America’s real treasure is its plethora of lesser-known places, which promise unconventional and unforgettable experiences. These hidden gems beckon the adventurous and the curious—from nature’s stunning perfection to the site of history or a city of its strange laws.

Here are 21 unique locations nationwide.

The Wave, Arizona

The wave is in Arizona; the trailhead is in Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. It is 15 miles (24.14 km) from Page, Arizona, and Kanab, Utah.

Vermilion Cliffs National Monument protects these 190 million—year—old sandstone formations carved by wind and water. The Navajo Sandstone’s internal structure, including layers of sand avalanching down the front of migrating dunes, forms the wave’s wavy lines. 

Devils Tower, Wyoming

Devil’s Tower is an igneous intrusion formed from molten rock that cooled and hardened underground, as the National Park Service (.gov) informs—Phonolite porphyry with no quartz. At 1,267 feet (386 m), Devil’s Tower is the world’s largest example of columnar jointing and is 1,267 feet (386 m) tall. 

Wisconsin – Apostle Islands Sea Caves

However, the Apostle Islands Sea Caves are a natural wonder and some of the most beautiful sea caves in the Great Lakes. Emerald-green forests and the sapphire blue waters of Lake Superior surround the caves. On calm days, visitors can kayak into the multicolored caves, which blend blue minerals and green moss.

Hamilton Pool Preserve, Texas

Hamilton Pool Preserve is a natural pool and waterfall in the middle of nowhere just outside Austin, Texas. Visiting requires reservations and up to eight people and one vehicle. 

Reservations do not insure swimming. Some featured a collapsed dome of an underground river that created the pool and grotto thousands of years ago.

Texas’ Museum of the Weird

The Museum of the Weird, founded in 1952, is one of the oldest and weirdest museums in the United States. Its collection includes shrunken heads, two-headed animals, mummies, fossils, movie props, and a wax museum.

The museum also has a cryptid collection that includes Bigfoot, yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster.

Cahokia Mounds, Illinois

Once spanning 4,000 acres, it was the most significant prehistoric Native American city north of Mexico—Cahokia Mounds. The city’s population was between 10,000 and 20,000, more than London’s around 1100. Cahokia Mounds is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Historic Landmark. 

As a complex chiefdom and pre-urban society, it is a striking example. 

Masonic Caves, New York

The Masonic Caves of New York are mysterious. Once, they were secret places for the Freemasons to meet. These caves are concealed in unknown parts as they were so many millennia ago: littered with ancient relics and arcane symbols beaten deep into their curtained walls.

These caves are seriously protected; only tours can enter, and they’re carefully preserved to maintain the aura—and the associated artifacts—of a secret universe.

Winchester Mystery Home, California

In 1886, Sarah Winchester, the widow of William Wirt Winchester, began constructing the house and continued until she died in 1922. It was built on a large plot of land that expanded from an eight-room farmhouse into a 24,000-square-foot mansion with 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, and 2,000 doors.

The house became a tourist attraction nine months after Sarah’s death. Its size, architectural curiosities, and many myths and legends of existence. 

Centralia, Pennsylvania

Many people come to Centralia as a dark tourism destination. The area around the town is still full of signs of the fire, with monitoring boreholes and gas vents. 

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (.gov) states that the fire began probably due to the accidental burning of trash in an abandoned strip pit in May 1962. The deep mine workings of the Buck Mountain Coal Bed burn smoldered. 

Salem, Massachusetts

Salem Witch Trials is a title coined for a series of events in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. Some 20 people were executed, and more than 200 were accused of witchcraft during the trials. 

Prospects of religious extremism, xenophobia, and tension in society fed the trials. Some of the more modern theories are that the girls were suffering from epilepsy, child abuse, or some virus that developed from eating rye infected with fungus. 

Roswell, New Mexico

At the center of Roswell’s fame are the presumably alien remains of that 1947 UFO incident and the Roswell UFO Pilgrimage. The town is colorful with its UFO attractions, topped by the yearly UFO Festival. A trip to the Roswell UFO Museum is essential to get into it.

