Atlas Obscura

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Reporting on the obscure corners of the world: hidden places, lost histories, strange foods, forgotten people. Genuinely curious, never glib.

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Atlas Obscura

The world's tallest building has 1,000-year-old air conditioning

Burj Khalifa's beautiful secret is revealed in the new book, Hidden in Plain Sight. Sublime science hides in plain sight at the world’s tallest building. Tourists swarm Burj Khalifa’s observation decks to absorb startling views across Dubai’s skyline, and the sandy coast of the United Arab Emirates. Laid out beneath them is a space-age city which showcases the burgeoning wealth of the Middle East. Above their heads, meanwhile, is a testament to ancient Arab ingenuity. Covering the ceiling of the 125th floor deck are mesmerizing geometric patterns engaged in a millennia-old battle with Mother Nature. Called mashrabiya, this Arab latticework is so old that its origins are murky. What is undisputed, however, is that it was a brilliant architectural innovation which both blocked sunlight, and funneled breezes into homes here in the sun-scorched Middle East. In this way, mashrabiya was simultaneously high art, and one of the world’s earliest forms of air conditioning. It waned in popularity over the 1900s, as modern home cooling technology took over. Now, however, mashrabiya is resurgent, as revealed in the new book, Hidden in Plain Sight, in which journalist and photography Ronan O'Connell visited 23 countries to uncover the mysteries of our planet's top landmarks. Intricate latticework is being used to decorate many extraordinary new buildings across the Middle East as a celebration of Arab cultural heritage. Including in the region’s most-visited destination, Dubai. With a population of 3.7 million people, it is the largest city in the United Arab Emirates. This oil-rich Middle Eastern nation sits on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula, between Iran to its north, Saudi Arabia to it west and Oman to its east. Its strategic location, midway between Europe and East Asia, has made the UAE a global air travel hub and tourist hotspot. Although the UAE has deep, intriguing history, having been inhabited for more than 6,000 years, most tourists are drawn by attractions which didn’t exist three decades ago. Before vast oil reserves were tapped in the 1960s, Dubai was a petite port city. It wasn’t until the 2000s it embarked on a building boom which aimed, in part, to make it magnetic to tourists. Before then, sand filled many of the sites now occupied by gleaming structures, including Burj Khalifa. Now Dubai’s parched land is studded by avant-garde skyscrapers, goliath shopping malls, world-class museums, five-star hotels, and cutting-edge theme parks. Some of which sit on unique, man-made archipelagos flanking the city’s coast. All these recent additions have helped Dubai become one of the planet’s top 10 most visited cities. At some point during their stay here, most travelers at least glimpse Burj Khalifa, which looms above a metropolis spiked by more than 250 other skyscrapers. Even people who’ve never visited the UAE likely recognize this steel-and-glass wonder, images of which abound on social media. The greatest tourist landmarks encapsulate a destination. For example, the Colosseum underscores Rome’s deep history, the Eiffel Tower symbolizes Paris’ timeless elegance, and the Statue of Liberty signifies New York’s unrivalled multiculturalism. Burj Khalifa is equally effective in defining Dubai’s appeal to visitors. Ostentatious, innovative, hyper-modern and record-breaking. Dubai strives to build the biggest, the best, the boldest of everything. Given this fierce ambition, it was natural this city would aim to reach further into the sky than any civilization before it. Previously, the evolution of the world’s tallest building had long been slow and steady. New York’s Empire State Building (381m high) was eclipsed by the nearby World Trade Center (417m), Followed by Chicago’s Sears Tower (443m), Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers (452m) and Taiwan’s Taipei 101 (509m). Then Dubai entered the race. Rather than merely taking the crown, it made its competitors look like toys. Standing 830m, Burj Khalia Is so tall that, every so often, its crest just disappears, obscured by fog. It was designed not just as a monument to Dubai’s wealth, but as a source of pride for the Arab World, which hadn’t boasted the world’s tallest structure since Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza was overtaken 700 years ago. As with any massive manmade construction, which isn’t a hospital or school, there was debate about Burj Khalifa’s necessity, utility, and sustainability. Those arguments persist. But what’s clear is that this goliath has been a boon for tourism. Some 17 million people visited Burj Khalifa in 2023. It is part of a cluster of tourist-friendly sites, adjoined by grassy Burj Park, turquoise Burj Khalifa Lake, glass-laden Dubai Opera House, and gargantuan Dubai Mall. The latter brims with more than 1,200 shops. As well as dozens of cafes and restaurants, and family-friendly attractions like Dubai Aquarium, Sega Republic theme park, an ice rink, virtual reality zone and kids play centers. Dubai Mall is also the gateway to Burj Khalifa. Perhaps the defining tourist experience of this city, Burj Khalifa’s At the Top sends visitors into the clouds. These tours offer access to three observation decks, on floors 148, 125 and 124. First is a ride in one of the world’s fastest elevators. Reaching the initial deck takes about 60 seconds, during which tourists learn remarkable facts about Burj Khalifa via a digital display. Some 22 million man hours were required to build this skyscraper. It consists of 330,000 cubic meters of concrete, 39,000 tons of steel reinforcement, 103,000 sqm of glass, and 15,500 sqm of embossed stainless steel. Of its 200 floors, 160 are inhabitable. Once guests exit the elevator, they walk a loop of each enclosed deck. This provides a 360-degree perspective of Dubai through soaring windows. Should they wish to spike their pulse further, they can tread onto the 125th level’s eerie glass floor attraction, which simulates cracking beneath their feet, as if set to collapse. Those who’d prefer to calm down may descend to level 122. Amid a luxurious setting rich with dark leather and red velvet they can savor a 13-course tasting menu at fine dining establishment At.mosphere. Or absorb the dizzying views with a cocktail in hand at the adjoining Champagne and Oyster Bar. In doing so, they’ll have had a modern experience of the Middle East. For an appreciation of its proud past, tourists to Burj Khalifa should research those mesmeric patterns on its 125th level. They will learn mashrabiya was created to fulfil many purposes at once. It beautified a building’s façade, offered privacy, softened natural light, dullened outside noise, and allowed for airflow which reduced both heat and humidity. Less certain than the value of mashrabiya are its origins. Some historical accounts trace it as far back as the 12th century, to Egypt. Others suggest it may have originated in Iraq and its capital Baghdad, then one of the world’s largest, most sophisticated cities. Dozens of homes in the ancient Iraqi city of Basra still feature mashrabiya. By night, these abodes are spectacular, due to the mashrabiya latticework which frames their stained glass windows. So once darkness falls, and house lights take effect, a kaleidoscope of patterns is beamed onto the Basra streetside. Historic examples of mashrabiya also still grace homes or mosques in Muslim nations like Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, Syria, Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Some utilize the Iraqi style of wooden mashrabiya screens, which enclose windows or balconies. Others are latticework carved into stone. That form of mashrabiya, which has different names from country to country, is particularly common in mosques and mausoleums. Including India’s Taj Mahal, built using Mughal architecture, a style which blends Islamic and Indian designs. Modern versions of mashrabiya also proliferate. Architects in the Middle East and beyond are increasingly blending it into new constructions. Tourists walking east from Paris’ famed Notre Dame Cathedral may pass hundreds of interlocking mashrabiya motifs on the towering glass façade of the Arab World Institute. In the UAE, meanwhile, travelers encounter such patterns in both of its key cities, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The latter has perhaps the world’s most stunning use of mashrabiya. Covering the 180m-wide dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum, it beams shards of light through hundreds of perforations. A spectacle which is almost matched by the gigantic mashrabiya windows of nearby Imam Al-Tayeb Mosque. Such geometric flourishes also punctuate downtown Dubai. Dubai Mall employs mashrabiya both on wall features, to cloak a pedestrian footbridge and embellish its Apple Store. Chances are, then, that many tourists glimpse this Islamic design feature before they ascend Burj Khalifa. Once they do, and reach its 125th floor, most will fixate on the futuristic view before them. All the while, in their periphery, mashrabiya sits as a marker of Arab innovation which flourished long before the Middle East began to build toward the clouds. An ancient decoration camouflaged on a modern icon, as revealed by the new book, Hidden in Plain Sight.

