The famed poet was born in 1819 in a farmhouse built by his father.

Now a retreat center for the faithful, it once provided training for clergy—but it began as a farm owned by a famed financier and his opera singer wife, who built a surprise in the backyard.

The world's oldest soul food restaurant is also one of its best.

Largest Roman Catholic church in North America.

The oldest still-operating tavern in the United States was once owned by a pirate.

The only remaining Cold War–era Minuteman II missile control center in Missouri.

This historic motel standing at the "crossroads of America" offers a radio in every room and was saved by local protesters.

This former mining town was named the most toxic town in America.

The railway carts travelers to central Athens's highest peak, which offers stunning vistas of the city.

The United States Capitol's former columns still stand.

Before Nixon, "watergate" meant canals.

A small Richmond island dotted with the remnants of hundreds of years of history.

Decades after testing the polio vaccine on unwitting patients, this historic mental hospital sits in ruin.

An unrealized dream to wirelessly electrify the entire Earth.

An old abandoned mining town in The Adirondacks where Theodore Roosevelt first learned of the shooting of President William McKinley.

This WWII-era military installation once held an entire city within its walls - now, its walls are falling down.

The remnants of an early American attempt at missile defense.

In the woods of New Jersey lie the ruins of a munitions village abandoned after World War I and the remnants of a 1920s wooden racetrack.

The eerie ruins of a remote abandoned hamlet said to be founded by the survivors of a shipwreck.

Nine of the very few concrete ships ever made in the U.S. are beautifully decaying off a Virginia pier.

This once-palatial plantation may have been the site where a draft of the Declaration of Independence was written.

The remains of a failed attempt at medieval nerdery are hidden deep in the woods of Virginia.

The ruins of this long-abandoned unsuccessful gold mine can still be found.

The hidden ruins of a mill that is linked to an attempt to assassinate the vice president of the United States.