Top Ten Weird Places To Visit In The USA
The world wide reach of American movies, TV and music has had an unexpected side-effect over the years. It has introduced us to the weirder side of Americana, buried deep in small towns, deep forests, expansive deserts, from Minnesota to Texas, Maine to California. The world has become aware of an intrigued by the strange follies of eccentric Americans, odd historical landmarks, and places of natural beauty adapted by pioneers forging their way through, and leaving their mark on the landscape of the USA. From the ‘biggest’ to the ‘smallest’, the claims of the ‘only’ or the ‘most’, many superlatives are used to lay claim to some of these attractions being somehow unique. Whatever their status, what they do all have in common is that they are uniquely American. What follows is a list. A list of ten such weird, wacky and wonderful places. Why ten? Ten is a good number, often lists like this number ten. But also because the first on the list is Cadillac Ranch, which itself numbers ten cars buried nose first in the plains of Texas. This is a personal list, a list of places I have heard of and would love to visit. Or should I say would have liked to have visited in years gone by as not all of them exist any more.
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A Haven For Devil Dolls - The unassuming looking house in a leafy Kentucky suburb, that is home to the world's largest collection of creepy ventriloquists dummies.
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The Winchester Mystery House - Like an Escher nightmare made real, a haunted house with an architecture that boggles the mind, and defies belief.
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Cadillac Ranch: A would be graveyard of 10 Cadillacs (see photo above) dating from 1949 to 1963, half buried nose first in the ground. Their tail fins pointing skyward at an angle the matches that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The art installation is said to document the glory years of the famously ostentatious tail fin of 50s and 60s American cars. Constructed in 1974 by three artists, collectively known as Ant Farm. The piece is an interactive public art space. Visitors are encouraged to bring along paints, to graffiti the cars, keeping the installation alive and vibrant. The original work was sponsored and for many years owned (until his death in 2014) by millionaire Stanley Marsh III.
Cadillac Ranch in popular culture: The installation has appeared in a number of commercials and music videos over the years. Bruce Springsteen called one of his songs on his 1980 album The River, “Cadillac Ranch”. More recently, the Ranch was referenced in the Pixar movie Cars (2006), appearing as a mountain range called “Cadillac Range”.
Location: Interstate 40, outside of Amarillo, Texas.
Largest Ball Of Twine: Now there’s some disputing which is actually the authentic Largest Ball of Twine in the USA. There are three towns that attempt to lay claim to the largest. The one in Cawker City, Kansas has in recent years become the largest, as residents add to it each August during their “Twine-a-thon”. However the ball in Cawker is more famous as being the ‘second largest’, after it was referenced in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, “Everybody in the car...or perhaps you don't want to see the second largest ball of twine on Earth which is only four short hours away?” The ball built by J.C. Payne of Valley View, Texas, which is the biggest in circumference, was certified as the world's largest ball of twine by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1993. However that’s made of plastic, and utterly dismissed by the people of Cawker City. They see theirs as a labor of love, built over more than 50 years, started by local resident Frank Stoeber in opposition to what I personally consider as the Largest Ball of Twine.
In Darwin, Minnesota, is a ball of twine created by Francis Johnson. It is the original and therefore the oldest and most famous of the twine balls. Johnson started in 1950 and was worked on for 39 years until Johnson died in 1989. Like Stoeber in Cawker City, it was a labor of love. In fact when Stoeber died in 1974, his ball was only one foot smaller than the Darwin ball. Anyway, all the competition aside, for me the original is the best and therefore it is the Darwin ball that goes on the list.
Largest Ball of Twine in popular culture: The classic LucasArts computer adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road includes a location which is the Biggest Ball of Twine. Although the location and is fictional and some artistic license was used, the ball of twine is located in Minnesota.
Location: Across from the town park, Main Street, Darwin Minnesota.