Ronan O'ConnellJun 9, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Xagħra, Malta

The second largest community of Malta's island of Gozo features a surprising number of unusual places to visit. Xagħra is the second largest locality on Gozo, the second largest island within the nation of Malta. Like many other towns on the island, Xagħra is located on a hilltop overlooking agricultural fields below it, although Xagħra seems to sprawl more. While Xagħra’s outwards appearance may make it look as quiet as most other residential communities on Gozo, the location actually has quite a few sites that are worth going out of the way to visit. The Xagħra Parish Church and the central plaza in front of the church stand at the center of the community. The current limestone church was built in the nineteenth century, and while it is similar to many of the other parish churches across the Maltese Islands, it is still an impressive building both inside and outside. The rest of the plaza features most of the community’s local shops and restaurants, and many of these restaurants have outdoor seating on the plaza. Also note the cross at the west end of the plaza; these crosses are a common feature of communities across the Maltese Islands. Xagħra’s most notable attraction is Ġgantija, a neolithic temple complex that sits on the community’s southern slopes. Built between 3800 and 2000 BC, Ġgantija is one of the largest neolithic structures in the islands, and the complex is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In spite of being so famous, Ġgantija is actually relatively uncrowded, making it a peaceful place to visit. Visitors will first be able to see neolithic artifacts from Ġgantija in the visitor center, including a few of Malta’s famous fertility figurines, before being able to walk inside the complex itself. Just north of the entrance to Ġgantija is the Ta’ Kola Windmill. In the 1700s when the islands were ruled by the Knights of St. John, the government constructed many windmills like Ta’ Kola to mill grain for the local population. Each windmill had a broad square base and a cylindrical tower at the center, giving the windmills a very distinct appearance. Most of Malta’s windmills have either been dismantled or demolished, but Ta’ Kola provides visitors with a chance to go inside one of the very few windmills left in the islands and to learn about their history. People who enjoy small, quirky tourist attraction will want to visit Ninu’s Cave and Xerri’s Grotto, both of which are located near the central plaza. Both locations are small limestone caves filled with stalactites and stalagmites that were found serendipitously by people drilling wells behind their homes; Ninu’s Cave was found first in 1888, while Xerri’s grotto was found in 1924. Both were turned into tourist attractions, and both are now run by the descendants of the men who found the caves. Note that Xerri’s Grotto is open during regular business hours but that Ninu’s Cave is only open late in the afternoons, and visiting both caves requires descending down narrow staircases. Located just north of Xerri’s Grotto is Sansuna’s Rock. While this looks like just a large limestone rock in a weedy plot of land, the rock may actually be the remains of an ancient burial chamber. It has also been associated with the mythical Sansuna, who is credited with constructing Ġgantija, and it is recognized as an important cultural site. The far northeastern end of Xagħra features a closed lookout standing over Calypso Cave, one of a couple of caves in the Maltese Islands that has been associated with the nymph from the Odyssey since the 18th and 19th centuries. While it is not possible to stand on the lookout or see the cave from above, this spot does offer spectacular views of Ramla Bay, which has one of Malta’s very few sandy beaches. The trail down to the beach passes through Ulysses Lodge, the most notable abandoned building on the island of Gozo. While this hotel was a popular wedding and events venue in the 1980s, it’s now aatracts graffiti artists and urban explorers (but note that walking around inside the structure may be unsafe because the structure is unstable). Most visitors spending just a few hours on Gozo will want to at least stop by Ġgantija for a couple of hours, but people spending at least one night on Gozo may want to spend the better part of a day exploring all of the different sites within this small community. Xagħra is easy to reach either by car or by public transport, but walking to the location is not recommending. For people driving on Gozo, the center of Xagħra is less than 10 minutes from the city of Victoria and less than 15 minutes from the island’s sole ferry terminal at Mgarr. Some of the roads may be narrow, but street parking is easy to find. Buses regularly travel to Xagħra from both the central bus station in Victoria as well as from the harbor. Although Xagħra does not have any large resort hotels, it does have a series of small guesthouses, bed and breakfasts, and smaller hotels that may appeal to tourists who are interested in having a quiet place to stay in a small town setting while visiting Gozo.

Dark Nebula DeluxeJun 8, 2026

Atlas Obscura

A fascinating visit to the temples of Old Pune

These temples are set in beautiful old courtyards with a world of their own. The old areas of Pune are called Peths. A Peth is a neighbourhood or a ward. The old city has been divided into a number of such wards. These areas have been in existence since several centuries. Narrow lanes, houses with timber overhangs, stone mansions, mysterious alleys, curiously shaped streetlamps, random crumbling walls… In the midst of all this, the temples of old Pune have historically served as community gathering centres for people of all ages to come together and socialise. Many of these temples are Shivkalin (built during the time of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj) or Peshwekalin (built during the time of the Peshwas). In this post, I will be discussing some of the most commonly seen traditional features of Pune’s heritage temples I have come across during my explorations of the city. Most of these temples have a vintage old fashioned stone gateway or a gatehouse to enter the premises. The gatehouse has a room above it and one can see traditional arched windows built in it. The door is always ancient and wooden, with shiny metal bolts and latches. Often, there are statues of Dwarapalakas (guardian deities of temple entrances in Hindu culture) on either side of the door. Once you step through these doors, you enter a time machine. The hustle and bustle of the street falls behind and you enter a different world. A slower world. A calmer world. There is generally a tiled courtyard open to the sky. The old temples are always set in a nice, peaceful courtyard. There is also a Tulsi Vrindavan near the temple entrance. A Tulsi Vrindavan is a stone or marble pedestal housing the Tulsi plant (Holy Basil, Ocimum tenuiflorum) which is considered to be sacred in Hindu culture. The temples are generally constructed out of both stone and wood. Particularly in the old temples in these old areas, since there is a lot of history involved, one can find a lot of paintings and historical information on the walls. Many temples also have intricately designed glass lamps hanging from the ceiling. Back into the courtyard, you will always find birds chirping around, squirrels nibbling at nuts or a cat snoozing in a corner. It is their home. The courtyard also generally has other smaller shrines dedicated to other deities, apart from the main deity of the temple. There can be a huge tree in the courtyard as well, one big enough to provide shade to the entire place. Such courtyards also have mysterious locked doors and closed windows. These generally lead to other houses in the area. A couple of times, I have seen beautiful stone statues lined along the corridor. Upon asking the locals, I found out their history. The locals are really kind and when you ask questions with a curious smile on your face, they are only too happy to share their knowledge. They have probably lived in that area all their lives and are privy to information not available elsewhere. People rarely stop to ask questions and when they do, the locals are delighted to share what they know. The kind of interesting facts and anecdotes they tell you will fill you up with a sense of wonder about the history of these places. There is so much that has happened in the past. We only know a small portion of it so it a delight to explore these places. There are many such temples in Old Pune, out of which I have visited a few. There is Tulshibaug Ram Temple in the Tulshibaug area whose spire was once upon a time the tallest structure in the city. There is Nageshwar Shiva Temple which is said to be around 700 years old. There is Belbaug Vishnu Temple which has a Portuguese bell and an interesting story behind it. There is Trishund Ganpati Temple which has an idol of Lord Ganesh with three trunks. There is Lakshmi Narasinha Temple in Sadashiv Peth with a nice courtyard. There are many more temples I am yet to explore. Most of them have some fascinating historical fact or anecdote associated with them.

Vivek GadreJun 8, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The Atlas Obscura Guide to the World’s Biggest Sporting Event

Explore the cities where this year’s players will leave it all out on the field, from Vancouver to Miami. As the biggest tournament in the world brings fans across North America, Atlas Obscura and Hilton invite listeners to go beyond the matches and into the stories, flavors, neighborhoods, and hidden wonders that make each host city so unforgettable. Our series explores the culture surrounding the world’s biggest sporting event — from unexpected local traditions to offbeat road trips between cities — helping visitors turn the tournament into the trip of a lifetime. Latest Episode: Mexico City’s Footwear Museum This unassuming museum showcases everything from booties worn by a rescue dog to slippers owned by Queen Elizabeth I.

The Podcast TeamMay 21, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Your Emails Are Fueling My Quest to See All 50 States

As Atlas Obscura's CEO continues her voyage to her remaining 11 states, your emails are pouring in. Keep them coming! I have to be honest with you: I thought I was the one going on an adventure. But then your emails started arriving, and I realized the adventure had already been happening — in living rooms and minivans and camper vans and cruise ships and, apparently, at least one sinking expedition vessel in the Drake Passage — long before I packed a single bag. Since I shared my quest to visit all 50 states before America's 250th birthday, which will be on July 4th this year, I've heard from hundreds of you, and I am genuinely moved. You are state-counters and road-trippers, expats writing from Sweden, Jesuit priests from Omaha, proud Fairbanksans, 87-year-olds still dreaming about five northwest states, and three-generation families who've made the full 50 a kind of inheritance. You are, in other words, exactly who I always believed our Atlas Obscura community to be: people who think that showing up somewhere — really showing up, eyes open, taking the back roads — matters. Some of you have systems. Anthony Castora and his wife draw a state quarter from a hat every New Year's Eve, right before the Times Square ball drops. They've been doing it for 16 years, and every January, his students and coworkers wait breathlessly to find out where the Castoras are headed next. I love this so much I want to steal it. And then there's David Raum, who told me he wasn't even that excited about visiting Hawaii — until the expedition ship he'd booked to Antarctica hit an iceberg and sank. Everyone survived, the airline vouchers needed using, and Hawaii became his 50th state entirely by accident. He's 81 now, just back from two months in Mexico, and still going. I want to be David Raum when I grow up. My trip continues, and after walking parts of The Trail of Tears, I wrote a guide about that, in case you, too, want to walk it. After an incredible time in Arkansas, next up, I will be sharing experiences from Oklahoma, Kansas, and then Wisconsin. The travels are so much better with your tips. You've sent me covered bridges and crater fields, a gravity-wave observatory on a nuclear site in Washington, a funicular railway in Dubuque, a barn shaped like a teapot, and — more than once, from more than one of you — the sandhill cranes along the Platte River in Nebraska in March, which I'm now convinced I cannot miss. (Will the cranes still be there in early April?) Keep the tips coming. I'm taking notes on every single one. And if you are on a quest to finish your 50 states -- or have already finished them -- tell me about that! And fill in your map! We are opening our platform and our podcast to feature stories of 50 state quests, and would love to hear yours. I'm at ceo@atlasobscura.com

