative arts, and elaborate period interiors.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history42.6262° N, 104.5312° W
Niobrara County, WY
A remote grave marker remembers Charlotte 'Mother Featherlegs' Shepard, a roadhouse operator murdered in 1879 and wrapped into local outlaw lore.
- Access
- Roadside, no entry
- Weird history39.0728° N, 89.7278° W
Mount Olive, IL
A small museum inside Mount Olive City Hall interprets coal mining, labor conflict, and the life and legacy of organizer Mother Jones.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history42.8418° N, 91.3558° W
Elkader, IA
A towering six-story limestone grist mill stands beside the Turkey River with several associated nineteenth-century buildings. The isolated stone complex looks almost fortress-like in the wooded valley.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history37.0875° N, 89.1780° W
Mound City, IL
Thousands of Civil War dead are buried in this national cemetery established beside wartime hospitals and naval facilities along the Ohio River.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history26.4461° N, 81.9279° W
Fort Myers Beach, FL
Museum and archaeological site built directly atop a nearly 2,000-year-old Calusa shell mound.
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- Open to visitors
- Weird history26.4317° N, 81.9225° W
Estero, FL
Boat-access shell-mound island believed to have been the capital of the Calusa.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history40.0958° N, 85.6201° W
Anderson, IN
Mounds State Park protects a group of prehistoric earthworks constructed by Indigenous peoples beginning more than two thousand years ago. The largest, the Great Mound, is an impressive circular earthwork that can be reached from maintained park trails.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history33.0027° N, 87.6281° W
Moundville, AL
Dozens of Mississippian platform mounds survive at one of the most important Indigenous archaeological sites in the Southeast. A museum and walking paths interpret the city that flourished here centuries before European colonization.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history46.7555° N, 88.1560° W
Skanee, MI
Michigan's highest point was not officially recognized as the state high point until improved measurements showed it exceeded nearby Mount Curwood by roughly 11 inches. Reaching the summit involves remote logging roads and a short hike, so road conditions can make access difficult during wet or snowy weather.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history42.3709° N, 71.1463° W
Cambridge, MA
America's first large landscaped rural cemetery mixes elaborate monuments, mausoleums, unusual funerary sculpture, ponds and a hilltop tower across more than 170 acres. It helped change American ideas about what a cemetery could look like.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history34.7381° N, 92.2785° W
Little Rock, AR
Known as the 'Westminster Abbey of Arkansas,' Mount Holly contains ornate monuments and the graves of governors, senators, soldiers and other notable Arkansans. Its age and elaborate funerary art make it a strong cemetery stop.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history44.8244° N, 68.7198° W
Bangor, ME
One of the country’s oldest garden cemeteries, Mount Hope is full of elaborate monuments, wooded lanes, and centuries of Bangor history. Horror fans also know it as a filming location used in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history31.6869° N, 91.1891° W
Lorman, MS
One of the last surviving historic stands on the Natchez Trace, where travelers once stopped for food and shelter. As of 2026 the historic structure has a closure tied to structural damage, although the site/grounds have had limited public access; verify conditions before routing a traveler here.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history40.4072° N, 74.0044° W
Atlantic Highlands, NJ
At New Jersey's highest natural point on the Atlantic seaboard, a memorial overlooks the New York skyline and honors Monmouth County residents killed on September 11, 2001. Its centerpiece incorporates an eagle clutching a twisted steel beam recovered from the World Trade Center.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history39.9311° N, 75.2358° W
Philadelphia, PA
Once one of Pennsylvania's largest Victorian cemeteries, Mount Moriah fell into severe abandonment after its old cemetery association disappeared, leaving mausoleums and graves swallowed by vegetation. Volunteers have reopened substantial sections, but public access is normally limited to weather-dependent weekend gate hours and visitors should stay on cleared routes.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history44.3761° N, 103.7256° W
Deadwood, SD
Deadwood's hillside cemetery holds Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock, Sol Star and thousands of other residents of the mining town. Chinese, Jewish, pauper and mass-grave sections make the cemetery a broader record of frontier Deadwood than its celebrity graves alone suggest.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history44.3981° N, 103.7592° W
Deadwood, SD
Seth Bullock built this stone tower in 1919 as a memorial to his friend Theodore Roosevelt. Reaching it requires a short climb above Deadwood, where the handmade tower rises unexpectedly from the forest like a small medieval ruin.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history43.8790° N, 103.4598° W
Keystone, SD
Four presidential faces carved into Black Hills granite form one of the country's most recognizable pieces of monumental sculpture. The site also carries a complicated history involving Indigenous land, federal monument-building and the engineering required to reshape the mountain.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Weird history46.2946° N, 122.8219° W
Silver Lake, WA
Exhibits, films, and landscape views explain the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and the massive destruction it caused. It is the best all-season orientation point for the volcano's stranger and more remote sites.
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- Open to visitors
- Weird history39.5416° N, 95.1425° W
Atchison, KS
This historic cemetery contains prominent Atchison burials and sits near the giant Amelia Earhart earthwork portrait visible from above. It is a legitimate historic destination, but visitors should follow cemetery hours and treat gravesites respectfully.
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- Seasonal or ticketed
- Weird history38.9111° N, 77.0541° W
Washington, DC
The Mount Zion–Female Union Band cemetery complex includes a small burial vault traditionally associated with refuge for freedom seekers; visit respectfully during allowed hours.
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- Seasonal or ticketed