Plymouth Rock: There is no order to this list, apart from the first two were at Southern and Northern parts of the States. So the next two should be at Eastern and Western parts. And so then to Plymouth Rock! That’s not weird you say?! Well look at it this way, There is no contemporary references to a landing on Plymouth Rock, the earliest reference is a “great rock” recognized as a boundary marker in 1715. The story of the ‘rock’ and landing on it came some 121 years later. The claim about the rock came from a 94 year old man, Thomas Faunce, who lived 3 miles away from the location (a long way in such times). His father didn’t even come on the Mayflower, he arrived two years after on the Anne in 1623. There has always doubt cast on his story. And as the author Bill Bryson wrote in his book Made In America, “The one thing the Pilgrims certainly did not do was step ashore on Plymouth Rock. Quite apart from the consideration that it may have stood well above the high-water mark in 1620, no prudent mariner would try to bring a ship alongside a boulder on a heaving December sea when a sheltered inlet beckoned from nearby.” Still, all that said, it is a place that should be visited and the bizarre history of a rock that isn’t ‘the rock’ because there may never have been a ‘rock’ in the first place, makes it all the more intriguing.
Plymouth Rock in popular culture: It’s the foundation stone of America! Whether it’s a made up story or not, it in many ways influences everything that came after it. Oh and Malcolm X referenced the rock in a famous speech, saying, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us."
Location: Pilgrim Memorial State Park, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The Wawona Tree (or the Fallen Tunnel Tree): Across the other side of the country now and back to the 1960s, to Yosemite National Park, California, sometime before 1969. Like the ‘ball of twine’ issue, there is more than one giant redwood (or giant sequoia) that has a whole through it big enough to drive a car through. For example there’s the Chandelier Tree in Drive-Thru Tree Park, which was briefly featured in the opening credits of National Lampoon’s Vacation (yes that movie again). However, this is my list and so the Wawona tree is the one I choose. Unlike the young whipper-snapper of the Chandelier Tree (carved in the 1930s), the Wawona Tree was craved through in 1881. (Yes it is the whole ball of twine thing again!) The tree fell in 1969 due to heavy snow fall weighing it down. The tree is estimated to have been some 2,300 years old. The tree still remains where it fell, and is commonly referred to as the Fallen Tunnel Tree. (I may then nip over to the Chandelier Tree though, just to say I’ve passed through giant redwood tree.)
The Wawona Tree in popular culture: In the up-coming Weird Retro Far-Out Fiction section of our In-Flight Magazine, the tree is mentioned in the prelude of the novel New Hope.
Location: Ex-of Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California
W.C. Rice's Cross Garden: A truly weird one among the mix, but this place has sparked my interest ever since I first saw photographs of it on the Internet. Always a fan of quirky religious evangelical lunacy, the W. C. Rice Cross Garden seems the epitome of such undying strangeness. Set In Prattville, Alabama, the name couldn’t be better this one man’s obsession has easily made it on the list. Why? Because it epitomizes an aspect of American culture that many other much more popular attractions doesn’t. That (for us outsiders) weird unquestioning “In God we Trust” attitude that exists in some of the deepest and most far-flung parts of the USA. And even taking the religious aspect out of the equation, this is American folk art at its best. Somewhere in the region of a thousand plus crosses, sit within 11 acres of land. Paint peeling off them, as the declare hell and damnation to all who see them. "It is my job to warn people that they better get ready to die," said the 69-year-old Rice has been quoted as saying about his garden of ‘good and evil’, that took him over 20 years to construct. Rev. W. C. Rice died in 2004, leaving a legacy of religious folk art for generations to see, whether they followed his fundamental beliefs or just wanted to see a true and honest, unmediated aspect of folk art, like me.
W. C. Rice Cross Garden in popular culture: Only shared on the Internet among those that are intrigued by such eccentric madness and people looking for locations to make low-budget horror films.
Location: On Highway 82, north of Highway 14, go past the Country Club and go up hill. On the down slope, watch for a paved road, that’s Autauga County Road 47. Look for County Road 86 and the crosses are just ahead, on both sides of road. Prattville, Alabama.