Louise StoryMar 12, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Wonder All Around Us

A stop at the gravesite of a Kentucky Derby champion reveals how Atlas Obscura turns ordinary drives into unexpected discoveries. Somewhere in Kansas, a well-traveled man asked me if I was driving long distances to hit the state's biggest attractions. I paused. That wasn't really how I was thinking about this trip at all. As I settled into driving south to north through the plains states, I discovered something. Wonder doesn't actually require huge detours when you travel with the Atlas Obscura app. Wherever I was headed, there was something unexpected and interesting practically underfoot. So I showed him. I pulled up the app right there. “Look. Fifty feet from where we're standing, there's an all-electric house.” And just a few minutes away, a horse graveyard. I had already failed to stop at Mister Ed's grave in Oklahoma, sorry Mister Ed, so I wasn't going to miss this one. The Lawrin gravesite sits at the end of a quiet residential cul-de-sac in Prairie Village, a tidy suburb of Kansas City. It's tucked behind a black wrought-iron fence on a small, well-tended rectangle of green. You would never know to turn into this neighborhood, wind down its meandering streets, and pull up to this spot without Atlas Obscura. But here's what's interesting about Lawrin. He was the only Kansas-bred horse ever to win the Kentucky Derby. In 1938, Lawrin crossed the finish line with jockey Eddie Arcaro in the saddle and a four-leaf clover tucked under it for luck. The entire 200-acre Woolford Farms where he was born and trained is now Prairie Village. All that's left of it is this small, immaculate patch of grass at the end of a cul-de-sac. While I was there, I met a man in his 90s who lives in the house across the street from the grave. He told me his favorite story about that 1938 Derby finish. In the final stretch, he said, Lawrin and his jockey glanced back. The second-place rider was closing fast. They nearly lost. But then they refocused and surged ahead. “Never look back,” he told me. “When you turn around like that, the horse thinks it's coming to the end. He starts to slow down. Just keep going.” Then he shared a bit of horse burial trivia. Racehorses are usually buried with only their head and heart because their bodies are simply too large. Head and heart. I turned that over as I walked back to my car. It turns out the full tradition actually includes the hooves too. Intelligence, spirit, and speed, all interred together. And if there was one thing Lawrin had in abundance, it was speed. Two minutes and four and four-fifths seconds worth of it, to be exact. That's what wandering with Atlas Obscura does for you. You stumble onto wonder in places you never would have found on your own. If you have suggestions for places I should see in the states I still have left, email me at CEO@atlasobscura.com. My map so far:

Louise StoryMar 16, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The Graveyard That Made Me Kiss a Frog

A surreal field in rural Wisconsin holds hundreds of giant fiberglass molds—an accidental archive of roadside Americana where art, industry, and imagination collide. I kissed a frog in Sparta, Wisconsin. Voluntarily. Enthusiastically. The frog in question is one of hundreds of giant fiberglass molds scattered across a football-field-sized lot behind a nondescript sheet-metal building off County Highway Q. This is the home of FAST — Fiberglass Animals, Shapes, and Trademarks — a company that has been building giant roadside statues, mascots, and water park attractions since the early 1970s. It was incorporated under its current name in 1983 by a man named Jerome Vettrus. FAST has worn the mantle of American titan-builder for over 50 years. Among their greatest hits: a 200-foot-long sea monster at House on the Rock in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and a 145-foot-long muskie in Hayward. After each job, they keep the mold. All of them. For decades. And that's how a quiet field in rural Wisconsin became one of the most unexpectedly wonderful places I've ever wandered. There are giant skulls and colossal dogs, oversized Santa Clauses and titanic mice. The fiberglass has weathered over time, giving the molds an almost ancient, stone-like quality, as though the yard is the remnant of some surreal lost civilization. Walking through it is eerie and beautiful at the same time. Some molds are rotted out, covered in weeds or standing water. Others are in relatively pristine condition and could practically be reused tomorrow. That's actually the point. The molds are kept for future reuse, since they'd be expensive to recreate. So this isn't just a graveyard. It's also a library. A catalog. An archive of American roadside whimsy sitting in the tall Wisconsin grass. I found the frog slide mold and, yes, I kissed it (still looking for my prince). FAST has been making frog slides for over 35 years. You've almost certainly seen one at a water park somewhere without knowing it. I slid down a few of the slides too, because how could you not. Then I stood there imagining all the places these forms have traveled, whether they were painted bright yellow or fire-engine red, whether they were installed at some mini golf course in Arizona or a splash pad in Ohio. I imagined the faces of the delighted kids who have no idea their beloved frog came from a field in Wisconsin. The current owner took over around 2020, and if you visit during business hours, he might just show you around. The whole thing is free. Open 24 hours. No facilities. Pure wonder. It got me thinking about waste and beauty. There's something philosophically satisfying about a place where industrial byproduct becomes accidental art installation. FAST's mold graveyard isn't the only example. Ghanaian artist El Anatsui famously creates vast, shimmering tapestries from discarded bottle caps. Artists on Mount Everest have turned abandoned oxygen cylinders and helicopter wreckage into sculpture. The stuff we discard has a strange afterlife when someone thinks to look at it differently. That's the gift of Atlas Obscura exploring: we keep pointing you toward the places where someone already did the looking for you.

Louise StoryMar 18, 2026

Atlas Obscura

I Asked. You Answered. Now I Have Some Questions for You.

Here is what you told me about the 11 states I am racing to visit before July 4th. And here is what I am still wondering. A few weeks ago, I announced my quest: Visit all 50 states before America’s 250th birthday on July 4th. I had 11 remaining—Arkansas, Kansas, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Indiana, Nebraska, Iowa, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska—and I asked if you had suggestions. What arrived was not a trickle. It was a flood. Hundreds of emails, from readers in Fairbanks and Visby, Sweden; from retired wildlife biologists and Jesuit priests and 87-year-olds and environmental science teachers in Phoenix. You have collectively produced what might be the most detailed, lovingly opinionated, off-the-beaten-path guide to these 11 states I have ever encountered. I want to share what you said. And then I want to ask you something. What You Told Me The single most-recommended destination in my entire inbox was Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. A world-class art museum in the Ozarks, built by the Walton family—and apparently, it is exactly as extraordinary as its reputation. Consider that recommendation well and truly made. It also has a special exhibit showing for the 250th. South Dakota produced the most passionate emails. The Badlands—“badass, take water”—came up from many readers. Mt. Rushmore came up almost as much, though almost always with a counterpoint: Crazy Horse, which multiple readers called more meaningful; or Custer State Park, where one reader used to pay her kids for animal sightings to keep their eyes off their screens. One reader admitted he was dead set against visiting Rushmore—saying “a bunch of stone heads defacing a beautiful mountain, who cares?”—and then was completely won over after hiking the trail up close. Hall of Mosses in the Hoh Rain Forest - Forks, Washington Washington produced more recommendations than any other state. The ferry system. The Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Rain Forest. Mt. Rainier. Mt. St. Helens. The Underground Seattle tour. The LIGO gravitational wave observatory on the Hanford nuclear site, which has monthly public tours and which I am not missing. Eastern Washington’s Yakima Valley, where one reader described apple orchards on volcanic soil and hop fields carrying “the foreshadowing fragrance of future IPAs.” And the Moccasin Bar in Hayward, Wisconsin—cash only, taxidermy animals staged in dioramas playing poker and boxing, a world-record musky on the wall. No website. For Nebraska: Several of you mentioned Carhenge. Several more mentioned the sandhill crane migration along the Platte River in March—which, as I write this, is happening right now. A Jesuit priest from Omaha described driving up through the Sandhills toward the Badlands as “a different kind of stunning beauty you won’t see anywhere else.” I believe him. Iowa kept surprising me. Mason City came up from numerous readers independently: It has the last surviving Frank Lloyd Wright-designed hotel, the hometown of Meredith Willson (who wrote The Music Man), and puppets from The Sound of Music on display at the local art museum. I did not know any of this. The future birthplace of Captain Kirk is also in Iowa, in the town of Riverside, which I find deeply wonderful. Craters of the Moon - Arco, Idaho Idaho, I am told, contains incredible nature. A retired wildlife biologist sent me a list of fifteen places that don’t appear in any guidebook, including rivers that vanish underground and a fault scarp still visible from the 1983 earthquake. Craters of the Moon came up four times. The town of Arco—the first city in the world powered by atomic energy—sits right next door. For Alaska, the advice was nearly unanimous: Go. Just go. One reader who has lived there 45 years wrote: “We love Atlas Obscura, but you don’t need smoke and mirrors in Alaska.” I believe him, too. What I Notice Across All of It Reading through hundreds of recommendations, a few themes emerge that say something about how this community thinks about travel. Almost everyone pushes past the obvious. The marquee attraction gets mentioned, and then immediately qualified or redirected. Go to Rushmore, but Crazy Horse. Visit Seattle, but cross the Cascades. The instinct to find the less-trodden version runs deep in this inbox. It is, I think, the Atlas Obscura instinct made explicit. Indigenous history comes up again and again, and always with moral weight. The flooding of Ojibwe land to create the Chippewa Flowage in Wisconsin. The Wichita Mountains in Oklahoma. The First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City. Multiple readers specifically suggested skipping the Mt. Rushmore tourist shops and buying from Native artisans instead. This isn’t incidental. It feels like something this community carries collectively. Food is always specific, never generic. Nobody says “eat at a good restaurant.” They say: Get a Maid-Rite in Iowa, a loose-meat sandwich served since 1926. Eat cheese curds in Wisconsin—“the squeakier, the fresher.” Get pie at Norske Nook. Have a coney dog at Coney Island on 104 E 3rd St in Grand Island, Nebraska, run by the original owner’s son, interior unchanged. These aren’t Yelp recommendations. They’re heirlooms. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Allen House - Wichita, Kansas And this surprised me: Frank Lloyd Wright is a secret connective thread through the whole trip. His last surviving hotel is in Mason City, Iowa. His Allen House is in Wichita, Kansas. His Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, has hotel rooms and a bar. His Taliesin is in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I could build an entire itinerary around one architect across four states. I might. Where I’m Still Looking for More I want to be honest: Kansas and Indiana got thinner treatment in the inbox than the other nine states. Kansas carries a reputation—“it’s flat,” multiple readers noted, often before and sometimes after their recommendations—that seems to suppress enthusiasm even among people who clearly love it. I know Monument Rocks exists. I know Lawrence has some of the richest Civil War history in America. But I want more. What are you not telling me about Kansas? Here is a video of one interesting little place I visited there so far. West Baden Springs Hotel - West Baden Springs, Indiana Indiana also feels like it has secrets I haven’t unlocked. The dunes, the caves, the West Baden Springs Hotel with its extraordinary domed atrium—those came up. But I suspect there’s an Indiana that doesn’t get written about, and I want to know what it is. So here is my ask: What did I miss? What did your fellow readers get wrong, or underrate, or skip entirely on the above states? Are there places on this list you’d push back on? And what would you add? Why I Trust You Studies consistently find that friends and community members—people who share your values, your curiosity, your sense of what a good trip means—are the most reliable predictors of whether you’ll love a place. One analysis of millions of travel check-ins found that the people in your community shape your destination choices more powerfully than any algorithm. The intangibility of travel makes us especially dependent on the testimony of someone who has actually been there—not descriptions, but the lived experience of a person saying: Go, it surprised me, do not miss it. The Atlas Obscura community self-selects for a particular kind of curiosity. You are not here for the obvious. You are not here for the sanitized version. The recommendations you sent are, almost without exception, from people who went somewhere, were surprised by it, and wanted to hand that surprise to someone else. That is an act of generosity. That is also, I think, why it feels so trustworthy—because it comes from the same place that wonder does. I am going to all 11 states. I have four months. And I am taking your list with me. Tell me what I missed. I’m at ceo@atlasobscura.com. — Louise

