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.
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