Strangest Roadside Attraction in Each State 3of3

This week is the third entry in my 3-part blog series presenting the strangest roadside attraction in each state. This week is New Mexico through Wyoming.

31. New Mexico

Strangest attraction: Very Large Array

Year built:1980

You probably don’t know its name, but you’ve see it in movies such as “Contact,” and “Independence Day.” The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array consists of twenty-seven 25-meter radio telescopes deployed in a Y-shaped array. Astronomers have used the VLA to observe black holes and protoplanetary disks around young stars.

32. New York

Strangest attraction: Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum

Year built: 1996

Once known as the Furniture Capital of the World, Jamestown is most proud of its best-known daughter, Lucille Ball. There’s a lot to love here, including meticulous recreations of the “I Love Lucy” sets used for Lucy and Ricky’s apartments in New York and Hollywood.

33. North Carolina

Strangest attraction: World’s Largest Chest of Drawers

Year built: 1926

The World’s Largest Chest of Drawers is 38 feet high and was built to call attention to High Point as the Furniture Capital of the World. The original chest was a 20-foot tall building-with-knobs and served as the local bureau of information. In 1996, it was completely renovated and converted into a 38-foot tall Goddard-Townsend block front chest.

34. North Dakota

Strangest attraction: Tommy the Turtle

Year built: 1978

Turtles and winter are not a combo that comes to mind — certainly not a snowmobile-riding turtle. But the 30-foot tall Tommy the Turtle is the largest turtle of its kind in the world and straddles the largest snowmobile in the world (34 feet long) while guarding the entrance to Bottineau’s municipal tennis courts. He’s meant to be a symbol for the nearby Turtle Mountains.

35. Ohio

Strangest attraction: As We Are exhibit

Year built: 2017

It may be the ultimate headshot. The new exhibit, the As We Are exhibit, contains a photo booth capable of taking 3-D pictures. The pictures are then displayed on a construct of a head made from ribbons of ultrabright LED screens. The head is 14 feet high, weighs more than three tons, and displays the faces of everyday people 17 times larger than life.

36. Oklahoma

Strangest attraction: Big Beaver Statue

Year built: 1970

Beaver is known for its annual World Championship Cow Chip Throwing Contest in April. To commemorate the festival, there’s a statue of a big beaver holding a large piece of cow poop. The beaver’s home is a mobile trailer that moves around town at different times of the year. FYI: the record cow chip toss was set in 2015 with one turd flying 188 feet, six inches.

37. Oregon

Strangest attraction: World’s First Riding Mechanical Corndog

Year built: 2016

The Pronto Pup — a wiener on a wooden skewer that’s dipped in cornmeal batter and deep fried — was created by George Boyington in the 1930s. It’s honored today with a restaurant that is topped with a 30-foot fiberglass corndog as well as a mechanical, rideable corndog out front that’s a quarter for a ride.

38. Pennsylvania

Strangest attraction: Haines Shoe House

Year built: 1948

The Haines Shoe House was built by Colonel Mahlon Nathaniel Haines, the flamboyant “Shoe Wizard” for advertising purposes. It is 25 feet tall and has five stories. The living room is located in the toe, the kitchen is located in the heel, two bedrooms are located in the ankle, and there’s an ice cream shop in the instep.

39. Rhode Island

Strangest attraction: Green Animals Topiary Garden

Year built: 1872

Among the more than 80 pieces of topiary in the Green Animals Topiary Garden are teddy bears, a camel, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant, and two bears made from sculptured California privet, yew, and English boxwood. There are also pineapples, a unicorn, a reindeer, a dog, and a horse with his rider. Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States.

40. South Carolina

Strangest attraction: Mars Bluff Crater

Year built:1958

On March 11, 1958, a U.S. Air Force plane accidently dropped an unarmed 7,600-pound atomic bomb on this small community. The bomb created a crater 35 feet deep and 70 feet wide. The incident and the crater, which is now overgrown and on private property, are marked by a nearby historical marker.

41. South Dakota

Strangest attraction: Center of the Nation Monument

Year built: 2008

The Center of the Nation Monument—a massive map of the United States enclosed in a compass rose, designed by a local artist and made of 54,000 pounds of South Dakota granite — isn’t technically at the center of the country. The center, which is 21 miles north of the monument, is marked by a small metal pole stuck into a pasture, off of a gravel road behind a ditch.

