Field index

Natural Oddities

Nature has its own collection of improbable sights. Explore Secret Caverns, the Mammoth Site, dinosaur tracks at Red Gulch, and the Bisti Badlands, then check individual entries for access conditions and visitor details before you travel.

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75 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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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

Ringing Rocks Park

Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania

Strike the right boulders in this seven-acre field and solid diabase answers with metallic notes more like bells than ordinary stone.

Natural Oddities

The Lost Sea Adventure

Sweetwater, Tennessee

Deep inside Craighead Caverns, visitors descend through the earth and board a boat on what the attraction calls America's largest underground lake.

Natural Oddities

The Sinks and Rise

Lander, Wyoming

A Wyoming river vanishes underground, takes hours to travel a quarter mile, and returns with more water than entered.

Natural Oddities

Mushroom Rock State Park

Marquette, Kansas

Wind and water balanced broad sandstone caps on narrow stems, creating a five-acre garden of giant stone mushrooms.

Natural Oddities

Eternal Flame Falls

Orchard Park, New York

A natural gas flame can flicker in a rocky alcove behind a waterfall.

Jet-black volcanic sand and coconut palms line Punaluʻu Beach on Hawaiʻi Island.

Natural Oddities

Punaluʻu Black Sand Beach

Naalehu, Hawaii

Jet-black volcanic sand, coconut palms, and basking sea turtles create one of Hawaiʻi Island’s strangest shorelines.

Natural Oddities

Ashfall Fossil Beds

Royal, Nebraska

Ancient rhinos and horses still lie where volcanic ash buried a prehistoric waterhole.

Natural Oddities

Toadstool Geologic Park

Crawford, Nebraska

Wind and erosion have made a Nebraska badlands landscape look like a field of stone mushrooms.

Natural Oddities

Neskowin Ghost Forest

Neskowin, Oregon

Dozens of ancient Sitka spruce stumps emerge from the beach at low tide, revealing the remains of a forest that vanished beneath the Oregon coast centuries…

Natural Oddities

Mississippi Petrified Forest

Flora, Mississippi

A woodland trail winds among ancient logs transformed into stone millions of years ago.

Natural Oddities

Soda Dam

Jemez Springs, New Mexico

Hot springs built a strange, mineral-crusted dam across a mountain river.