The USA is a country famous for its roadside attractions and museums dedicated to strange and wonderful things. Some are deadly serious. Others are created with a tongue firmly planted in the cheek. Nearly every one of them reveals something about the hopes and dreams of the people who created them and the unique character of the area in which they are set.
Read on to see the most eccentric and unusual attraction in each state, some raising a laugh, others a quizzical eyebrow...
Dothan is the self-proclaimed 'Peanut Capital of the World.' Half of the peanuts produced in the US are grown within a 100-mile (161km) radius of the city center. They celebrate with an annual Peanut Festival every fall, of course, but a local non-profit coalition called The Downtown Group wanted the city’s peanut credentials to be honored throughout the year. Fiberglass peanuts were given to local artists who were told to let their imaginations go wild. The result is Peanuts on Parade, over 60 anthropomorphic peanuts dotted around the town celebrating local businesses, services, and awareness programs.
Dave Pahl has always had a bit of a thing for hammers. In 2001, after years of collecting and repairing old tools, he opened the Hammer Museum on the Alaska Panhandle in Haines. The museum is easy to spot – there’s a giant hammer outside – and holds a collection of over 2,000 pieces including ancient Egyptian hammers and ones designed specifically to test cheese. The prize exhibit is a Tlingit warrior's hammer, thought to be at least 800 years old, and uncovered when Dave was building the museum.
Tucson has a reputation for combining public art with city improvement projects. And nowhere is that more apparent than the bicycle and pedestrian bridge over Broadway Boulevard at the Barraza-Aviation Parkway. Designed by artist Simon Donovan, it is built in the shape of a giant diamondback rattlesnake, offering the unnerving experience of entering its gaping maw, complete with fangs, to get to the other side. Locals were unsure at first, but the bridge has since been recognized as one of the nation's best road projects by the Federal Highway Administration.
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Stopping for a quick selfie with the fearsome monster towering over the Monster Mart in Fouke is something of a tradition in this part of southwest Arkansas. The creature is a representation of the famous Boggy Creek Monster, a terrifying cryptid that was first spotted in the area in 1834 but rose to national notoriety in 1971 when it reportedly attacked locals Bobby and Elizabeth Ford in their own home. Movies were made and cryptozoologists flocked to the town, prompting the local mart to start selling souvenirs and trinkets based on the beast.
Salvation Mountain in Calipatria rises like a psychedelic mirage in California's Colorado Desert. It’s the handy work of local artist Leonard Knight who built the 50-foot-high (15m) mound from adobe mud and straw in 1985. Knight then spent the next 30 years covering it with folk art proclaiming his religious devotion, drawing tourists to a part of southern California that had fallen upon hard times. Knight sadly passed away in 2014 but other local artists have taken it upon themselves to maintain his labor of love and see its legacy continue.
Whatever your feelings about Elevationism, a brand-new religion that believes that rituals and the use of cannabis can reveal the best version of yourself, you’re going to want to see its spiritual headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Once a straight-laced Lutheran church, the International Church of Cannabis on 400 S Logan Street is now a riot of color and creativity, transformed by the mind-bending murals of renowned Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel. Take a seat on one of the pews and be transported to another dimension.
The small city of Willimantic in Connecticut is famous for two things. The cotton mill that once cranked out 50,000 spools of thread a week in the early 1900s. And the ‘Battle of the Frogs’, when a huge, loud racket in the woods in 1754 convinced the townsfolk they were under attack from the French. The noise turned out to be thousands of bullfrogs fighting over what was left of a drought-ravaged pond. So when a new bridge was built in 2001, locals insisted it featured a giant bronze frog. Atop an equally large spool of thread, of course.
If the chance to sample a craft beer at the Dogfish Head brewery in Miton doesn’t entice passing visitors to stop, the sight of a giant metallic treehouse often does. Created for the Burning Man Festival in 2007 by artist Sean Orlando and the Five Ton Crane Collective, the 40-foot (12m) tree fashioned from welded girders and metal plates sits juxtaposed against the hi-tech fermenting tanks behind it. It now functions as a private drinkhaüs for a brewery's employees. A suitably surreal backdrop for a post-IPA selfie.
The City of Live Mermaids in Weeki Wachee Springs State Park has been enchanting visitors of all ages since it opened in 1947. Glamorous ‘mermaids’ swim and dance in an underwater theater built 20 feet (6m) below the spring’s crystal-clear surface, using special breathing techniques developed by former Navy man Newton Perry. The park offers all kinds of other adventures like kayaking and special seasonal events, but it is the siren call of the mermaids that keeps people coming back.
