For two weeks every June, fireflies in the Smoky Mountains perform an astonishing light show.

Wild lights and sound effects turn a walk through some caves into an eye-popping 1960s tourist attraction.

Hop on the train and tour an elaborate miniature town made completely of junk (including the train).

A 300-yard long natural tunnel runs through a ridge deep in the Appalachian Mountains.

Railroad came. People came. Railroad left. Town died.

Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton were stars of the vaudeville circuit.

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

The 15-foot-wide, 2-ton pan fries hundreds of chickens once a year.

Traditional Appalachian dances such as the Georgia Rang Tang and the Shoo-Fly Swing are kept alive at this weekly event.

The only known Futuro house in North Carolina sits along a stretch of desolate highway on the Outer Banks.  .

Andy Griffith's hometown has made itself up to look like the fictional town of Mayberry.

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

Divinely-inspired village houses 6,000 dolls, plus strange and lovely outsider art.

Ruins of an American Civil War iron forge still survive today.

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

Art museum based around the collections accumulated over 58 years by one eccentric thrift store owner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A psychological self-portrait in the form of a giant, segmented head.

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