42. Tennessee

Strangest attraction: Titanic – World’s Largest Museum Attraction

Year built: 2010

Surprisingly, landlocked Tennessee is home to the largest permanent Titanic museum in the world. Half the size of the original ill-fated ocean liner, the museum lets “passengers” experience what it was like to walk the hallways, parlors, cabins, and grand staircase, while surrounded by more than 400 artifacts directly from the ship and its passengers.

43. Texas

Strangest attraction: Cadillac Ranch

Year built: 1974

This Route 66 landmark features 10 Cadillacs facing west in a line, all half-buried, nose-down in the dirt. From the 1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan deVille, the Caddies’ tail fins are held high. Created by The Ant Farm, a group of art-hippies who had a silent partner—Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh III—who wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals.

44. Utah

Strangest attraction: Hole N’ The Rock

Year built: 1952

Hole N’ The Rock began as a home that was dug, carved, and blasted out of the rock beginning in the 1940s. Today, you can tour the 14 rooms arranged around huge pillars. A fireplace with a 65-foot chimney drilled through solid sandstone, a deep French fryer, and a bathtub built into the rock are among the attractions. There’s also a petting zoo with a zebra.

45. Vermont

Strangest attraction: Ben & Jerry’s Flavor Graveyard

Year built: 1997

On a hill in back of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream plant, beyond the bulk milk tanks, are grave markers to dearly departed flavors such as Ethan Almond and Bovinity Divinity. It’s a good final stop after a 30-minute guided tour of the ice cream factory. After sampling the still-living flavors, you can pay your respects to those no longer there to give you a brain freeze.

46. Virginia

Strangest attraction: The Great Stalacpipe Organ

Year built: 1954

The Great Stalacpipe Organ is located inside the Luray Caverns near Shenandoah National Park. Instead of using pipes, the organ is wired to soft rubber mallets poised to gently strike stalactites of varying lengths and thicknesses. Leland W. Sprinkle created the organ by finding and shaving appropriate stalactites to produce specific notes; it can be heard anywhere within the cavern.

47. Washington

Strangest attraction: Nutty Narrows Bridge

Year built: 1963

Everyone’s seen dead animals along the side of the road. After seeing a deceased squirrel with an acorn still in its mouth, Amos Peters also decided to do something about it. The result was a bridge to give squirrels a way to cross busy Olympia Way without getting flattened by passing cars. Today, there are five such bridges throughout the city.

48. West Virginia

Strangest attraction: The Mystery Hole

Year built: 1973

The Mystery Hole bills itself as a gravity-defying wonder. It includes attractions such as balls that roll up hill and a Volkswagen Beetle, chopped in half, seemingly crashed into the side of the building. Original owner Donald Wilson “discovered” the hole’s mysterious powers in the 1970s and set up a kitschy tourist attraction that fell on hard times in the 1990s, but new owners are restoring it.

49. Wisconsin

Strangest attraction: Sputnik Crashed Here

Year built: 1962

People remember when satellites and rockets go up, but not so much when they come down. On Sept. 6, 1962, a 20-pound smoldering piece of the Soviet Union’s 5 ton Sputnik IV satellite fell from the sky and embedded itself three-inches deep on Eighth Street, in Manitowoc In front of the Rahr-West Art Museum. The spot where it landed is now marked on the street, although the fragment is no longer there. The museum has hosted an annual Sputnikfest since 2007.

50. Wyoming

Strangest attraction: Cody Dug Up Gun Museum

Year built: 2009

Take the name — Cody Dug Up Gun Museum — literally. Almost all the weapons on display here were dug up. Some were found by metal detecting, some were spotted sticking out of the ground, others were lying in dry streambeds, and some were salvaged from battlefield dirt. The collection includes a revolver dropped in a creek during a Civil War battle and a rifle that exploded in a homesteader’s hand.

The 50 roadside attractions I've presented over the last 3 weeks were not determined by me and might not be the strangest (especially considering that strangest is a subjective opinion), but they are certainly very strange. 

Strangest Roadside Attraction In Each State 2of3

This week is part 2 of my 3-part blog highlighting an interesting, unusual, or historic roadside attraction for each of our 50 states. This week covering Hawaii through New Jersey.

11) Hawaii

Strangest attraction: Pineapple Garden Maze

Year built: 1999

Located on the Dole Plantation, the world’s largest maze features 14,000 colorful Hawaiian plants, has nearly 2.5 miles of paths, and covers more than three acres. In the maze, the goal is to locate the eight secret stations. The fastest finishers win a prize and get their names recorded on a sign at the maze’s entrance.