Here’s a hiking path with a difference – the Doll’s Head Trail that runs through the Constitution Lakes urban park, just a few miles from downtown Atlanta. The trail is covered in a crazy collection of outsider art, including dismembered dolls and other toys marking out the track. Should you get lost in the woods or as you cross the wetland boardwalks on the 1.6 mile (2.6km) walk, simply look for a chubby plastic limb pointing you in the right direction.
This is your chance to walk among the dinosaurs – or at least a realistic representation of their bones – in the breathtaking Ka’a’awa Valley. Part of the privately-owned Kualoa Ranch, this was where much of Jurassic Park was shot, as well as King Kong, and more recently the Jumanji movies. Today the ranch offers tours of the most famous movie sites in the valley, including a field scattered with dinosaur bones and a mountain-side Second World War Army bunker that now hosts posters and props from over 200 titles that have been shot here.
If you think cleanliness is next to godliness then you’ll find this museum in southeastern Idaho dedicated to the history and art of staying clean absolutely heavenly. The Museum of Clean was founded in 2006 by Don Aslett to display his personal collection of cleaning supplies, including 250 pre-electric vacuums. A doyen of the cleaning industry, Don has written books and delivered lectures about cleanliness and hopes the museum will help spread his belief that the concept of clean is about more than just dirt and clutter; it’s a way of life.
In the summer of 1989, the future President of the United States, Barack Obama took future First Lady Michelle Obama on their first date. He took her for ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins in a mall in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. They ate their ice cream on the curb opposite, on the corner of Dorchester and 53rd Streets. They also shared their first kiss, an occasion memorialized by this plaque attached to a 3,000-pound (1,360kg) boulder. The Baskin-Robbins, however, is now a Subway.
The Indiana Medical History Museum sits in the old pathology building of the psychiatric Central State Hospital. It is like a time capsule, a perfectly preserved and untouched medical facility from the late 19th and early 20th century. The 1896 teaching amphitheater is exactly as it was when students and doctors watched autopsies. And the array of gleaming instruments are an intriguing insight into how much medicine has changed. It can only be viewed on a guided tour, but you’re free to wander the beautiful medicinal garden in spring and summer.
Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic is one of the most recognizable and best loved works of art in modern America. One farmer in Mount Vernon, Iowa took his love of the painting to extraordinary lengths by commissioning the local middle school art teacher to create a super-sized reproduction on the side of his barn. You’ll spot it on the left-hand side, through a stand of trees, as you make your way along Route 30 from Cedar Rapids.
In the small rural community of Lucas in Kansas you’ll find a museum that has big ambitions but on a tiny scale. It’s the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things. It is, in essence, a love letter to the ‘big’ things that serve as roadside attractions around the United States. The curator, Erika Nelson, travels the country looking for inspiration and upon finding the world’s largest ketchup bottle or ball of yarn, promptly makes the world’s smallest version of them. This is where they reside.
One can only imagine what people said to Ken Ham when he suggested building a full-size version of Noah’s Ark, but he was true to his word. Three-stories high and 510 feet (155m) long, this awe-inspiring wooden vessel is now the centerpiece of Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky and one of the most highly rated attractions in the state. Inside, sculptures of the different types of animals and animatronics of Noah and his family bring the Bible story to life.
In today’s increasingly polarized world, Dr Bob’s folk art signs are just the tonic humanity needs. Cheeky and colorful, each hand-painted sign is a variation of his famous mantra “Be Nice or Leave.” They are decorated with objects like bottle caps and discarded Mardi Gras beads and can be spotted all over New Orleans. Or you could visit his studio and gallery in Bywater to soak up the energy and cacophony of the place they’re created in.
Wild blueberries are one of only three fruits native to the United States and the official fruit of Maine. Just off Route 1 in Columbia Falls, you’ll find Wild Blueberry Land, a theme park and farm dedicated to celebrating this humble food. Apart from the farm where the wild blueberries grow, the main attraction is a bakery housed in a bright blue geodesic dome offering freshly baked blueberry pastries, breads and sweets. There’s a blueberry-themed mini-golf course as well, with winners offered the pick of fresh veggies grown on the farm as their prize.
