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Natural Oddities

Browse documented natural oddities from across America.

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75 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Natural Oddities

Secret Caverns

Howes Cave, New York

A quirky show cave with painted signs and a waterfall roughly 100 feet tall underground.

Natural Oddities

Papakōlea Green Sand Beach

Naalehu, Hawaii

A remote volcanic cove where glittering olivine crystals turn the sand an improbable shade of green.

Natural Oddities

Red Gulch Dinosaur Tracksite

Shell, Wyoming

More than 1,000 Jurassic dinosaur tracks are preserved across a tilted slab of Wyoming limestone where scientists once expected an ancient sea instead of walking dinosaurs.

Natural Oddities

The Mammoth Site

Hot Springs, South Dakota

An entire building surrounds an ancient sinkhole packed with mammoth bones, leaving visitors face to face with an active Ice Age excavation.

Natural Oddities

Bisti Badlands Hoodoos

Farmington, New Mexico

A remote maze of mushroom-shaped rocks and alien-looking badlands.

Natural Oddities

Crater of Diamonds State Park

Murfreesboro, Arkansas

Visitors dig through a volcanic field and may keep every diamond they discover.

Natural Oddities

Goblin Valley State Park

Green River, Utah

Thousands of squat sandstone figures crowd a Utah valley so densely that the landscape looks less eroded than populated by an army of stone creatures.

Natural Oddities

Thor’s Well

Yachats, Oregon

Pacific waves pour into a roughly twenty-foot basalt hole, creating the unnerving illusion that the ocean is draining through the Oregon coast.

Natural Oddities

Sea Lion Caves

Florence, Oregon

An elevator drops visitors into an enormous natural basalt sea cave where wild Steller sea lions gather beside the crashing Pacific.

Natural Oddities

Elephant Rocks

Belleview, Missouri

Enormous granite boulders line up like a parade of elephants in this unusual Missouri state park.

Natural Oddities

Dismals Canyon

Phil Campbell, Alabama

Thousands of tiny glowworm-like larvae illuminate the walls of this shadowy Alabama sandstone canyon.

Curious Landmarks

Keahiakawelo

Lanai City, Hawaii

Red earth and massive boulders create a remote, wind-scoured landscape often mistaken for another planet.