Crater Lake, Oregon

Crater Lake is the deepest in the US, at 1,943 feet (592 meters), and the seventh deepest worldwide. Mount Mazama collapsed more than 7,700 years ago in a massive volcanic eruption that created Crater Lake, formed when a caldera filled with rain and snow. 

The park’s Rim Drive, with 30 overlooks for sightseeing along which visitors can drive, is perhaps best known. 

South Dakota’s Badlands National Park

The area was first known to the Lakota people as “mako sica,” meaning “land that is bad. ” The name probably indicates little water, a very high temperature, and a strange surface. 

The park includes bison, bighorn sheep, prairie dogs, coyotes, pronghorns, and black-footed ferrets. The only venomous snake is the prairie rattlesnake, and the park also has a good population of nutria. 

Painted Hills, Oregon

Painted Hills formed 35 million years ago by volcanic ash and pumice deposits from the Cascade Mountains that settled there. The ash was buried with other sediments, compacted into soil, and weathered into clay; it turned into clay. 

The Painted Hills are home to birds, elk, deer, cougars, beavers, otters, minks, raccoons, coyotes, bats, badgers, rabbits, and mice. 

Luray Caverns, Virginia

The largest and most famous Eastern American cave system is Luray Caverns. It is filled with chambers 30 and 140 feet tall, linked by corridors, bridges, and stairs. Many speleothems decorate the caverns, including stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, mudflows, and mirrored pools.

Though the caverns have no exits, they are well-lighted, paved walkways that visitors can explore. The tour takes about 2–3 hours.

Colorado — Great Sand Dunes National Park

Star Dune is named because it is 755 feet above the base, making it the tallest dune in North America contained in the park. It also holds over 10 billion cubic meters of sand, making this Canada’s largest sandbox and North America’s biggest.

Winds blew sand from the San Juan Mountains westward into the San Luis Valley, dropping it at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and forming the dunes. 

Maine — Allagash Wilderness Waterway

1966, the Maine Legislature created the AWW to perpetuate the area’s wilderness character. This was the first program administered by a state within the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System and was designated a wild river in 1970.

The AWW consists of Allagash Lake, the Allagash River, and several other connected lakes and ponds. One of the more notable features is a view of nearby mountains, Katahdin, or an ice cave on Allagash Lake. The AWW allows visitors to canoe, kayak, fish, and hunt while camping. Wildlife the AWW is famous for includes bald eagles, moose, deer, ospreys, and loons. 

Hawaii, Haiku Stairs (Stairway to Heaven)

Built by the US Navy during World War II in 1942, the “Stairway to Heaven” in Hawaii, named the “Haiku Stairs,” is a steep, steel staircase to the top secret radio facility. It is now being torn down due to the health dangers of illegal trespassing; accessing this staircase is considered illegal and not open to the public.

The Neon Boneyard, Nevada

The Neon Museum is a nonprofit organization that collects, preserves, and exhibits neon signs. Its outdoor exhibition area is the ‘Neon Boneyard.’ Most of the signs in the Neon Museum’s collection were donated from what is now called the Neon Museum’s boneyard (actually, decommissioned signs were stored and slowly destroyed by the elements in YESCO’s boneyard), where Tescoesco stockpiled completed decommissioned signs.

Vintage images from the Las Vegas News Bureau’s archive of the city’s early neon use to the present day breathe life into the Neon Boneyard. 

Salvation Mountain, California

Salvation Mountain is Leonard Knight’s 28-year passion project to spread his “God is Love” message. The mountain is 50 feet tall and was built using found materials, including donated paint, adobe clay, and straw. Visitors from other countries even fly in to see It. 

Thor’s Well, Oregon

Thor’s well is a big, empty hole in the Oregon coast’s basalt rock near Cape Perpetua. For that reason, it’s also called “the drainpipe of the Pacific,” as it seems to suck water from the ocean. It is a sea cave humans didn’t carve out for themselves. 

Eventually, the cave roof collapsed, leaving an opening on top and a hole at the bottom of the hole. An hour before high tide is the best time to visit. The well is empty; you can see it, and the water is coming in.

Disclaimer – This list is solely the author’s opinion based on research and publicly available information.

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