Graceland Too: In the news recently, due to the death of its owner Paul MacLeod, being able to visit Graceland Too is in doubt. However as with other bygone attractions, this one still makes it to my personal list. A two-story house, Graceland Too was crammed full of Elvis memorabilia collected by the eccentric obsessive fan MacLeod over more than 60 years. Opened in 1990, it was claimed that the ‘museum’ was open 24/7, 365 days a year. The house had gone beyond mere collection, or even a shrine to the King, the house itself had become an example of outsider art by the self proclaimed World’s No.1 Elvis Fan. Unfortunately MacLeod died on 17th July 2014, sat in a rocking chair on the porch of Graceland Too. Two days earlier, MacLeod had shot and killed a man called Dwight David Taylor Jr., who’d tried to force his way into the house. A bizarre and fitting end, to such a strange character as MacLeod.
Graceland Too in popular culture: In an interview with Vice in 2004, MacLeod claimed that his weird home had featured, “Two hundred eighty-nine newspapers, front-page, worldwide. New York Times, Dallas Morning News. Ten million. Here's top TV shows with us on 'em. We're on the internet 64,500 times.” There is a facebook page called Graceland Too: The Movie, about a film project to make a documentary about the man and his museum.
Location: 200 E Gholson Ave, Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Vent Haven: I’ve written about the ventriloquist dummy museum Vent Haven previously, as it is another piece of odd Americana that fascinates me. So it would be erroneous not to add it to the list. Vent Haven Museum is the world’s largest collection of ventriloquists dummies. The museum was founded by Cincinnati businessman with the eccentric name of William Shakespeare Berger, himself an amateur ventriloquist. From the 1900s, until his death in 1973, Berger gathered a large collection of dummies, that have been continually added to over the years. The museum boasts over 800 exhibits, and thousands of photographs, pamphlets, books and ventriloquism related ephemera. The museum is open from May until end of September. It only opens weekdays, and by appointment only. Over a thousand people a year arrange to visit the collection.
Vent Haven in popular culture: In 2005 the renowned CBS show 60 Minutes, did a piece on Vent Haven called Who’s The Dummy? British ventriloquist Nina Conti featured Vent Haven in her 2012 BBC documentary A Ventriloquist's Story: Her Master's Voice.
Location: 33 W Maple Ave, Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.
Little A'Le'Inn: The bar, restaurant and motel located in Rachel, Nevada on the aptly named Extraterrestrial Highway near Area 51 (or State Route 375 to the uninitiated.) The UFO/Area 51 themed business, sells a variety of related memorabilia, for the conspiracy/sc-fi geek. Itself has become a place of pilgrimage for many a UFO enthusiast from all over the world.
Little A’Le’Inn in popular culture: The bar has been featured in a number of TV shows. It was in The X-Files season six episode "Dreamland II", in an episode of the British TV series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, and more recently was used for scenes in the 2011 British-American sci-fi road comedy movie Paul.
Location: 9631 Old Mill St, Rachel, Nevada.
London Bridge: Being a Brit., there is a whole mythology that goes with the story of London Bridge making its way to a desert town in Arizona. The bridge originally built in 1831, was dismantled from its place over the River Thames in London in 1967, and the original external stone cladding shipped over to the USA. It was bought by Robert P. McCulloch as part of a planned retirement development, who had the bridge reconstructed to link an island in the Colorado River with Lake Havasu City. The work was completed in 1971. The island that the bridge crosses too never originally existed, being a spit of land that jutted out into the River. It was the construction of a canal, after the bridge was built, that separated the two pieces of land. So the bridge, when first built just spanned desert. The element of this story that fascinates us Brits is the urban myth, that McCulloch actually thought he was buying the famous Tower Bridge, a symbol of London.
London Bridge in popular culture: Apart from the aforementioned urban legend surrounding the supposed mistaken purchase of the bridge, the bridge was and Havasu Lake were the location for a made-for-TV movie starring David Hasselhoff. In the 1985 movie Bridges Across Time, the spirit of Jack The Ripper has been transported with the bridge, and is blamed for a number of grisly murders. The bridge is also referenced in the TV show Pinky and the Brain. In an episode called “Napolean Brainaparte”
Location: Lake Havasu, Arizona.