12) Idaho

Strangest attraction: Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 Atomic Museum

Year built: 1951

Ever wanted to touch the instruments in a nuclear reactor control room or try to use the mechanical arms used to hold radioactive materials? You can at the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1, or EBR-1 for short, which made history on Dec. 20, 1951, when it became the first plant to generate usable electricity from atomic energy.

13) Illinois

Strangest attraction: The Super Museum

Year built: 1993

It’s a bird! it’s a plane! No, it’s a Superman museum. Located on Superman Square in the Man of Steel’s official hometown of Metropolis, the two-story building features more than 20,000 items from longtime Superman enthusiast Jim Hambrick’s collection, including the only remaining George Reeves costume from the original TV series.

14) Indiana

Strangest attraction: United States Vice Presidential Museum

Year built: 1993

Officially known as The Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center after the 44th vice president, the two-story former church building showcases the history of all the vice presidents, including memorabilia and a theater. Did you know Mike Pence is the sixth VP from Indiana, following Schuyler Colfax, Thomas Hendricks, Charles Fairbanks, Thomas Marshall, and Dan Quayle?

15) Iowa

Strangest attraction: Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk

Year built: 1985

The town of Riverside, incorporated in 1882, is best known for an event that won’t occur for 210 years. That’s when James T. Kirk, future captain of the USS Enterprise, will be born. A plaque commemorates the upcoming event, and an annual Star Trek festival is held in the town that claims Kirk as its own after creator Gene Roddenberry wrote that the captain was born in Iowa.

16. Kansas

Strangest attraction: Giant Van Gogh Painting on World’s Largest Easel

Year built: 2001

Kansas is the Sunflower State, so it makes sense that Canadian artist Cameron Cross pitched Goodland for his third and so far last giant recreation of a famous Van Gogh work. The 32-by-24 foot “Sunflower” recreation rests on an 80-foot tall easel a half-mile off I-70. If you’re curious, the other two are in Altona, Manitoba and Emerald, Australia.

17. Kentucky

Strangest attraction: The Vent Haven Museum

Year built: 1973

Hey, dummy, did you know this is the only museum in the world dedicated to ventriloquism? Housing more than 900 dummies used by ventriloquists from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the dolls are from founder W.S. Berger’s collection. Berger was not a professional ventriloquist. He retired as president of the Cambridge Tile Company.

18. Louisiana

Strangest attraction: National Hansen’s Disease Museum

Year built: 1999

Located at the former National Leprosarium, it’s a museum that honors the once quarantined on site leprosy patients and the medical staff who took care of them. The hospital began as the Louisiana Leper Home in 1894 before becoming one of two leprosy hospitals in the U.S.

19. Maine

Strangest attraction: Lenny the Chocolate Moose

Year built: 1997

Located in Len Libby Candies, a store that sells handcrafted chocolate and ice cream, Lenny is a 1,700-pound solid milk chocolate moose. He resides in a pond of white chocolate tinted with food coloring. The self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Chocolate Animal Sculpture” is eight feet tall and over nine feet from end to end.

20. Maryland

Strangest attraction: National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Year built: 1993

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine is dedicated to demonstrating how techniques developed on the battlefields of the Civil War contributed to modern medicine. If you like gore, this could be your place. More arms and legs were cut off during the Civil War than in any other war in U.S. history, according to the “Ammunition and Amputations” display.

21. Massachusetts

Strangest attraction: The Museum of Bad Art

Year built: 1994

One man’s trash becomes an art fancier’s dream. Antique dealer Scott Wilson started the collection after showing a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who then suggested the idea. The pieces in the Museum of Bad Art range, according to the museum’s website, “the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush.”

22. Michigan

Strangest attraction: Hoegh Pet Casket Co.

Year built: 1966

The tour at Pet Casket Factory starts in a showroom, where a complete pet funeral seems to be in progress — with casket, floral arrangements, candles, and velvet paintings of mournful, large-eyed puppies. It concludes at the model pet cemetery outside. And there’s a brass plaque on the crematorium: “If Christ would have had a little dog, it would have followed Him to the Cross.”

23. Minnesota

Strangest attraction: Jolly Green Giant

Year built: 1979

The 55.5-foot Jolly Green Giant statue grew out of a local radio station owner’s “Welcome Travelers” program. As he interviewed people who passed through town, he gave them Green Giant vegetables (canned in a local factory) at the end of each show. The guests would sometimes ask, “Where’s the Green Giant?” An idea and a monument were born.

