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

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

Nonprofit art center that promotes outsider, intuitive, and self-taught art.

This unauthorized stone mermaid was secretly carved out of public stone before being permanently preserved.

The subtle science of a master molecular gastronomist.

A haunting statue called "Eternal Silence" has quite the reputation among visitors with active imaginations.

An antiquated German apothecary on Chicago's North Side.

A lush green oasis in the middle of Chicago.

An urban forest overtakes what was the greatest failure of utopic urban housing.

One of few surviving standpipe water towers in the U.S.

What was once a presidential estate is now an exotic menagerie and home to the Budweiser Clydesdales.

A creepy sculpture of a decapitated head invites viewers to see St. Louis through its empty eyes.

Man-made geyser that rises to the exact height of the Gateway Arch.

A historic house in St. Louis was plagued by a series of suicides committed by family members involved in a successful brewery.

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

Quirky water tower advertises the long-gone Brooks Tomato Products Co.

An engraved boulder marks the spot where Patsy Cline's life ended in a plane crash.

A key producer of charcoal iron in the early 1800s, the structure still stands today.

In the St. Francois Mountains in the Ozarks at 1,772 feet above sea level, Taum Sauk Mountain is the highest (and possibly oldest) peak in Missouri.

A tribute to a 13-year-old boy who was kidnapped in 1793 and escaped over two years later.

Giant granite rocks standing end-to-end like a train of circus elephants.

The home used in just a few seconds of film that came to define the setting of a hit sitcom.

Patrick Dougherty's fantastic living tree sculptures, mind-blowing but temporary.

This open air cathedral invites all faiths to worship under the only roof big enough to fit them all: the sky.