This week is the third and final 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 chip flying 188 feet 6 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 costs 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's
25 feet tall. 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.