24. Mississippi

Strangest attraction: Devil’s Crossroads

Year built: 1938

Location: Corners of Highways 61 and 49, Clarksdale

Closest city: Oxford

If you’re a blues fan, you might be familiar with the legend of blues icon Robert Johnson selling his soul to Satan at this crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Legend aside, this busy intersection is hard to miss thanks to a signpost with giant guitars sitting atop. Nearby, learn more about Johnson at the Rock ‘n Roll and Blues Heritage Museum.

25. Missouri

Strangest attraction: Jesse James Home Museum

Year built: 1881

In the Jesse James Home Museum you can see the infamous bullet hole in the interior wall made after Robert Ford pulled out his .44 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and shot the legendary outlaw behind his right ear on April 3, 1882. After James’s body was exhumed in 1995, it was determined that the bullet that killed him never left his body.

26. Montana

Strangest attraction: Talking Penguin Statue

Year built: 1989

Cut Bank, a town of 3,000, considers itself to be the coldest spot in the nation. To back up its claim it has a 27-foot tall talking penguin made from 10,000 pounds of concrete over a metal frame, which talks (when its speaker works), bleating out the slogan, “Welcome to Cut Bank, the Coldest Spot in the Nation!”

27. Nebraska

Strangest attraction: Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit at the Hastings Museum

Year built: 1927

Kool-Aid, the flavored powdered drink mix, is the creation of Edward Perkins, who came up with the concoction in his mother’s kitchen. The Hastings Museum’s Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit explores the life of Perkins, whose other creations included Nix-O-Tine Tobacco Remedy and M, a gasoline additive.

28. Nevada

Strangest attraction: Toilet Paper Hero of Hoover Dam

Year built: 2007

Can you imagine cleaning latrines for 7,000 men in 120 degree heat? That was the inspiration for Steven Liguori for his statue to “Alabam,” who worked at the nearby Hoover Dam construction site. Alabam cleaned the outhouses, a thankless job that Ligouri honored with this statue.

29. New Hampshire

Strangest attraction: The Redstone Rocket

Year built: 1971

Warren, a small town of less than 1,000 people in the middle of the state, stands out for its 66-foot Redstone rocket shell. This type of rocket was used to launch the first American satellites and astronauts. The Rocket stands upright on top of a cement block in the center of town between the Methodist church and the municipal building.

30. New Jersey

Strangest attraction: World’s Largest Light Bulb

Year built: 1938

It shouldn’t be a surprise that atop the Edison Memorial Tower at the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, named for the man who developed the practical electric light bulb, there’s the world’s largest light bulb. It’s 14 feet tall, weighs eight tons, and crowns the 12-story tower.

Strangest Roadside Attraction in Each State part 1of 3

The great American road trip remains a cultural touchstone. Hundreds of thousands of Americans each year pack into a car with their friends or family for a trip to reach the opposite coast, or an amusement park in a nearby state, or a beachside resort. And the country’s long stretches of road have given us another tradition that many find as important as the destination—the roadside attraction.

These curiosities range from unusual museums to Guinness World Records to strange memorials. Giant statues of beavers, an enormous moose made out of chocolate and a jolly green giant are just a few of the sights that can take your mind off the road and give you a chance to stretch your legs. Whether it’s a giant talking penguin, a museum dedicated to hammers, or the spot where a Soviet satellite crashed, every state has interesting, quirky, unusual, and just plain wacky places to visit. They’re not the most famous or popular attraction, just ones that will make you scratch your head and say you never knew that.

The famous Route 66 that stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles was riddled with such curiosities, and many can still be found all across America to this day, along famous trip routes like the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Pacific Coast Highway to the back roads and scenic routes you might take just to see an unusual sight.

Sometimes, these attractions and museums were specifically created to be tourist traps, with no historical context for their presence. Others are sites of unusual, famous, and often infamous events in local history. In one case, an event that has not even happened yet—and probably never will.

This week's blog covers Alabama thru Georgia.

1) Alabama

Strangest attraction: Unclaimed Baggage Center

Year built: 1970

Ever wonder what happens to luggage that never gets picked up from the airport? It ends up here, in the Unclaimed Baggage Center, and so do nearly a million annual visitors who come to comb through the contents of the bags — sorted ahead of time into departments for easy shopping.

