Meant for a railway that was never built because of the Great Chicago Fire, these piers still stand nearly 150 years after they were installed.

A relic of the Cold War in Chicago.

At the largest railway museum in the United States, you can see everything from an early steam engine to a functioning Thomas the Tank Engine.

A former atom smasher turned into an art gallery.

This national park dedicated to the tallgrass prairie ecosystem still displays its military past.

The only place in America where anyone who wants can shovel coal aboard an antique train.

Tour the luxe "glass cage" that inspired and unnerved the architecture world upon its debut.

This urban drawbridge gained eternal pop culture fame when the Blues Brothers jumped it while it was raised.

Cold War missile launch site which has been converted to a public park.

The 40-year-old machine serves soda quicker than you can catch it for a mere 75 cents a pop.

The final resting place of the world's first nuclear reactor.

One of Chicago's last seafood smokehouses perfects a dying breed of fishcraft.

Once one of the world's great cities, Cahokia was a place of religious worship, trade and mass human sacrifice before being mysteriously abandoned.

First planned industrial community in the United States.

A shining sculpture made of 3,115 lights, the number of visible stars in the Northern Hemisphere.

All of Chicago's wood-paved streets are long gone but two alleys remain.

A science teacher's dream.

This tiny site in Iowa, part of a patchwork national wildlife refuge, is home to ancient flora and fauna.

Remnants of a quarry company town still stand on the banks of the Wapsipinicon River.

While there are no actual snakes in the history of this crooked road, there may be a number of dead horses.

The remains of a bustling turn-of-the-century park built to showcase the wonders of electricity.

A mysteriously dark cemetery monument fuels stories and legends galore.

The world's only three-story rotary jail is now a museum to a bizarre trend in prison design.

A rancher expanding a natural spring for his cattle came up with bones – lots and lots of them.