Pismo Beach (Clam Festival): Okay so not that weird, the resort town of Pismo Beach in and of itself. But this is my list, so I get to decide. Plus Pismo Beach is the start point of an up and coming novel serialization soon to be started on Weird Retro, so it gets a worthy mention. (Due to the setting of the novel, I’d take rocketship Weird Retro back to 1950s Pismo Beach). The Pismo Beach pier was constructed in 1924, and renovated in 1985. Pismo is famous for its clams, and holds an annual clam festival, that’s been running for nearly 70 years every October. The festival features a Best Clam Chowder Contest, as well as Clam Digs and Clam Bakes. It’s the Clam Chowder Contest that I’m most interested in, as I’d like to enter my special and somewhat renowned recipe. There you go, I will add the weird into Pismo.
Cadillac Ranch in popular culture: The installation has appeared in a number of commercials and music videos over the years. Bruce Springsteen called one of his songs on his 1980 album The River, “Cadillac Ranch”. More recently, the Ranch was referenced in the Pixar movie Cars (2006), appearing as a mountain range called “Cadillac Range”.
Location: Interstate 40, outside of Amarillo, Texas.
Largest Ball Of Twine: Now there’s some disputing which is actually the authentic Largest Ball of Twine in the USA. There are three towns that attempt to lay claim to the largest. The one in Cawker City, Kansas has in recent years become the largest, as residents add to it each August during their “Twine-a-thon”. However the ball in Cawker is more famous as being the ‘second largest’, after it was referenced in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, “Everybody in the car...or perhaps you don't want to see the second largest ball of twine on Earth which is only four short hours away?” The ball built by J.C. Payne of Valley View, Texas, which is the biggest in circumference, was certified as the world's largest ball of twine by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1993. However that’s made of plastic, and utterly dismissed by the people of Cawker City. They see theirs as a labor of love, built over more than 50 years, started by local resident Frank Stoeber in opposition to what I personally consider as the Largest Ball of Twine.
In Darwin, Minnesota, is a ball of twine created by Francis Johnson. It is the original and therefore the oldest and most famous of the twine balls. Johnson started in 1950 and was worked on for 39 years until Johnson died in 1989. Like Stoeber in Cawker City, it was a labor of love. In fact when Stoeber died in 1974, his ball was only one foot smaller than the Darwin ball. Anyway, all the competition aside, for me the original is the best and therefore it is the Darwin ball that goes on the list.
Largest Ball of Twine in popular culture: The classic LucasArts computer adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road includes a location which is the Biggest Ball of Twine. Although the location and is fictional and some artistic license was used, the ball of twine is located in Minnesota.
Location: Across from the town park, Main Street, Darwin Minnesota.
Plymouth Rock: There is no order to this list, apart from the first two were at Southern and Northern parts of the States. So the next two should be at Eastern and Western parts. And so then to Plymouth Rock! That’s not weird you say?! Well look at it this way, There is no contemporary references to a landing on Plymouth Rock, the earliest reference is a “great rock” recognized as a boundary marker in 1715. The story of the ‘rock’ and landing on it came some 121 years later. The claim about the rock came from a 94 year old man, Thomas Faunce, who lived 3 miles away from the location (a long way in such times). His father didn’t even come on the Mayflower, he arrived two years after on the Anne in 1623. There has always doubt cast on his story. And as the author Bill Bryson wrote in his book Made In America, “The one thing the Pilgrims certainly did not do was step ashore on Plymouth Rock. Quite apart from the consideration that it may have stood well above the high-water mark in 1620, no prudent mariner would try to bring a ship alongside a boulder on a heaving December sea when a sheltered inlet beckoned from nearby.” Still, all that said, it is a place that should be visited and the bizarre history of a rock that isn’t ‘the rock’ because there may never have been a ‘rock’ in the first place, makes it all the more intriguing.
Plymouth Rock in popular culture: It’s the foundation stone of America! Whether it’s a made up story or not, it in many ways influences everything that came after it. Oh and Malcolm X referenced the rock in a famous speech, saying, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us."
