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.
2 comments:
We have been to the Dug Up Gun museum in Wyoming and also the Atomic museum in Idaho. Both intriguing and most unusual. Thanks for this interesting blog series.
Anonymous: I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Thanks for your comment.
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