A science teacher's dream.

A once-booming Mississippi River town with a history of racial violence is now eerie and mostly abandoned.

Pirates had to be ousted from the land where this now ruined Louisiana fortress was built.

An otherworldly musical haven in The Big Easy.

This "second" cemetery represents New Orleans' attempt to keep cholera at bay.

One of the most extensive and well-preserved collections of dinosaur footprints in North America.

This Route 66 classic sports a giant fiberglass rabbit that you can ride.

This secluded aqua waterfall in the Grand Canyon is the perfect swimming hole, and the Havasupai tribe's fiercely protected natural wonder.

Most-visited and most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest.

An ill-fated attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush steppe of northeastern Nevada.

An 1870s ranch for pioneers, rodeo stars, and divorcees was abandoned and left for dead, until the city reopened it for exploration.

The eerie ruins of an isolated abandoned town nicknamed "the Widowmaker" for its deadly gold mine.

A Nevada mining boomtown that ran out of silver and luck.

A hidden gem of a saloon in the middle of a ghost town.

Mysterious meeting place for UFO hunters near Area 51.

An eatery for UFO seekers on the Extraterrestrial Highway.

This Nevada lake holds its titular natural pyramid and, if the legends are true, a number of dangerous spirits.

The longest living non-clonal organisms on Earth.

Odd outsider art installations surround a Gold Rush-era ghost town.

A preserve with 75,000 ancient drawings remains the realm of public – not just scientific – exploration.

A unique geological area spiked with wind-carved rocks that resemble teepees.

The old Route 66 town straddling Texas and New Mexico died along with the Main Street of America.

Seemingly grown on some other world, these New Mexico rock formations look like a disused science fiction set.

The land is full of geologic eye candy, such as otherworldly spires, mushroom-shaped hoodoos, and prehistoric fossils.