Holyn ThigpenMar 21, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Two Places, One Story: Mickey Mantle’s House and the Toxic Town

An Atlas Obscura map led to a joyful stop at Mickey Mantle’s childhood home, and a haunting visit to the abandoned mining town just up the road. The Atlas Obscura map led me to two places in the same corner of northeast Oklahoma on the same afternoon. I didn't plan it as a journey from joy to grief. But that's what it became. The first stop was Commerce, Oklahoma, population around 2,400, a town so modest you could drive through it in under two minutes and think nothing of it. I pulled up to 319 South Quincy Street with my eleven-year-old son, and we got out of the car into the bright afternoon and stood there in front of a small white house, taking it all in. This is where Mickey Mantle grew up. The Commerce Comet. One of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. I told my son the story the way it deserves to be told: like a fairy tale. Mickey's father, Mutt, was so certain of his son's destiny that he named him after a Hall of Fame catcher before he was even born. When Mickey was a boy, Mutt would come home from work every afternoon at four o'clock, and the baseball lessons would begin. Mutt pitched right-handed. Mickey's grandfather pitched left-handed. They engineered a switch-hitter on purpose, right there in that yard. Below the windows was a single. Above them, a double. The roof, a triple. Clear the house entirely and you had a home run. Mickey once said he was "the only kid in town that didn't get in trouble for breaking a window." My son and I walked around the yard. We peered into the old tin shed that served as Mickey's backstop. We stood where Mickey stood, and I tried to explain what it meant, that from this unremarkable house on this unremarkable street, in a small town most people have never heard of, something extraordinary grew. That greatness doesn't wait for the right zip code or the right circumstances. That you can come from anywhere, from very little, and still become something magnificent. A Yankees center fielder even. He nodded. We skipped around the yard a little, goofing off in the way that eleven-year-olds do when something connects with them but they don't quite have the words for it yet. We got back in the car. I told him our next stop was just up the road. I knew it wouldn't be a happy place. Atlas Obscura’s entry about the town of Picher had made that clear. We drove north on the small Highway 69, past flat green fields and bare trees, and then the landscape began to change. Gray mountains appeared, massive, looming, wrong. These were the chat piles: seventy million tons of toxic mining waste, the crushed and poisoned remnants of a century of lead and zinc extraction. As we rolled slowly into Picher, I was livestreaming on Instagram. Almost immediately, a viewer from Oklahoma appeared in the comments, urgent, almost scolding: Why are you going there? There are so many nicer places to visit. I kept driving deeper into the toxic town. Courtesy of Bethan Herron The houses came into view. Deserted. Every one of them. "KEEP OUT" spray-painted across doors and windows, faded but legible. Yards still faintly shaped by the people who had tended them, a walkway here, a porch railing there, the ghost of a garden. This didn't feel like some picturesque old mining ghost town from the 1880s, the kind you visit out west with a gift shop nearby. Picher had been a living community until very recently. In 1983, the EPA designated it part of the Tar Creek Superfund Site, one of the most toxic places in America, it turned out, surpassing even the Love Canal. By the mid-1990s, studies found that 34% of the children in Picher had dangerous levels of lead in their blood, a contamination that could cause lifelong neurological damage. An Army Corps of Engineers study in 2006 found that 86% of the town's buildings were badly undermined by mine shafts and at risk of sudden collapse. Then, in May 2008, an EF4 tornado tore through what remained, killing six people and destroying 150 homes. The government stopped offering to help people rebuild and started offering to pay them to leave. By June 2009, the last residents had accepted buyouts. On September 1, 2009, Picher was officially dissolved as a municipality. Sixteen years ago. That's what I kept thinking. Sixteen years ago, people lived here. Children played in these yards. A high school class graduated — eleven seniors, the last class in Picher-Cardin High School's history — and then the doors closed forever. "Can we go faster?" my son asked. "Can we leave?" We stayed in the car. I didn't roll down the windows, having read on Atlas Obscura that the wind could carry harzardous material. I told my son what I tell myself about travel: that it's not just about the beautiful places and the perfect photos. It's about seeing many angles on the world, including what's hard and strange and broken. And that we owed it to the people who lived here not to look away. Courtesy of TonboMedia He nodded again. Less convinced this time. Picher stayed with us for days afterward. We kept talking about "that toxic town." And, honestly, I couldn't decide what to share about it with Atlas Obscura's community. Should I even write about it? Then, I sat down to write about Mickey's house in Commerce. I was writing the story about the balls thrown over the house with his father, and I looked up more about Mutt. Wow. Mutt died in 1952, at forty years old, when Mickey was twenty. The cause was Hodgkin's disease. Mutt's father Charlie, the same man who had pitched left-handed to Mickey in that yard every afternoon, had also worked in the mines of northeast Oklahoma and also died of Hodgkin's disease before he was fifty. Mickey spent his whole life assuming it was family fate — that the Mantle men simply didn't make it past forty. He didn't know, until much later, that inhaling lead and zinc dust in the mines can lead to Hodgkin's disease. Mutt had worked specifically at the Eagle-Picher Company, the mining operation whose waste became the toxic mountains I had driven through that same afternoon, a few miles up the same road. And here is what stopped me cold when I worked out the timeline. The Eagle-Picher mines didn't close until 1967, fifteen years after Mutt was already dead. The EPA didn't declare the area a Superfund site until 1983, thirty-one years after Mutt died. And the last residents weren't cleared out until 2009, fifty-seven years after Mutt's death. The mine that in all likelihood killed him, just kept going. More workers. More families. More dust. And the town built on top of all that poison wasn't fully evacuated until more than half a century after Mutt Mantle was buried. When all that happened, people weren’t talking about Mutt Mantle or the connection the mine had to the famous Yankee’s baseball star. Today, most people who make the pilgrimage to Mickey Mantle's boyhood home in Commerce never drive the few minutes north to Picher. Why would they? Mickey's house draws baseball fans and history lovers who want to stand where a legend stood. They skip around the yard, peer into the old tin shed, feel the warmth of the American dream — and then they get back in the car and drive away, the story intact, the fairy tale complete. But the full story isn't in Commerce. It's also in the journey to Picher. Until you've sat in that toxic town and felt the eerie silence of those deserted streets, you haven't really understood what it meant for Mutt Mantle to come home from work every afternoon at four o'clock. "That's so sad," my son said, when I told him that Mickey’s father worked there. "Are you okay that I took you to Picher?" I asked him. He thought about it for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly, solemnly, a little wiser. Wonder, I've come to believe, isn't only the beautiful and the marvelous. Sometimes it's the terrible thing you finally understand. Sometimes it's the two places on the map that turn out to be, quietly, the same story.