2) Alaska

Strangest attraction: Hammer Museum

Year built: 2002

It’s hammer time all the time at the world’s first museum dedicated to preserving the history of the world’s first tool. More than 2,000 hammers are on display at any given time, ranging from modern tools to old ones such as hammers from ancient Egypt, and from tiny hammers two inches long to as big as 20 feet. Just look for the giant ball-peen hammer in the front yard.

3) Arizona

Strangest attraction: Flintstones Bedrock City

Year built: 1972

What began as a six-acre tourist attraction, including theme park and replicas of the Flintstone and Rubble residences (furnished with props), today also doubles as an RV campground and parking site. This ode to the ‘60s classic cartoon has a large metal slide resembling a brontosaurus so you can recreate the opening credits. Yabba-dabba-doo!

4) Arkansas

Strangest attraction: Gallows of Hanging Judge Parker at Fort Smith

Year built: 1873

The gallows at Forth Smith is where 19th century hard justice was meted out. Fort Smith was where the Lawless West met the Civilized East. For 21 years, Isaac “Hanging Judge” Parker held the bench of the U.S. Court for the Western District of Arkansas and sentenced 160 people to death. The gallows that stands today is a reconstruction.

5) California

Strangest attraction: Elmer’s Bottle Tree Ranch

Year built: 2000

On a stretch of old Route 66, Elmer Long, who is often on site, created his Bottle Tree Ranch. Elmer Long welded together a forest of metal trees and hung dozens of colorful glass bottles from each one. And atop each tree he placed a found object such as a sewing machine, guitar, rifle, and various signs.

6) Colorado

Strangest attraction: UFO Watchtower

Year built: 2000

It makes sense that a UFO sighting hotspot would have a watchtower. The San Luis Valley has more UFO sightings than anywhere else in America, according to paranormal experts. The tower has a 360-degree view, so you can look all around as well as up. In addition to the observation platform, there’s a campground and, of course, a gift shop.

7) Connecticut

Strangest attraction: Frog Bridge

Year built: 2000

Officially, it’s the Thread City Crossing, but it’s known as the Frog Bridge because of the four copper frogs on each end of the steel bridge over the Willimantic River. The frogs commemorate 1754’s The Battle of the Frogs, a story about a large-scale death of frogs fighting over the last water in the middle of a drought. The frog deaths were loud enough to convince residents that the French and Native American were coming to town to slaughter them. The invaders never came, and the frog battle became a part of Willimantic history.

8) Delaware

Strangest attraction: Miles the Monster

Year built: 2008

The Dover International Speedway, a racetrack known as “The Monster Mile,” is proud of its monster mascot. He’d been the mascot since 2000, so when the track got a makeover beginning in 2007, a huge 46 feet tall “Miles the Monster” creature statue was erected just outside the track. You can find Miles also on the winner’s trophy, tickets to the races, t-shirts, as action figures, and other memorabilia.

9) Florida

Strangest attraction: World’s Smallest Police Station

Year built: 1963

The World’s Smallest Police Station that stands on U.S. Highway 98 is a replica of the original phone booth that served as the department’s call box. Remember, those were pre-cell phone days, and calls would come to one location. The previous phone was bolted to the outside of a building. Standing inside the booth provided protection when it rained.

10) Georgia

Strangest attraction: Georgia Guidestones

Year built: 1980

Sometimes referred to as America’s Stonehenge, the Georgia Guidestones granite monument consists of five slabs, astronomically aligned, and a capstone lying atop of them. A message consisting of a set of 10 guidelines or principles for humanity and Earth is engraved in eight different languages: English, Spanish, Swahili, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.

Check back here next week for part 2 of 3 covering Hawaii – New Jersey.

The Last Czar

On July 17, 1918, the last Czar of Russia Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children were brutally murdered by revolutionaries known as the Bolsheviks. Though the Bolsheviks claimed to have murdered the entire family, their bodies were mutilated and subsequently buried in unmarked graves which led to speculation that the youngest daughter of the five Romanov children, Anastasia, had escaped.

The rumors seemed all but confirmed when just a few years later a mysterious woman appeared in Berlin and was admitted to a psychiatric facility. The legend of the escaped Grand Duchess and the notion that the mysterious woman could be none other than Anastasia swirled across Europe and continued well into the 1980s. But were the rumors true?