Location: Pilgrim Memorial State Park, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
The Wawona Tree (or the Fallen Tunnel Tree): Across the other side of the country now and back to the 1960s, to Yosemite National Park, California, sometime before 1969. Like the ‘ball of twine’ issue, there is more than one giant redwood (or giant sequoia) that has a whole through it big enough to drive a car through. For example there’s the Chandelier Tree in Drive-Thru Tree Park, which was briefly featured in the opening credits of National Lampoon’s Vacation (yes that movie again). However, this is my list and so the Wawona tree is the one I choose. Unlike the young whipper-snapper of the Chandelier Tree (carved in the 1930s), the Wawona Tree was craved through in 1881. (Yes it is the whole ball of twine thing again!) The tree fell in 1969 due to heavy snow fall weighing it down. The tree is estimated to have been some 2,300 years old. The tree still remains where it fell, and is commonly referred to as the Fallen Tunnel Tree. (I may then nip over to the Chandelier Tree though, just to say I’ve passed through giant redwood tree.)
The Wawona Tree in popular culture: In the up-coming Weird Retro Far-Out Fiction section of our In-Flight Magazine, the tree is mentioned in the prelude of the novel New Hope.
Location: Ex-of Mariposa Grove, Yosemite National Park, California
W.C. Rice's Cross Garden: A truly weird one among the mix, but this place has sparked my interest ever since I first saw photographs of it on the Internet. Always a fan of quirky religious evangelical lunacy, the W. C. Rice Cross Garden seems the epitome of such undying strangeness. Set In Prattville, Alabama, the name couldn’t be better this one man’s obsession has easily made it on the list. Why? Because it epitomizes an aspect of American culture that many other much more popular attractions doesn’t. That (for us outsiders) weird unquestioning “In God we Trust” attitude that exists in some of the deepest and most far-flung parts of the USA. And even taking the religious aspect out of the equation, this is American folk art at its best. Somewhere in the region of a thousand plus crosses, sit within 11 acres of land. Paint peeling off them, as the declare hell and damnation to all who see them. "It is my job to warn people that they better get ready to die," said the 69-year-old Rice has been quoted as saying about his garden of ‘good and evil’, that took him over 20 years to construct. Rev. W. C. Rice died in 2004, leaving a legacy of religious folk art for generations to see, whether they followed his fundamental beliefs or just wanted to see a true and honest, unmediated aspect of folk art, like me.
W. C. Rice Cross Garden in popular culture: Only shared on the Internet among those that are intrigued by such eccentric madness and people looking for locations to make low-budget horror films.
Location: On Highway 82, north of Highway 14, go past the Country Club and go up hill. On the down slope, watch for a paved road, that’s Autauga County Road 47. Look for County Road 86 and the crosses are just ahead, on both sides of road. Prattville, Alabama.
Graceland Too: In the news recently, due to the death of its owner Paul MacLeod, being able to visit Graceland Too is in doubt. However as with other bygone attractions, this one still makes it to my personal list. A two-story house, Graceland Too was crammed full of Elvis memorabilia collected by the eccentric obsessive fan MacLeod over more than 60 years. Opened in 1990, it was claimed that the ‘museum’ was open 24/7, 365 days a year. The house had gone beyond mere collection, or even a shrine to the King, the house itself had become an example of outsider art by the self proclaimed World’s No.1 Elvis Fan. Unfortunately MacLeod died on 17th July 2014, sat in a rocking chair on the porch of Graceland Too. Two days earlier, MacLeod had shot and killed a man called Dwight David Taylor Jr., who’d tried to force his way into the house. A bizarre and fitting end, to such a strange character as MacLeod.
Graceland Too in popular culture: In an interview with Vice in 2004, MacLeod claimed that his weird home had featured, “Two hundred eighty-nine newspapers, front-page, worldwide. New York Times, Dallas Morning News. Ten million. Here's top TV shows with us on 'em. We're on the internet 64,500 times.” There is a facebook page called Graceland Too: The Movie, about a film project to make a documentary about the man and his museum.
Location: 200 E Gholson Ave, Holly Springs, Mississippi.
Vent Haven: I’ve written about the ventriloquist dummy museum Vent Haven previously, as it is another piece of odd Americana that fascinates me. So it would be erroneous not to add it to the list. Vent Haven Museum is the world’s largest collection of ventriloquists dummies. The museum was founded by Cincinnati businessman with the eccentric name of William Shakespeare Berger, himself an amateur ventriloquist. From the 1900s, until his death in 1973, Berger gathered a large collection of dummies, that have been continually added to over the years. The museum boasts over 800 exhibits, and thousands of photographs, pamphlets, books and ventriloquism related ephemera. The museum is open from May until end of September. It only opens weekdays, and by appointment only. Over a thousand people a year arrange to visit the collection.