Louise StoryMar 23, 2026

Atlas Obscura

This Chef Is Redefining Cuban Comfort Food From a Kissimmee Food Truck

Amanda Melendez and her partner Claudia Mena built their following with a showstopper seven-hour pork dish. “All that we have learned has been, as we Cubans say, ‘a golpe.’” Amanda Melendez is explaining the success of her food truck in Kissimmee, Florida, and it’s quickly becoming clear that her popularity did not come by accident: It was forged out of fire. “A golpe” literally means “by blows,” and when Melendez says she learned that way, she means that she did so through struggle or sheer force of will. It would be easy to forget this while salivating over a plate of her cerdo asado, or roast pork, the meat falling apart under a gleaming sheet of crispy skin. Served over Cuban rice and beans with pickled onions, fried sweet plantains, and yuca, the knock-out dish makes customers feel at home. So too does warm, graceful service from Melendez and Claudia Mena, her partner in life and in business. But behind Chef Amanda’s brilliant cooking and impeccable service are two women who have worked tirelessly to build their business from the ground up. Chef Amanda’s food truck is known for cerdo asado, a roast pork dish served with rice and beans, pickled onions, and plantains. Courtesy of Amanda Melendez Beginnings Melendez was born and raised in Matanzas, Cuba in a family that cherished mealtime. “Food, for us, was more than food,” she recalls. “It was the moment where we would sit together, where we would share our culture.” Melendez’s grandmother Mirta would prepare delicious meals for her entire extended family: comfort dishes like carne frita, or fried meat, and macaroni with pork fill Melendez’s memories of childhood. “We don’t have that much abundance in Cuba,” Melendez says, “and my grandmother would resolve to feed us with whatever she could get her hands on.” In this way, young Amanda was raised in a culture of culinary innovation. “In Cuba, if something doesn’t exist, Cubans will invent it to feed their families,” Melendez says. At age 18, Melendez left the island nation for Miami, where she joined her father, who was already living there at the time. At first, Amanda wasn’t particularly interested in cooking. As a child, she left the cooking to her grandmother. In Miami, fate brought her just outside of the kitchen, as a server and a manager. “I worked, like we all do in this country, in gastronomy,” Melendez says. Her first job was in a Salvadorean restaurant, and her second was at a Cuban one. The experiences exposed her to cuisines from across Latin America—even her own. “I ate foods that people here say are Cuban dishes—that you don’t actually eat in Cuba,” she said, because of a lack of access to ingredients. She points out that ropa vieja, a slow-cooked, shredded beef dish that is famous in the United States, is rare in Cuba, because the slaughter and sale of beef is heavily regulated on the island. With time in the United States, Melendez would not only taste, but also innovate on Cuban dishes that were difficult to obtain back home. At her food truck, she plates a mini-serving of ropa vieja on crispy tostones (fried green plantains) for a small, punchy bite of Cuba. The truck’s take on ropa vieja. Courtesy of Amanda Melendez A chef is born Though Amanda’s transition to life in Miami was marked by abundance, she became a cook during a time of desperation: the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. With nothing to do, she began to cook in her Miami home, her grandmother guiding her through Cuban classics. “Little by little,” she remembers, “my love for cooking emerged.” Claudia, who met Amanda while they were both waiting tables, could tell that she was tapping into a passion. “She pushed me to study it” seriously, Amanda says, and she did, enrolling in night classes at the María Moreno Culinary Institute in Miami. By night, she learned the fundamentals of French cooking, and by day she continued working at a Cuban restaurant in Miami. But that hustle was not paying off; the pandemic killed much of the business at her day job, so she needed to look for other opportunities. Again, her loved ones saw her talent, and encouraged her to nurture it. “My brother-in-law told me, ‘You cook well, why don’t you start a meal prep business?’” Amanda took to preparing lunches in her home kitchen that Claudia would deliver to clients around Miami. Over the course of several years, her business grew from 7 clients to 80, and she had to start cooking in a ghost kitchen to handle the volume. While at school she worked a punishing schedule: she would wake up at 3 A.M., cook until around 7, take a nap, then buy groceries for the next day before heading to classes from 7 P.M. to 11 P.M. at night. While Amanda was at school, the couple heard about an opportunity to buy a food truck, and they jumped on it. At first, they used the truck as a ghost kitchen. In 2024, Amanda graduated from Maria Moreno with a degree in culinary arts. She and Claudia continued with their catering business in Miami, but they dreamed of leaving the city so they could show Amanda’s cooking—Cuban food with global influences—to a non-Cuban public. Amanda’s father lives in Orlando, and on a trip to visit him, Amanda and Claudia were impressed by the area’s vibrant food truck scene. They wanted to become a part of it. They applied to join five or six food truck parks before getting a call from Food Trucks Heaven. The manager offered them a spot, but there was a catch: “You have to come before the end of the week because I only have one spot available,” Amanda recalls her telling Claudia over the phone. “We left for Orlando early the next morning.” From top: a Cuban-inflected take on arancini; cerdo asado; and arroz frito. Courtesy of Amanda Melendez A place in Food Trucks Heaven The first month in Kissimmee was “horrible,” Amanda remembers. One of the toughest parts of leaving was separating from her 90-year-old grandmother, whom she had lived with since arriving in the United States. On top of that, she left behind many other family members in the Miami area to move to a city where she knew no one besides her father. “Nobody knew who we were, and my food truck is named Chef Amanda,” says Melendez. “Who is Amanda? No one knows. It didn’t say ‘Cuban’ anywhere. It was horrible, horrible.” Amanda worked the kitchen of the pink food truck, and Claudia attended to customers. Melendez burnt herself cooking on her first day. There were days where Amanda and Claudia did not sell a single thing. “It was like when someone is just exhausting themselves, sacrificing so much, but with nothing to show for it,” Amanda remembers. “We realized the only way people would buy from us was if they learned about our food first.” Claudia and Amanda started to give away samples of cerdo asado, their show-stopper. Tourists started sharing images of the delicious, seven-hour slow-cooked pork on social media. Influencers stopped by. “We’ve grown little by little this way,” Amanda says. Seven months later, they sell so much that they’re having trouble keeping up with demand. Claudia says that Amanda’s biggest challenge is that she has trouble delegating her work to other people, but it’s time for her to hire a worker to help out. They’ve grown on the strength of Claudia’s hospitality and business acumen — Amanda calls her the “mastermind” of the operation — and Amanda’s innovative, soulful cooking. When the pair was still in Miami, Amanda’s professor, Yoher Vielma, helped them create a menu for their nascent food truck based in Cuban cooking, but with modern, global twists. “We make use of the original recipes with new techniques to create a fusion menu,” says Melendez. “Because society advances.” Take, for example, Amanda’s croquetas, a classic breaded fritter that on the island would be made with a doughy center. Amanda, taking notes from Spanish croquettes, makes hers with bechamel, so the crispy exterior gives way to a melt-in-your mouth interior. Or her arroz frito, a fried rice dish brought to Cuba by Chinese immigrants in the 1800s. She loaded hers with Cuban stir-fry ingredients—pork, pineapple, sweet plantains—but came up with her own sauce incorporating Japanese rather than Chinese ingredients. Her arroz con pollo arancini are particularly revelatory. The base of the dish is a yellow rice-and-chicken dish that Amanda says Cuban cooks use to transform a small amount of poultry into a large, filling meal. And in Melendez’s hands, the dish transforms once more. “It ends up with a texture like a risotto,” she says. She adds cheese while it’s hot, breads it, and fries it to make it crispy on the outside, and moist and flavorful on the inside. She cuts the richness of the fried rice balls with two salsas: one made of cream cheese and lemon; and another with Japanese mayonnaise, lemon, and aji amarillo, a Peruvian orange pepper. Customers have also been clamoring for her tarta vasca, a crustless Basque cheesecake, which she Cubanizes with a guava marmalade. The same marmalade is served with her queso frito, fried cubes of muenster cheese that are breaded and fried until tender on the inside but crunchy outside. “The cheese is spectacular,” she says. “People order a ton of it in the food truck.” Queso frito, fried muenster cheese, served with a guava marmalade. Courtesy of Amanda Melendez Many Cubans are “incredulous” when they see the menu. “They ask me, ‘This is Cuban?’” Amanda says. “We tell them, ‘Try it. If you don’t like it, I won’t charge you.’ “And what always happens? They’re surprised. They’re always surprised, because when they try it they realize that it is Cuban food.” The menu is filled with her delicious takes on Cuban classics, like pan con lechón, a roast pork sandwich, a Cuban sandwich, and the inimitable ropa vieja. Customers can wash it all down with pineapple, mango, guava, or mamey (a custardy, aromatic tropical fruit) juice. In fact, while certain visitors need convincing, some Cuban-American influencers have been sharing videos of themselves eating at her food truck, calling it the best Cuban food truck in Orlando and saying that it transports them right back to Cuba. And though Amanda loves winning over her compatriots, she is just as pleased when an American who isn’t as familiar with Latin American food tries her cooking. “They come to us and say, ‘This is the best Cuban sandwich I’ve ever eaten.’ That fills us up, really. It gives me more happiness, I promise you, than money could.” Chef Amanda Melendez with a dish of fried rice. Courtesy of Amanda Melendez From Kissimmee to the world Now that she’s developed a following in Kissimmee, Melendez says that she’s just getting started as a restaurateur. Next, she hopes to open another food truck in the Orlando metro area, and at some point, a brick-and-mortar. She and Claudia are also eying cities north of Florida where they can introduce her takes on Cuban cuisine to Americans who might be unfamiliar with it. Getting there won’t be easy, but she and Claudia are more than up to the challenge. “You’ll fall, you’ll hit a thousand obstacles, Amanda says. “But you can’t give up.” She encourages people who are hesitant to follow their dreams to take a leap. “Anything you want in this world you can achieve, but you have to believe in yourself unconditionally,” she said. Though Amanda’s dreams are grand, they are simple at their core: She likes feeding people. “It makes me happy when someone smiles when they eat something I made.” she says. “I want everyone to experience that.”

