This eerily well-preserved coal town was saved from destruction by a Sean Connery movie.

A park full of outsider art, created by college students studying outsider art.

"Dark Sky Park" is heaven on Earth for astronomers, one of the rare U.S. locations with no artificial light pollution.

An abandoned stretch of highway, deteriorating next to the operational one.

Philadelphia boasts one of the best — and most often overlooked — traditional Japanese gardens in North America.

Mysterious rocks that ring musically when struck.

Amazing pre-Civil War ruins alongside a shallow, rocky river that hosts beautiful (but endangered) lilies.

The oldest bridge in South Carolina may have been designed by the same man who created the Washington Monument.

This 5-by-6-foot wooden hut is the smallest historic post office in the U.S.

A mailbox that saved a nature reserve.

The bears may be gone, but their old cages can still be found.

Ralph Waldo Emerson spent two years living here decades before it became a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park.

The often-overlooked ruins of one of the first buildings designed by famous landscape architect Frederick Olmsted.

One of the oldest used bookstores in the U.S. has been selling antiquarian treasures since 1825.

Follow the path behind this treat-slinging camper van to a sculpture garden in the forest.

The scant remains of this flooded historic village can be explored in one of the most remote areas of the Great Smokies.

A forgotten sea village stands silent after hurricanes deemed it obsolete.

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

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

This Transylvania County city is home to a rare white squirrel population that is descended from an escaped carnival animal.

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

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

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

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