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Roadside Attractions

Browse documented roadside attractions from across America.

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123 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Roadside Attractions

Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park

Wilson, North Carolina

Thirty enormous kinetic sculptures made from road signs, bicycle parts, industrial scraps, reflectors, fans, and gears turn a downtown park into a wind-powered mechanical carnival.

Roadside Attractions

The Villagers of Taylor

Taylor, Nebraska

More than 120 painted plywood people inhabit this small Sandhills town.

Roadside Attractions

Lemmon Petrified Wood Park & Museum

Lemmon, South Dakota

Thousands of tons of petrified wood, fossilized grass, and round boulders were stacked into towers, pyramids, arches, and buildings across a downtown city block.

Roadside Attractions

W’eel Turtle

Dunseith, North Dakota

More than two thousand steel wheel rims were welded into an enormous turtle whose open metal shell looks part animal, part industrial machine.

Roadside Attractions

The Peabody Ducks

Memphis, Tennessee

Every day, five mallards march through a grand Memphis hotel on a red carpet, spend their shift in a marble lobby fountain, then parade back out…

Roadside Attractions

Turtle Boy

Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester's beloved Turtle Boy fountain pairs a nude bronze youth with an enormous sea turtle in one of New England's most gloriously awkward public sculptures.

Haunted Locations

The Clown Motel

Tonopah, Nevada

Thousands of clowns fill a working desert motel beside Tonopah’s old cemetery.

Roadside Attractions

Cathedral of Junk

Austin, Texas

Behind an ordinary Austin house, decades of bicycles, hubcaps, bottles, ladders, appliances, cables, toys, and scrap have grown into a towering walk-through junk labyrinth.

Roadside Attractions

Papermoon Diner

Baltimore, Maryland

Mannequins, dolls, toys, sculptures, kitchen tools, vintage objects, and brightly colored installations turn a functioning Baltimore diner into a constantly mutating art environment.

Roadside Attractions

House of Frankenstein Wax Museum

Lake George

A monster-filled wax museum with animatronic scares on Lake George’s main street.

Roadside Attractions

Green Animals Topiary Garden

Portsmouth, Rhode Island

More than eighty topiary animals and figures fill a seven-acre estate where shrubs have been trained into bears, birds, a giraffe, a camel, a unicorn, and…

Frog mural by artist Robert Dafford in Rayne, Louisiana, the Frog Capital of the World

Roadside Attractions

Rayne’s Frog Army

Rayne, Louisiana

The Frog Capital of the World did not stop at a nickname. Painted concrete frogs, giant frog art, murals, a live frog pond, and amphibian mascots…