Sam Lin-SommerMar 26, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Wyoming, and What Happens When You Pull Over

On her quest to visit all 50 states by July 4th, Atlas Obscura's CEO pulled over for a bicycle sculpture, a plane on a pole, and a mountain lion being skinned in a Wyoming backroom, and came away with something unexpected. I had not planned to stop in Pringle, South Dakota. We were driving west through the Black Hills to take a day trip to Wyoming when … I spotted it — a large sculpture made entirely of bicycles, welded together on the roadside outside of town, going nowhere and completely magnificent. We pulled over. My kids ran through its arches and tunnels. We took pictures. We left 10 minutes later having seen something none of us expected. That stop set the tone for the next two days. Just off I-90 near Sundance, Wyoming, I pulled off at a spot I'd found in the Atlas Obscura database: the Quaal Windsock — a 1950s Beechcraft Twin Bonanza airplane, 45-foot wingspan, mounted on a 70-foot pole above the highway. Mick and Jean Quaal loved the old plane but couldn't justify the $200,000 it would have cost to restore it to flying condition. So instead, they put it back in the sky another way. It pivots with the wind. The propellers still spin. We stood there and watched it turn for a while, and then we got back in the car. We had come to this corner of Wyoming for Devils Tower, the strange flat-topped rock column that erupts from the plains northeast of Hulett like something from another planet — which, if you grew up watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it essentially is. In Lakota tradition it's called Bear Lodge, and the grooves running down its sides are the claw marks of a great bear who chased children to the top while the rock rose to protect them. Prayer flags tied by Native visitors flutter at its base. Rock climbers (I'm one of them) move slowly up its columnar basalt faces far above. It is one of the more genuinely strange and beautiful places in America, and it deserves every word that has been written about it. But this essay is not about Devils Tower. Hulett is a small, old-timey Wyoming town about 20 minutes from the Tower. We were driving through it, windows down, when I saw the sign: Deer Creek Taxidermy. I said what I always say in these moments: Can we stop? We stopped. Atlas Obscura has hundreds of taxidermy places in its database. Our community has written about anthropomorphic Victorian taxidermy — dead kittens at tea parties, dead hamsters playing cricket — and about taxidermy loan libraries where you can check out a full-grown tom turkey the way you'd check out a book. We have taught bird taxidermy and mammal taxidermy online to thousands of students. One of our most dedicated community members — a woman named Caroline Mazel-Carlton who has visited more than 1,000 Atlas Obscura locations — told me she has loved taxidermy since she was 2 years old, and that her friends have, on multiple occasions, had to extract her from taxidermy backrooms while on trips. I had always found this odd. I had not yet understood it. Bobbi Butler was behind the counter at Deer Creek when we walked in, keeping an eye on her granddaughter at the same time. She gave us the tour without hesitation. The walls were covered: deer, elk, bears, steers, animals arranged in postures of frozen alertness. Some looked calm. Some looked intense, even furious. My 8-year-old, a vegetarian, moved quietly from mount to mount, studying each one. Then Bobbi said: "So the guys are out back, and they're actually, I don't know if you'd like to see, but they are skinning a mountain lion." Of course, I said yes. Outside, a mountain lion lay on its back, legs suspended in the air. Blood across the chest, deep red at the neck. Two men worked efficiently and without ceremony. My son looked at it and said, "That's disgusting." One of the men looked up. "Good, we needed more help. If everybody holds a leg we have enough people." Bobbi explained: the animal had been harvested by a hunter who'd brought it to Deer Creek to be mounted. "When it comes back from the tannery," she said, "then we do all the artistic stuff." One of the men popped out a claw — enormous, curved — and held it toward us. "You want to see the dangerous stuff? Look at this." My son, the vegetarian, looked at the claw. He did not look away. Back inside, Bobbi walked us through the full process. Animals come in wet and go straight into the freezer. When it's time to work, they thaw the skin and glue it over a high-density foam form sculpted by specialists to the exact shape of the animal. "We order the foam," she said, "then we take the skin out of the freezer and thaw it out, put glue all over the form, stretch the skin over it, sew it up down the back, put glass eyes in, and tuck the nostrils and eyelashes in." She showed us mounts mid-process, pins still holding the skin in place while it dried. I asked whether the eyelashes were preserved from the actual animal. Yes, she said. My son asked if they'd done a cow. They were working on one. A monkey? Yes. A whale? No. He thought about this. "I think it would be cool to do a rat." I had come to Wyoming for Devil's Tower. I left thinking about what Bobbi Butler's work actually is — not preservation of death, exactly, but an argument that something was worth remembering and looking at in new form. The foam form. The glass eyes. The real eyelashes tucked carefully into place. Someone decided this animal's specific likeness, its particular claw, deserved to last. The Quaals' windsock had been put in the sky because they loved a plane too much to let it rust on the ground. The bicycle sculpture in Pringle was welded to the roadside for no navigational reason whatsoever. Bobbi's mountain lion will hang on someone's wall for decades. Maybe the purpose is the same in all three cases. Someone saw something worth presenting in a new way. Someone said: Look at this, and look what I did with it. Caroline would have stayed for hours. I think I'm starting to understand why. — Louise Ps - I hope you are enjoying my quest to complete my 50 states. Email me anytime with your own questing stories or travel suggestions at ceo@atlasobscura.com.