The Bolsheviks, whose revolution would eventually create the ruling communist party in Russia, sent the Romanov family to live in exile in a small house in the city of Yekaterinburg. For 78 days the family was held in five small rooms under constant surveillance as their captors grew increasingly paranoid about a possible rescue attempt.

On the morning of July 17th, the family was ushered into the basement where a bloodbath ensued. Overall, the executions had taken 20 minutes. The bodies were then stripped, burned by fire or in acid, and buried in an abandoned mineshaft. The family’s burial site remained hidden for 61 years following their execution. During this time, the anonymity of their burials and the knowledge that the children had jewels hidden in their clothing, led some to believe that a child could have escaped. Rumors spread and several impostors attempted to claim the royal fortune.

Perhaps the most famous impostor of Anastasia Romanov was an unstable young woman named Anna Anderson. In 1920, Anna attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in Berlin. She survived and was brought to an asylum without any paperwork or identification.

For six months she refused to identify herself and didn’t speak a word to the hospital staff. When she eventually did speak, it was determined that she had a Russian accent. Combined with the distinct scars on her body and her withdrawn demeanor, this inspired theories among the hospital staff and the patients.

At least four other women would come forward all claiming to be the missing Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov. These women appeared in different corners of the world at varying times: one appeared in Russia in 1920, another in Chicago in 1963. But none were more famous or had a more believable case, than Anna Anderson.

When Anderson eventually left the hospital in Berlin, she was accosted by the press in an attempt to confirm whether or not she was the Grand Duchess. Since the fall of the Romanov dynasty, Russian aristocrats who were able to escape the Bolshevik takeover had spread all across Europe along with the rumors of Anastasia’s resurrection. Anderson was able to find housing with various aristocrats who had been friends to the Romanov family despite the fact that Anastasia’s former nursemaid, tutor, and many other former servants denied that she was the Grand Duchess.

In 1970, a judge ruled in court that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that Anderson was the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Anderson was eventually identified as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who had gone missing shortly before Anderson turned up in Berlin. She died in 1984.

The burial site of the Romanovs was discovered in 1979, but this information wasn’t made public until 1991 because two bodies were still missing. One of the missing bodies was Alexei and the other was Maria, one of the Czar’s four daughters. But because the corpses were so damaged, the notion that the missing daughter could be Anastasia persisted.

That was until 2007 with the discovery of two more remains near the site. Their DNA showed that they were the bodies of Alexei and Maria with Anastasia having been identified among the bodies from the previous burial.

I came across a news article…actually, it was a few of years ago…about the Russian government's desire to reunite the remains of their last imperial family in one place—the czar, czarina, and their five children. However, the mission was not without roadblocks, namely the need to satisfy skeptics about the validity of all the remains.

On September 23, 2015, Russian investigators exhumed the body of Czar Nicholas Romanov II and his wife, Alexandra, as part of an investigation into the family's death a hundred years ago—in 1918. It's part of the ongoing attempt to confirm that the remains really belong to Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children. Some of the family's remains were tested in the early 1990s (the early days of DNA testing) with the results being that the scientists were pretty confident that it's really them. The remains exhumed at that time included the czar, his wife, three of their children, and several servants. Two of the children, Alexei and Maria, were unaccounted for at that time. But the officials weren't able to convince the Russian Orthodox Church about the authenticity of the remains.

The church officials have not come out with their exact reasons for doubt. There had been some discussion about the Romanov family having been canonized in 2000 which made the remains holy relics which required a different way of treating them. In general, church leaders say they just aren't convinced. The church's approval is important for bringing the family's remains together.

The church did, somewhat reluctantly, allow the family's remains to be interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg where most of Russia's other czars are buried. But the church still had not accepted the family's identities in spite of the fact that several rounds of DNA testing had occurred.

When the remains of Alexei and Maria were subsequently located (their identities confirmed by DNA testing), those remains were left sitting on a shelf because the Russian Orthodox Church balked at the idea of adding them to the family tomb. The church says it believes the family's remains were destroyed and won't change their position until they are 100 percent sure in spite of the DNA confirmation.

In February 2016 the church once again blocked the reuniting of the remains. Currently, the most prevalent explanation is that the church hierarchy wants to avoid the decision because either choice would alienate key factions. Rejecting the bones will anger some Orthodox adherents, particularly those outside Russia, while accepting them will incense a conservative domestic faction that believes the Soviet government somehow faked the original burial at the time and those aren't the real remains of Czar Nicholas II and his family.

And the entire effort remains in limbo.