Field index

North Dakota Oddities

Unusual destinations, curious landmarks, and worthwhile detours across North Dakota.

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9 documented oddities Highest curiosity first

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Giant Objects

Tommy Turtle

Bottineau, North Dakota

Bottineau combined two local symbols into one spectacularly ridiculous landmark: an enormous turtle mounted on an equally enormous snowmobile.

Roadside Attractions

Enchanted Highway

Gladstone, North Dakota

A lonely county road crosses the North Dakota prairie past enormous geese, grasshoppers, pheasants, deer, fish, and a towering family built from scrap metal.

Historic Oddities

Nekoma Pyramid

Nekoma, North Dakota

An enormous concrete pyramid built to track incoming nuclear warheads still dominates the prairie decades after its billion-dollar missile-defense system was shut down.

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.

Giant Objects

Dakota Thunder

Jamestown, North Dakota

A 26-foot-tall concrete bison weighing roughly sixty tons has loomed over Jamestown since 1959.

Historic Oddities

Oscar-Zero

Cooperstown, North Dakota

An elevator descends roughly sixty feet beneath the prairie to an intact Minuteman missile launch control center sealed behind a massive blast door.

Giant Objects

Salem Sue

New Salem, North Dakota

A 38-foot-tall Holstein cow stands on a hill above New Salem, visible for miles and large enough to make the interstate below look miniature.

Roadside Attractions

Geographic Center of North America

Rugby, North Dakota

A 21-foot stone monument declares Rugby the geographic center of North America, even though geologists acknowledge that the continent has no single universally agreed center.

Roadside Attractions

Mystical Horizons

Bottineau, North Dakota

Pink granite walls, sighting tubes, and a working sundial turn a remote Turtle Mountain overlook into a modern astronomical calendar.