Louise StoryMar 31, 2026

Atlas Obscura

A Flight Attendant’s Philosophy

A Q&A with flight attendant Deeb Haidar about a life spent in motion. Deeb Haidar may live in Brooklyn, but he spends half his time in different cities—sometimes even different countries. Since becoming a commercial flight attendant three years ago, Haidar has travelled all over the world for his job, working his way up from less-glamorous destinations to vibrant places that have each come to feel like a second home. Atlas Obscura Community Editor Holyn Thigpen spoke with Haidar about his favorite cities to travel to for work, the hole-in-the-wall spots he’s come to love, and the simple pleasures of a life spent in transit. Atlas Obscura: What made you want to become a flight attendant? Deeb Haidar: I used to travel a lot as a kid—mostly the Middle East. I was in Lebanon and Jordan and Kuwait to see family, and when I would go there, I’d be there for so long. Growing up in a Middle Eastern household in the U.S., I was never fully integrated, even though my parents wanted me to be. I was in such a bubble at home that even though I grew up in the U.S., a lot of things were super unfamiliar my whole life. AO: What kind of routes did they put you on in the beginning? And has that changed over time? Haidar: Domestic hell. In and out of Ohio—the worst stuff you can imagine. I’m still in my domestic era. I have to fight for everything internationally. AO: Is that because they’re more likely to give those flights to old-timers? Haidar: Yeah. I go to LA and San Francisco the most right now. If we’re talking about cities that I feel the most integrated in outside of New York, it’s definitely going to be San Francisco. It feels like such an old city. Even the businesses and the types of establishments they have there—old diners and eateries that are from, like, a hundred years ago—they’re all still there and all the architecture is still intact. AO: What else do you like about SF? Haidar: There is such an interesting kind of counterculture that exists in San Francisco once you get past all of these tech bro aesthetics and the tech bro lifestyle. I used to always go to Chinatown there, but there are all these Chinese spots that are not in Chinatown because of how it’s become [gentrified]; they’re in this neighborhood called Inner Richmond. That’s where the legit old school places are. A lot of the Chinese community in San Francisco moved to Inner Richmond from Chinatown. And the intention there is not to attract tourists, which I like. AO: How did you find out that this is the “real” Chinatown? Was it just through you exploring while you were there on work? Haidar: I just talked to people, mostly taxi drivers. Taxi drivers are like my lords. They really, really, really do help out. There are some weird ones for sure, so you have to know which ones are actually going to have good recommendations. I always wait to see if they have a family before I start talking to them. AO: Do you have a routine as far as what you do when you’re there, or do you like to switch it up every time? Haidar: I’ll get in from my flight, I’ll shower and I’ll change. I’ll put my earrings on. Go to the Mission or to Outer Richmond. I’ve been going to Outer Richmond a lot more often recently, just because I feel like it’s a bit more calm. But the Mission is beautiful because there’s such a vibrant and ever-present Latin diaspora there. Amazing restaurants and all these different cafeterias. You can go around just speaking Spanish. The Mission, captured on film. Photo by Haidar AO: I love this approach you have, where you’re just immersing yourself in different neighborhoods. Haidar: I think there’s this “cruise ship mentality” or “Disney park mentality” that’s baked so deep within us now that we just can’t find the magic in places. We’ll go somewhere, like Paris, and be like, “Ugh, I don't like Paris. The people are so mean” and this, that, and the other. And if you press people when they say stuff like that, they’ll just say “Oh, well, I wanted to order this and [the Parisians] just kind of scoffed at me.” But with those people, it’s always the same thing: They don’t speak French. It’s always that they're not speaking French. And I get it: Obviously not everybody speaks French, but it’s nice to at least try. When I’m in Paris, I don't even try to—like, English never even enters my head. It’s weird because, with Gen Z, we like to claim that we’re the most culturally literate generation and we’re the most forward thinking and all these things, but I’ve seen it a million times where a Gen Z person will go into a cafe and they’ll start speaking English. As a flight attendant, I see it too. Because when we go to Spain, when we go to Italy—I’ll speak Spanish first; I’ll speak Italian. I see how passengers react to me, and from that alone I can tell how they are when they’re in these countries they’re flying to. I’ll ask someone if they want something to drink in a language, and they’ll respond in super overly articulated English. It is a kind of aggressive thing to do, even though I’m sure they don’t realize it. AO: You told me before we started that Paris is one of your favorite cities. What are your favorite spots there? Haidar: My number one favorite is probably this dingy little tobacco shop that has all these slot machines and a coffee bar. I went in there because I needed to use the bathroom. I got a cup of coffee because I thought I had to buy something. (I didn’t. They literally wanted nothing to do with me.) But it was the best coffee I ever had in my entire life. It was run by this old Asian lady and her daughter. It’s funny, too, because I know people have this expectation of Paris—that there’s a certain type of person and a certain type of establishment. But there are all these different ethnic groups. These are people who immigrated from all over, but they’ve been in Paris longer than we’ve been alive. They’re more Parisian than anyone with a French degree will ever be. Through blood, sweat, and tears, they’ve become Parisian. AO: So best coffee you’ve ever had and you can use the bathroom for free if need be? Haidar: If need be. I don’t have the name of it because it’s a very generic place. It’s a random place on a corner. I got a shot of espresso that literally tasted like white chocolate, and it was milky and thick and rich. It was the most incredible coffee of my life. There’s also a boulangerie called La Griotte, and it’s in the 17th [arrondissement]. La Griotte Boulangerie Pâtisserie Michael Maher via Instagram. Used with permission. You go there and everything is plastic and gray and it’s lit horribly. And the pastries there? I’m sure they’re not the best in Paris by a long shot, but you go in there and you feel so welcome. You see commuters come in with their dogs, and you see how that one spot, based on geography alone, has become a fixture in these people’s lives, and it’s embedded so intimately in their lives. And they’re also so kind to you if you try and speak French, even if you sound like an idiot. AO: This is really warming me up to the Parisians. I think I’m going to have to give them another shot. Haidar: Oh, definitely. I think everyone needs to give them a shot. It’s become such a thing in America to hate on them. And I’m not saying everyone in Paris is an angel, but I think people who go there just like to believe they’ve had the same experience as others and they convince themselves of that. AO: What are your other go-to Paris spots? Haidar: There’s Chez l’copain, which is in the 18th, and it’s a little wine bar. It’s really trendy, cute, super dimly lit with red lights, and everyone’s young and outside smoking a cigarette. Les Vinaigriers is a restaurant that’s in the 10th. It’s a French restaurant. There’s only like four or five things on the menu, and they do it really well and everything is mixed. There are some experimental menu items that have shoyu and stuff in them, which is really cool. So there is a little bit of a mixed flavor there going on. And it’s a really, really cute street corner next to another cafe I haven’t been to yet called Le Flash, which is based off of arcade games. And there’s Le Garçon, which is a cafe, and I’d put that on my list just because of my experience with coming in and saying that I’m bad at French. Chez l’copain Courtesy of Chez l’copain AO: They were helpful? Haidar: It wasn’t that they were guiding you through it; they were just listening to you. They stopped and they listened to you. And everyone in there is French, and there are all these construction workers who are all commuting. Especially if you go in the morning, which I do. And they just sit there and listen to you struggle, but they’re not making fun of you. I really think French people love Americans. I know it sounds crazy—this is my hot take. They love American stuff. They love burgers. They love McDonald’s. McDonald’s is such a big thing! French people foam at the mouth for McDonald’s. If you go to France and you get a McDonald’s, honestly, you are kind of doing some form of cultural immersion in a way. McDonald’s and Burger King. Those are the two franchises that have been reclaimed by the French. AO: Are there special French McDonald’s items that you’ve tried? Haidar: They have the sauce chinoise, which is the Chinese sauce. AO: Are there any places that you think are overrated in Paris? Haidar: Oh, yeah. Champs-Élysées, for sure. The whole street. AO: What about it? It’s just a tourist trap? Haidar: It’s a tourist trap, and it’s all retail. A lot of European cities have this, and even American cities have it, where it’s the perceived center of a city, but now it has all been replaced by retail. It’s like a non-place. It’s a Zara. It’s a Salomon pop-up. It’s a Louis Vuitton. It’s a Hermes. It’s all these places. And then you’ll see a bistro here and there, and the prices are marked up by thousands. That’s an exaggeration, but still. Attractions have become the same everywhere you go. The same stores, the same things are there, and you don’t feel like you’ve gone anywhere. And I know some people look for familiarity, and they look for safety, and they look for something that they’re comfortable with. And it’s there for them. But obviously, you’re probably going to come back feeling like you haven’t done anything or you haven’t gotten anywhere. Also, it is kind of overstimulating and really depressing. AO: You mentioned the 10th arrondissement is an area where a lot of your favorite places are. Are there other areas in Paris where you just really like the vibe? Haidar: Yeah, the 9th. It’s a more chill part of the town. It’s very residential. There are families about, and what’s great is that it’s not for anybody, you know? That’s why I also like that really ugly gray place—because it’s not trying to be anything trendy. It’s not for you. It’s not for anybody. It’s not for people who visit Paris. And Paris shouldn’t—any city shouldn’t—no one should expect a show to be put on for them like they’re going to Epcot. No one should be expecting to enter a theme park. The 9th isn’t dolled up for anyone because it’s a city. It’s a real place. People live there. AO: I know you're very much an explore-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person, but is there any spot that you really want to hit next time you're there? Haidar: There are two places. There’s Le Flash. And then there’s this one cafe that I saw...I took a picture of the street next to it. It doesn’t have a name on the wall, but there are no lights. It’s all natural lighting. And it’s really small, and the seats are cushioned outside. It looks so old, but everyone there is so young. And they look like they know that they’re going to a simpler time. I don’t know...there’s so much I really can’t articulate about some places. Le Flash Max Drehsen via Instagram. Used with permission. AO: So between San Francisco and Paris, is San Francisco still your favorite city? Haidar: I mean, just because of how much I’ve travelled there, I’ve made friends. There are people that I go see now. AO: Just locals you’ve happened to meet? Haidar: Like, literally, I was in a tiny coffee shop called Grand Coffee and I met one guy named Angel, and he became one of my best friends. We get ice cream together and stuff. There’s a place actually called Garden Creamery and they do all their ice cream flavors from scratch and we get ice cream after he’s done at work. I haven’t paid for a coffee for as long as I can remember when I go in there. It’s the size of half of a bedroom—a tiny coffee shop with four little stools, and it’s a bar, basically. And [Angel] gives me the aux; I don’t pay for coffee, and I bring him ginger beers from the corner store down the street. AO: I always love those connections I make when I’m traveling that I’m actually able to maintain. That’s so special. Haidar: It is special because you do feel like you’re creating something. When you travel enough, you feel like you don’t really belong anywhere. And sometimes you have those moments where you’re like, “Wait, maybe I do. Maybe there are people that…” Because I feel like home as a concept is never a place. It’s always people.

Holyn ThigpenApr 2, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The Breathing Hole of the Earth, Found in South Dakota