On the banks of the historic Susquehanna Flats in Maryland you’ll find the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum. Decoys have been a central element of Chesapeake culture for centuries, not just as utilitarian objects but as works of art as well. The museum has over 1,200 decoys on display, including extraordinary decorative carvings by masters such as R. Madison Mitchell, Bob McGaw, and the Ward Brothers. Just don’t call them fakes. These are sophisticated works of art created with century-old skills passed down from master to apprentice for generations.
The MOBA (Museum of Bad Art) started after its founder Scott Wilson pulled the gallery’s first piece out of a trash heap. He dubbed it “Lucy in the Field with Flowers” and it has since been joined by hundreds of equally horrific masterpieces, like this one, Torment of the Soul, bought in a thrift store. Originally housed in the Dedham Community Theater, the collection has now moved to the Dorchester Brewing Company.
Tucked away in the back of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn you’ll spot an unassuming test tube in a red glass case. The sealed test tube is said to hold Thomas Edison's dying breath, captured by Edison’s son Charles on the request of Henry Ford. Ford once worked at the Edison Illuminating Company and struck up life-long friendship with the inventor. He also dabbled in reanimation and spiritualism and hoped that by capturing the breath he would also capture Edison’s soul as it escaped his body. Which would prove useful should he ever reanimate the inventor.
When the Hormel Foods company first introduced SPAM to the world in 1937 it could not have envisaged how internationally successful the luncheon meat made from pork and a few other ingredients would become. Or that it would be the subject of a musical or refer to unwanted emails. Its success was supercharged by the Second World War and remains hugely popular in places like Hawaii and the Marshall Islands because of that. This quirky museum charts SPAM’s incredible history with ‘SPAMbassadors’ on hand to share even more intriguing tales.
Did the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson meet the devil at the intersection of 61 and 49 in Clarksdale? Did Lucifer then tune his guitar and bestow him with otherworldly talent in exchange for his soul? We’ll never know, of course. But the exact spot where the transaction supposedly took place is marked with three giant blue guitars and called The Crossroads. It remains one of the most popular attractions on the Blues Trail in Mississippi.
Everyone knows that cookies taste so much better when they are cut into whimsical shapes. And this equally whimsical museum in Joplin, Missouri is dedicated to the tool that turns them into those magical shapes – the humble cookie cutter. Tin cookie cutters were brought to the New World from Europe and quickly became a holiday season necessity, cutting out cookies in the shape of trees, pumpkins, horses, and more. The National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum traces that history through dozens of display cases stuffed with cutters, with each visitor receiving a free plastic cookie cutter to take home with them.
Jim Phillips began collecting antlers as a 10-year-old boy and over the intervening decades has amassed a collection of over 16,000. None of the antlers were bought. Jim collected most on hikes into the Montana backcountry. Now the 'Antler Man’s' extraordinary collection is artfully displayed in one well-lit shed in Three Forks, Montana for the whole world to admire.
There are many ways to honor the memory of your father, but the way Jim Reinders honored his is truly unique. He made a replica of England’s prehistoric Stonehenge but by using old cars instead of stone. Thirty-eight cars represent the 38 major stones at Stonehenge and are arranged accurately and proportionately to mirror the original landmark. Each car is painted gray to match the English monument as well. The locals initially considered Carhenge something of an eyesore but have warmed to this unconventional public art installation as its popularity has grown.
If you suffer from coulrophobia (a fear of clowns) we suggest you give the Clown Motel in the desert town of Tonopah a miss. Catering to bikers, truckers, and other long-haul travelers who are mistakenly looking for a good night’s sleep after tackling another long stretch of the Nevada desert, the clown-themed hotel is decorated with over 3,000 clowns – figurines mainly, but there is a full-size clown that greets you at the door. In case that isn’t scary enough, there’s a reportedly haunted Wild West cemetery just on the other side of the parking lot.
How you feel about the Museum of Dumb Guy Stuff in Portsmouth, New Hampshire will depend entirely on how you consider the ‘treasures’ it holds. Is curator Clayton Emery’s shrine to his boyhood toys from the Sixties simply dumb guy-stuff or is it a fun nostalgia trip? This is the fundamental question you need to ask as you wander through his eccentric collection housed in the basement of his Mechanic Street home.
Don’t be concerned by the colorful glow as you approach the Sterling Hill Mine Museum. This historic zinc mine in New Jersey is now home to the largest publicly displayed collection of fluorescent rocks in the world. In 1990, brothers Richard and Robert Hauck filled the abandoned mine with fluorescent minerals, fossils, crystals, glass, fabric, and concrete and then fitted ultraviolet lights to showcase their glowing qualities. It is arguably the most surreal sight in northern New Jersey.
