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Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Fishkill, NY
Military-surplus dealer Francis Bannerman built this eccentric castle-like arsenal on Pollepel Island between 1900 and 1918, later leaving a romantic ruin after explosions, fire and abandonment. The island is controlled by New York State Parks and can be visited only through authorized seasonal boat or kayak tours.
Westfield, NY
Completed in 1829, Barcelona Lighthouse is recognized as the world's first lighthouse powered by natural gas. The grounds are open year-round and the restored tower can be climbed during staffed seasonal hours when weather and staffing permit.
Buffalo, NY
This enormous Art Deco railway terminal opened in 1929 and was abandoned by passenger trains in 1979, leaving its tower and concourse as one of Buffalo's most imposing industrial-era landmarks. Interior historic tours are currently suspended during restoration work, but an official self-guided outdoor audio tour follows designated exterior paths.
Sugar Loaf, NY
The intersection of Hambletonian Road and Pine Hill Road became known locally as Calamity Corners because of a succession of deaths, accidents and violent events associated with the area. Its reputation begins with the 1818 murder of Richard Jennings, a case often cited as an early American murder-for-hire, and a Legends & Lore marker was added in 2026.
Cooperstown, NY
The Cardiff Giant was a ten-foot stone figure secretly manufactured and buried before being "discovered" in 1869 and promoted as a petrified prehistoric man. One of America's most famous nineteenth-century hoaxes survives today inside The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown.
Stony Point, NY
Doodletown was a small Hudson Highlands settlement whose remaining residents left in the 1960s after the Palisades Interstate Park Commission acquired the property. House foundations, roads, cemeteries and interpretive signs remain in the woods, reached only by hiking trails inside Bear Mountain State Park.
Clifton Park, NY
One of the earliest European settlement sites in what is now Clifton Park, where Nicholas Fort ran a rope ferry across the Mohawk from 1728. It sits inside the public Vischer Ferry Nature and Historic Preserve, with a mile-and-a-half historic trail to the ferry site, the Fort homestead foundation and interpretive panels.
Queens, NY
Escape artist Harry Houdini is buried beneath a distinctive monument in Machpelah Cemetery, where magicians and fans have gathered for decades around the anniversary of his Halloween 1926 death. The grave can be visited during cemetery hours, but this is an active burial ground and should be treated respectfully.
Bronx, NY
New York City has used Hart Island as its public cemetery for more than a century, burying more than a million people there in mass and individual graves. The island is not freely accessible, but NYC Parks now offers limited public ranger visits and scheduled gravesite visits using the city ferry.
Kings Park, NY
The former Kings Park Psychiatric Center grew into a sprawling institutional campus that held more than 9,000 patients at its peak before closing in 1996. Much of the property is now Nissequogue River State Park, where public roads and trails pass surviving hospital buildings; the abandoned structures themselves are unsafe and off-limits, so do not enter them.
Moravia, NY
This hamlet was once known as Sodom until, according to local lore, a man climbed the ridgepole of a new gristmill in 1823 with a jug of whiskey and proclaimed that the struggling village had "new hope." The story of the unusual christening is now preserved on a Legends & Lore marker along NY-41A.
Bronx, NY
North Brother Island held Riverside Hospital, where New York isolated patients with contagious diseases and where Mary Mallon, better known as Typhoid Mary, spent years in quarantine. Hospital ruins remain overgrown across the island, but it is a protected wildlife area with no ordinary public access, so travelers should not attempt to land there.
Catskill, NY
The Catskill Game Farm operated from 1933 to 2006 and was once promoted as America's largest privately owned zoo. Many empty cages, paths and zoo buildings still survive, but the property is now an inn and campground and only overnight guests currently have permission to explore the abandoned zoo grounds.
New York, NY
The ornate original City Hall subway station opened with New York's first subway line in 1904 and closed to passengers in 1945, leaving its Guastavino tile vaults and chandeliers intact underground. Entry is restricted to rare New York Transit Museum member tours that require advance tickets and a security background check.
Oneida, NY
Nearly 300 members of the radical Oneida Community once lived communally in this enormous mansion while practicing group marriage, communal child rearing and religious Perfectionism. The 93,000-square-foot building survives as a museum, inn and residence with daily self-guided museum access and scheduled deeper tours.
Woodstock, NY
Concrete walls and staircases from the abandoned Overlook Mountain House still stand high above Woodstock after repeated fires and unfinished rebuilding attempts ended the resort's history. The ruins are reached by a steep multi-mile hike, and the state warns visitors not to enter or climb the unstable structures.
New York, NY
This Gothic Revival ruin on Roosevelt Island opened as a smallpox hospital in the nineteenth century and later became a nurses' residence before abandonment. The shell remains fenced and cannot be entered, but it is clearly visible from the public paths in Southpoint Park while preservation groups work toward eventual safe access.
Buffalo, NY
H.H. Richardson designed this monumental complex as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, with Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux shaping the grounds around it. The grounds remain accessible and scheduled seasonal tours enter portions of the restored complex, while other former hospital buildings are not open for exploration.
Niagara Falls, NY
The Schoellkopf complex was once the world's largest hydroelectric power station before a catastrophic rockslide and collapse destroyed most of it in 1956. A seasonal elevator at Niagara Falls State Park now carries visitors into the gorge, where surviving walls and industrial remnants can be seen along the official ruins trail.
Newcomb, NY
The abandoned mining settlement of Tahawus sits deep in the Adirondacks near the old iron and titanium works where Theodore Roosevelt began his famous 1901 ride to the presidency. Furnace ruins and surviving structures remain around the remote historic district, reached by a long drive into public forest lands and short walks from established access areas.
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.
Rosendale, NY
This enormous former cement mine is part of the Snyder Estate, where Rosendale cement was once quarried for major American construction projects. The cavernous mine now hosts concerts and special events, so interior access is limited to scheduled programs rather than unrestricted exploration.
