Field index

Historic Oddities

History takes unusual forms here: a steamboat stranded on land, Hope Cemetery’s carved memorials, Havre’s underground streets, and Seattle’s buried city. Browse these sites for the documented story behind each place and information for a respectful visit.

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109 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Abandoned Places

Madame Sherri Forest

Chesterfield, New Hampshire

A ruined party chateau and broken stone staircase hide in a protected forest.

Haunted Locations

Sloss Furnaces

Birmingham, Alabama

Birmingham preserved an enormous maze of blast furnaces, pipes, towers, and industrial machinery as a public museum.

Historic Oddities

Salt Museum

Liverpool, New York

An entire museum devoted to the brine and salt works that shaped Syracuse.

Abandoned Places

Central State Hospital

Milledgeville, Georgia

A vast former mental-hospital campus contains monumental buildings, quiet cemeteries, and difficult institutional history.

Historic Oddities

Crook Point Bridge

Providence, Rhode Island

A steel railroad drawbridge has remained raised above the Seekonk River since train service ended in 1976, leaving a giant piece of transportation machinery frozen against…

Abandoned Places

Dungeness Ruins

St. Marys, Georgia

Wild horses wander around the roofless shell of a Carnegie mansion on a ferry-only barrier island.

Curious Landmarks

Bannerman Castle

Beacon, New York

A ruined castle on a Hudson River island was built to store military surplus.

Historic Oddities

Old Idaho Penitentiary

Boise, Idaho

Cell blocks, solitary confinement, gallows, and handmade prison weapons fill a sandstone territorial prison.

Historic Oddities

Sputnik IV Impact Site

Manitowoc, Wisconsin

A Soviet spacecraft missed its planned descent, broke apart over Earth, and dropped a hot chunk of metal into the middle of a Wisconsin street in…

Curious Landmarks

Memorial Arch of Tilton

Northfield, New Hampshire

A Roman-style hilltop arch marks the tomb its wealthy builder never used.

Historic Oddities

Grotto of the Redemption

West Bend, Iowa

Built from millions of gemstones, fossils, and minerals gathered from around the world, the Grotto of the Redemption is one of the largest man-made grottos on…

Historic Oddities

Wooldridge Monuments

Mayfield, Kentucky

Eighteen stone figures gather around one man's grave, including relatives, hunting dogs, a horse, a deer, a fox, and Wooldridge himself at the center of it…