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As is often the way with eccentric attractions in the US, the Classical Gas Museum in Embudo, New Mexico grew out of one man’s singular passion. Johnnie Meier began collecting gas station paraphernalia after he retired and a decade or so later he opened the museum in his home beside the Rio Grande. Just look for the impressive line of old gas pumps on the south side of NM route 68. But make sure to fill up before you arrive – not one of them still pumps gas.
If the TV series Mad Men was an airport hotel, this would be it. Formerly the TWA Flight Center, this futuristic airport terminal was the last word in sophisticated air travel and became known as the 'Grand Central of the Jet Age.' Sadly, all this Sixties glamor didn’t comply with modern security and the terminal was closed in the early 2000s. Close to 20 years later, it’s back as a retro 512-room hotel and as stylish and beguiling as ever.
How do you stop potential customers from choosing your competitor’s gas station in 1930s North Carolina? Build your station in the shape of giant yellow clam shells, of course. That was the brainwave local Shell distributors Joe Glenn and Bert Bennett had, and soon their eight gas stations in and around Winston-Salem were booming. Today, only one of these quirky stations survives – at 1111 E Sprague St. It doesn’t pump gas but it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Standing on the same plains near Jamestown where herds of wild buffalo once roamed freely, this massive roadside sculpture is a sad but majestic reminder of what once was. It's 46 feet (14m) long, 26 feet (8m) in height, and weighs 60 tons – the equivalent of 60 full grown male buffalo. Stop for a photo, by all means, but be sure to check out the live herd of buffalo living nearby, including the extremely rare albino buffalo.
At any convention held at the Greater Columbus Convention, the longest line isn’t at the cafe or to chat with a highly regarded guest speaker. Rather, it’s in the North Atrium, where visiting delegates line up to get their picture taken inside a sculpture called As We Are. Known locally as 'the giant head', the 14-foot (4.2m) LED sculpture has a photo booth in the neck where you can have a 3D picture taken that is then displayed on the sculpture’s face. The work of artist Matthew Mohr, it has taken the concept of selfies to a whole new level.
Considered the most American of instruments, the banjo was actually appropriated from African enslaved people who made the instruments using gourds and animal skin. The American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma City recognizes this plus hundreds of other interesting facts and stories in a display of over 400 instruments, as well as historic sheet music, related ephemera, and out-of-print records from forgotten banjo greats. You can even try your hand at playing a banjo in the cafe at the end of your tour.
Oregon’s largest city has the slogan 'Keep Portland Weird'. The locals have certainly taken that to heart by tethering tiny plastic horses to antique rings embedded into the curb of streets around the city. The horse rings date to the 19th and early 20th centuries when horse-drawn carriages were the main method of transportation. When the city started removing them in 2005, local resident Scott Wayne Indiana started a campaign to save them by encouraging people to tether toy steeds to them. Now they can be seen all around Portland.
In a city bursting with world-class museums and galleries, one piece of public art draws more visitors than most in Philadelphia – a cast bronze statue of Rocky Balboa at the bottom of the steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rocky, of course, is the character played by Sylvester Stallone in the (many) Rocky movies. And the 72 steps leading up to the museum have become known as ‘The Rocky Steps’ after the iconic training scene in the first movie. The statue was created by A. Thomas Schomberg and commissioned by Stallone himself.
Attractions don’t get much more eccentric than this – a rough-hewn granite monument with a bronze tablet bearing the likeness of a large chicken next to a baseball field in a small hamlet in Rhode Island. It is, of course, a tribute to Rhode Island's state bird, the Rhode Island Red, a domesticated chicken breed that absolutely dominated the 19th-century poultry industry. It was erected in 1925 to mark the spot where the breed originated and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
It could be argued that the American automobiles are an art form in themselves. Many were designed to look beautiful, not just functional. That’s why Wheels of Yesteryear in Myrtle Beach is more than just a collection of over 150 beautifully restored classic vehicles. It’s a celebration of the craft as well. Paul Cummings began collecting classic cars after his father bought him a 1940 Ford. Wheels of Yesteryear is his way of sharing that passion with the world.