Vent Haven in popular culture: In 2005 the renowned CBS show 60 Minutes, did a piece on Vent Haven called Who’s The Dummy? British ventriloquist Nina Conti featured Vent Haven in her 2012 BBC documentary A Ventriloquist's Story: Her Master's Voice.
Location: 33 W Maple Ave, Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.
Little A'Le'Inn: The bar, restaurant and motel located in Rachel, Nevada on the aptly named Extraterrestrial Highway near Area 51 (or State Route 375 to the uninitiated.) The UFO/Area 51 themed business, sells a variety of related memorabilia, for the conspiracy/sc-fi geek. Itself has become a place of pilgrimage for many a UFO enthusiast from all over the world.
Little A’Le’Inn in popular culture: The bar has been featured in a number of TV shows. It was in The X-Files season six episode "Dreamland II", in an episode of the British TV series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends, and more recently was used for scenes in the 2011 British-American sci-fi road comedy movie Paul.
Location: 9631 Old Mill St, Rachel, Nevada.
London Bridge: Being a Brit., there is a whole mythology that goes with the story of London Bridge making its way to a desert town in Arizona. The bridge originally built in 1831, was dismantled from its place over the River Thames in London in 1967, and the original external stone cladding shipped over to the USA. It was bought by Robert P. McCulloch as part of a planned retirement development, who had the bridge reconstructed to link an island in the Colorado River with Lake Havasu City. The work was completed in 1971. The island that the bridge crosses too never originally existed, being a spit of land that jutted out into the River. It was the construction of a canal, after the bridge was built, that separated the two pieces of land. So the bridge, when first built just spanned desert. The element of this story that fascinates us Brits is the urban myth, that McCulloch actually thought he was buying the famous Tower Bridge, a symbol of London.
London Bridge in popular culture: Apart from the aforementioned urban legend surrounding the supposed mistaken purchase of the bridge, the bridge was and Havasu Lake were the location for a made-for-TV movie starring David Hasselhoff. In the 1985 movie Bridges Across Time, the spirit of Jack The Ripper has been transported with the bridge, and is blamed for a number of grisly murders. The bridge is also referenced in the TV show Pinky and the Brain. In an episode called “Napolean Brainaparte”
Location: Lake Havasu, Arizona.
Pismo Beach (Clam Festival): Okay so not that weird, the resort town of Pismo Beach in and of itself. But this is my list, so I get to decide. Plus Pismo Beach is the start point of an up and coming novel serialization soon to be started on Weird Retro, so it gets a worthy mention. (Due to the setting of the novel, I’d take rocketship Weird Retro back to 1950s Pismo Beach). The Pismo Beach pier was constructed in 1924, and renovated in 1985. Pismo is famous for its clams, and holds an annual clam festival, that’s been running for nearly 70 years every October. The festival features a Best Clam Chowder Contest, as well as Clam Digs and Clam Bakes. It’s the Clam Chowder Contest that I’m most interested in, as I’d like to enter my special and somewhat renowned recipe. There you go, I will add the weird into Pismo.
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Pismo Beach in popular culture: I first heard of Pismo Beach in the (now supposedly banned) Warner Bros cartoon, Ali Baba Bunny, featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Heading for Pismo Beach, the two take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and end up in Ali Baba’s cave. Also the Pismo clams were mentioned in the 1969 TV movie Dragnet 1966, when Bill Gannon retires to Pismo Beach. He is in poor health, but after a number of months of eating Pismo clam chowder, he returns back to the explaining to Joe Friday the reason for his new found health, "The clams, Joe. The clams."
Location: Pismo Beach, San Luis Obispo County, California. |
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Tracking Down The Atomic Beast: Survival Town & Yucca Flats - Less than a 100 miles from Las Vegas is the infamous nuclear test site at Yucca Flats, home to the remnants of Survival Town.
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The Salton Sea & Slab City: Life, Death & Hope In The Badlands - A journey through the badlands of California, in search of the lost American Dream.
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