This rare basilica nestled right in downtown Asheville is an architectural marvel, inside and out.

This nine-story building can be played like an instrument.

The enormous 250-room Vanderbilt mansion conceals hidden doors and secret passageways.

This North Carolina store preserves a historic moment in America's movement for racial equality.

The highest point in North Carolina and the United States east of the Mississippi River, Mount Mitchell is named after argumentative explorer Elisha Mitchell.

This scented city oasis was a labor of love.

This vast kitty-themed collection illustrates the history of human-cat interaction.

A retired tobacco farmer's pet project turned into a sturdy miniature city.

A historic covered bridge, only one of two remaining in North Carolina.

North Carolina's finest examples of Native American pictographs have survived for 5,000 years.

One of the best places to see feral Colonial Spanish Mustangs in the United States.

A piece of outsider public art accompanied by a strange urban legend.

A 120-year-old legend concerning an empty circular patch in the North Carolina woods.

Garden dedicated to native carnivorous plants and site of huge flytrap heist.

The remains of the iconic train crash from the movie The Fugitive can still be found rusting along the Great Smoky Railroad.

A cabin completely covered in coffee mugs, where visitors are welcome to leave one of their own—if they can find an empty nail.

This bright yellow relic is the final survivor of a short burst of seashell-shaped petrol pumps.

The highest point in Tennessee, Clingmans Dome bears witness to the ravages of one type of insect.

Gnarled canopies of pink and purple wildflowers arch over the trail to the summit.

A curious collection of oddities including a lock of Alexander Hamilton's hair and Harry Houdini's ouija board.

This bridge is haunted by the ghost of a distraught mother.

A sculptor's dream castle turned fantastical ruin.

This woodland architectural installation acts as a camera obscura for the heavens.

This road in the Great Smoky Mountains was supposed to assuage a displaced community, but ended up a $52 million dead end.