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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

Meramec Caverns

Sullivan, Missouri

A classic Route 66 cave attraction leads through enormous chambers and colorful formations.

Curious Landmarks

Keahiakawelo

Lanai City, Hawaii

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

Natural Oddities

Jug Rock

Shoals, Indiana

A 60-foot sandstone formation shaped like a colossal stone jug, standing alone where erosion separated it from a nearby ridge.

Natural Oddities

Lava Tree State Monument

Pahoa, Hawaii

A lava flow wrapped around living trees, leaving a forest of hollow stone molds after the wood vanished.

Curious Landmarks

Fly Geyser

Gerlach, Nevada

A misbehaving geothermal well built a rainbow-colored geyser on private ranchland.

Natural Oddities

Ape Cave

Cougar, Washington

Beneath the forests near Mount St. Helens runs a roughly 2.5-mile lava tube where visitors explore darkness, rock falls, and an underground lava waterfall.

Natural Oddities

Ringing Rocks

Whitehall, Montana

Strike these boulders lightly and the hillside answers with metallic chimes.

Natural Oddities

Craters of the Moon

Arco, Idaho

Black lava seas, spatter cones, and underground tubes turn the Idaho desert into an alien landscape.

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

Kaūmana Caves

Hilo, Hawaii

A roadside staircase descends into a dark lava tube left behind by Mauna Loa’s 1881 eruption.

Natural Oddities

Periodic Spring

Afton, Wyoming

A cold mountain spring repeatedly surges from a limestone opening, slows or stops, then starts again in a natural cycle that can repeat within minutes.

Natural Oddities

Elephant Rocks

Belleview, Missouri

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