Yes, that is a six-ton, 12-foot-tall (8.7m) concrete prairie dog sitting just outside of the Badland National Park in Philip, South Dakota. The massive pink and ocher statue has been watching over this corner of the Badlands for more than 50 years and is purportedly the largest in the world. Visiting the giant prairie dog is free, but for only $1 you can buy peanuts from the Ranch Store Gift Shop next door and make friends with the life-size prairie dogs, who scurry around the place.
Travelers passing through Pigeon Forge in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains are greeted by an unusual sight – a half-scale recreation of the doomed ocean liner Titanic, crashing into a half-scale recreation of the iceberg that sank it. Opened in 2010, and costing $25 million to build, the Titanic Museum Attraction also includes recreations of the ship’s rooms based on actual Titanic blueprints. There is even an interactive exhibition where you can touch ice water the exact temperature that the unfortunate souls were plunged into in 1912.
Bob 'Daddy-O' Wade is one of Texas’s pre-eminent artists with his work being shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Paris Biennale alongside Marina Abramovic. In 1979, he turned his skills in fashioning concrete and fiberglass into a very stylish pair of 35-foot-tall (11m) ostrich-skin cowboy boots. In 2016, the Guinness Book of Records recognized them as the largest in the world and today they sit outside San Antonio’s North Star Mall. It seems everything really is bigger in Texas.
In 1976, the women of Vernal in Utah came up with a novel way to celebrate America’s Bicentennial. They hired Salt Lake City sculptor Phyllis Juhlin Park to create porcelain doll heads bearing the likenesses of each of the First Ladies, from Betsy Ross all the way up to Nancy Reagan. (Eleanor Roosevelt is pictured here.) Inspired by dresses that each of the First Ladies wore, the dolls were put on display at the Uintah County Western Heritage Museum, where you can still see them today.
As you can imagine, the famously creative ice cream manufacturer, Ben & Jerry’s, is always coming up with new flavors. Sadly, not all of them work. But rather than consign them to the trash can of ice cream flavor history, Ben & Jerry’s honor their failed recipes in a Flavor Graveyard at the back of their factory in Waterbury. Here you’ll find the final resting place of Tennessee Mud, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Rainforest Crunch and Turtle Soup, with poems etched in tombstones paying homage to their short stay on Earth.
Americans love a good parade. And they have an awful lot of them. Have you ever wondered what happens to the floats after the marching band has stopped playing and the last of the ticker tape has been swept away? Welcome to the American Celebration on Parade, part of the Shenandoah Caverns in Quicksburg, Virginia. Here you’ll find an enormous warehouse filled with parade floats from presidential inaugurals, the Rose Parade, Miss America parades, Thanksgiving Day parades, and other celebrations.
Even if you’ve never found rubber chickens particularly funny, you can’t help but admire Archie McPhee’s dedication to this brightly colored comedy prop. Archie runs the popular Archie McPhee novelty store in Seattle and has turned a whole section of the store into a Rubber Chicken Museum. Here you’ll find dozens of bright yellow birds peering out from display cases with their beaks agape. It’s guaranteed to raise a smile, even if it’s a rueful one accompanied by a shake of the head.
Created as a Community Pride Project in 1990, this giant fiberglass apple in Martinsburg, West Virginia is not just another 'big thing' celebrating the area’s legacy of apple farming. It’s a time capsule too, scheduled to be opened in 2040 and full of artifacts to give future Martinsburg residents a fascinating insight into life in the 1990s, when people ate apples plucked from a tree rather than in a vacuum-sealed space pouch (maybe...)
On 19 August 2008, the city of Milwaukee honored one of its most beloved fictional sons, The Fonz, with a bronze statue bearing his likeness unveiled on North Riverwalk Way. Arthur Fonzarelli, aka The Fonz, was a character on the popular TV series Happy Days that ran from 1974-1984, set in Milwaukee. He was played by Henry Winkler (pictured with his sons at the unveiling of the statue) and said things like “Heeyyy!” and "Sit on it.”
Reportedly inspired by the ruins of Slains Castle in Scotland, the National Museum of Wildlife Art built into the side of a cliff in Jackson, Wyoming houses one of the largest collections of wildlife art in the US. It has amassed over 5,000 pieces of wildlife-inspired art, from Native American bird stones that are more than 2,500 years old to paintings and sculptures from modern masters. There are 14 galleries of wildlife art all told, as well as an outdoor sculpture trail designed by Walter J. Hood.
Now discover more unusual things you'll find on a US road trip...