South Dakota just as winter was ending, and the most alive things were underground. Atlas Obscura community member Catherine Laton warned me. "You're going to be so surprised at how much you'll love South Dakota." She is one of hundreds of readers who flooded my inbox after I announced my quest to visit all 50 states before July 4th. And, she was right, and also not quite right. I was surprised, but not in the way she meant. Fueled by your e-mails and recommendations, I arrived in the Black Hills at the tail end of winter — roads clear, season not yet turned. The hotel had almost no other guests. A handful of sites were shuttered until Memorial Day, waiting for crowds that hadn't arrived yet. Off-season travel: a little lonely, occasionally frustrating, and then suddenly, quietly, revelatory. Because the caves were open. Jewel Cave sits in the southern Black Hills, not far from where Mount Rushmore keeps its vigil and Crazy Horse slowly emerges from the mountain to the southwest. Below is one of the longest caves in the world. Calcite crystals coat the walls in formations that catch your headlamp and scatter it like broken chandeliers — spectacular, alien, cold. (There's also an advanced caving tour for ages 16 and up that requires squeezing through a narrow slot. I fit, so we're coming back when my kids are old enough.) Wind Cave is different. Wind Cave is a story. The cave is named for the wind that blows through its entrance — air pressure changes above ground push air in and out, as if the earth has lungs. When we left, my kids and I could barely pull the door closed behind us; the cave wanted to keep breathing. The Lakota called it Washun Niye, "the breathing hole of the earth," and held it sacred as the place from which the buffalo and their own people first emerged into the world. White settlers "discovered" the entrance in 1881. By 1903 it was a National Park. It was this cave that consumed the young life of Alvin McDonald, a teenager who began exploring its passages in the late 1880s and kept a diary of everything he found. He mapped corridors. He named rooms. He went back again and again, and started bringing tourists with him, charging admission, occasionally leaving them overnight in the dark when he had somewhere else to be and retrieving them the next morning. He died of typhoid fever around 20, having explored more of Wind Cave than anyone before him. The rangers tell his story with real tenderness: here was a kid with a candle and a notebook and an overwhelming need to know what was around the next corner, and apparently no particular anxiety about other people's comfort. I recognized something in that. Our guide mentioned that visitors always ask whether Wind Cave and Jewel Cave connect somewhere underground. Both are only partially explored — vast unmapped passages still ahead — so no one knows for certain. Probably not, she said; Jewel has no wind phenomenon, which suggests they're separate systems. But who knows. I found myself thinking about that uncertainty for the rest of the trip. South Dakota turns out to be a place of magnificent incompleteness: caves that may or may not connect, a monument still being carved after seven decades, a history still being reckoned with. There is so much still ahead. Above Wind Cave, the bison were grazing in the cold. American bison were hunted nearly to extinction by the late 1800s, from an estimated 30 million animals down to perhaps 1,000. Wind Cave Park became one of the reintroduction sites in 1913, and the recovery worked. The park now maintains a free-roaming herd of 400 to 600. They are enormous and indifferent and they do not move for your car. I sat and waited while a young bull stood broadside in the lane, regarding me with what I can only describe as philosophical calm. The buffalo emerged here, the Lakota say. They nearly vanished. They came back. The cave is still breathing. Reader Jerry Turley had told me Crazy Horse impressed him more than Rushmore. He was onto something. Rushmore is extraordinary — the sheer audacity of carving four faces at that scale isn't something photographs prepare you for. But Crazy Horse, still being carved seven decades after sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski began in 1948, carries a different weight. Ziolkowski died in 1982 without seeing it finished. His family has continued. He built something he knew would outlast him, and somehow that makes it more moving than the four finished faces just up the road. Reader Arthur Hillson had told me: Skip the tourist shops at Rushmore and buy a blanket directly from a Native artisan instead. Good advice I'm keeping in mind for the road ahead. I drove back through Deadwood in the fading afternoon, a town that has leaned fully into its own mythology, saloons and history museums stacked on top of each other. Catherine Laton told me to take water in the Badlands. I did. She was right about that too. Atlas Obscura has 64 places listed in South Dakota — many that I didn't get to. Yet. — Louise PS - This is part of my quest to see all 50 states before the 250th birthday of our country on July 4th. I hope you will email me your thoughts about traveling across the United States at ceo@atlasobscura.com

Louise StoryApr 6, 2026

Atlas Obscura

These Historic D.C. Spots Tell America’s Story

Celebrate 250 years of red, white, and blue at these hidden and unusual places. This year, the United States celebrates a major milestone: 250 years since the Declaration of Independence was signed and America became an independent nation. The country’s Semiquincentennial is an important time to reflect on the people, ideals, and events that have shaped it, as well as what the future holds. And what better place to celebrate the U.S. than its capital city? D.C. is home to America’s federal government, national monuments, and prominent political figures, but it’s also the site of some truly incredible, lesser-known U.S. history. Since July 4, 1776, the story of America has been written largely by its unsung heroes and enlivened by the unique places and moments often left out of history books. At these six sites, America’s past, present, and future converge in vivid color against D.C.’s lively cultural backdrop. A vibrant world packed with fragrant foliage and centuries-old botanical traditions. DC Gardens, CC BY 2.0 National Herb Garden Inside the U.S. National Arboretum lies the National Herb Garden, one of the most extensive collections of its kind in the country. Established in 1980 by the Herb Society of America, the garden is divided into thematic “rooms” and specialty sections that trace the roles that herbs have played in culture and history. Informational plaques throughout the garden showcase each plant’s practical, medicinal, or cultural significance, from those brewed into beverages to the dyes drawn from blossoms. The garden also contains collections of specific genera such as lavender, rosemary, and chili peppers, allowing visitors to experience the taxonomic diversity within plant families. A private creative bunker for one of America’s most prominent thinkers. Ted Eytan, CC BY SA 2.0 Frederick Douglass’s Growlery This small stone cabin on the grounds of Douglass’s Cedar Hill home became the reformer’s favorite place to read, write, and think in peace throughout his career. Douglass kept the single-room structure simply furnished with a couch, stool, and desk filled with his books and papers. It is likely that many of Douglass’s most famous works were first drafted in this space, which has been jokingly called a “19th-century man cave.” Today, visitors can step inside the reconstruction of this cozy abode, which uses materials from the original Growlery and sits in its original location. A salvaged mast honors sailors lost in a tragic explosion. Arlington National Cemetery, Public Domain USS Maine Memorial (Mast of the Maine) The mast of the USS Maine, an armored cruiser that exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898, stands proud in Arlington National Cemetery, commemorating the over 260 people who died in the tragedy. It was first raised from the sea in 1911 and brought to Arlington in 1912. Now, the mast sits atop a large granite base, designed to resemble a battleship gun turret. It contains inscriptions of the names and ranks of those lost in the wreck, as well as a welded depiction of the Maine’s bell. Above the door, another inscription reads, “Erected in memory of the officers and men who lost their lives in the destruction of the USS Maine at Havana Cuba, February Fifteenth MDCCCXCVIII.” This 4-foot stone marker once symbolized a national dream. Charles Smith, CC BY SA 2.0 Zero Milestone This small granite structure symbolized lofty goals for America’s future when it was erected in 1923. Championed by Dr. S. M. Johnson, an advocate of the burgeoning Good Roads Movement, the marker was intended to show the central point from which one could measure highway distances throughout the country—a timely aim in the early days of America’s booming automobile age. Johnson took inspiration from ancient Rome’s Golden Milestone, located in the Forum, which marked the origin point of the Roman Empire’s extensive road system. While the Milestone’s great vision never quite caught on, it’s still technically a geodetic benchmark for some local measurements. Rochambeau helped lead Americans to victory at Yorktown in 1781. This statue shows him directing his troops. Daderot, CC Zero Statue of General Comte de Rochambeau This statue of the famous French Revolutionary War hero was erected in Lafayette Park to affirm positive Franco-American relations. Following tensions between the two countries during the 1898 Spanish-American War, France sought to show that it held no grudges and was ready to restore friendly diplomacy. President Theodore Roosevelt and members of Congress, along with French military and civil delegations, dedicated the Rochambeau statue in 1902 in the southwest corner of the park. Intelligence officers worked long, grueling shifts inside a former pigeon coop. Elliot Carter, Atlas Obscura User Peirce Mill Spy Station During the Cold War, D.C. was full of covert spaces for top-secret operations, such as this unadorned attic space in Rock Creek Park. The small nook atop a former carriage house became a site for intelligence officers to monitor bugging equipment directed at the diplomatic consulates (and snap the occasional sneaky photos). Meanwhile, the ground floor of the space became home to an alternative art collective called the Art Barn. The building’s use as a spy station was not revealed until 1992, when the Washington Post interviewed the Art Barn’s executive director about her unusual upstairs neighbors. In the same article, the Post reported that all spy equipment had been removed from the mill the previous year when the Cold War came to an end.

Holyn ThigpenApr 10, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Stuck in the Long Valley Caldera

Driving through snowy mountains, Kelly’s hot spring adventure suddenly went wrong—or did it go right? Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. A few weeks ago, I was up in the Sierra Nevada mountains by myself for the weekend. I like doing that sometimes. The ski mountain I like is about five hours north of L.A. I usually leave town on a Friday night. On the way up, I sleep in my van at a rest stop or a campground on public land. And I wake up the next morning and the mountains are right there. On this trip, I decided that after a day of skiing, I was going to go explore the Long Valley Caldera. A caldera is basically a big depression caused by a volcano that has collapsed on itself. And the Long Valley Caldera did that about 700,000 years ago. It’s actually one of the largest calderas in the world, 20 miles by 11 miles, right near Mammoth Mountain, where I go skiing. It looks like just a big, flat, open field covered in sagebrush. But underground, there’s still an active magma chamber that heats the groundwater and forms some of my favorite things in the world: hot springs, these little blue pools that pop up all across the field where hot water has bubbled up, and you can just get in and sit there on a really cold day. So on this day, I was searching for hot springs in the Long Valley Caldera by myself in my van. Oh, and it was after a really big snowstorm. What could go wrong? I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And here at the show, we ask people a lot of questions about the places they go. Sometimes we like to ask ourselves those questions too. Today’s question for me was this: What is a time when you felt like you were in over your head? This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Hot Creek, a hot spring in Long Valley Caldera CC BY 2.0 / James St. John There are really good maps of the Long Valley Caldera. I did not have one. Instead, I decided to type “hot springs” into Google Maps and wing it. I drove down the highway, took a left at the old green church I remembered, and went another few miles on a paved road. Then I got to a turnoff that Google Maps said would take me to some hot springs. They have names like Crab Cooker and Wild Willy’s and Hilltop. But the problem was: that road had not been plowed. It was covered in snow and ice. And my van is not four-wheel drive. I should have hesitated … I didn’t. At this point, I should probably come clean about the fact that in my life, I have turned down a lot of roads I shouldn’t have turned down. Because for many years I was an international correspondent for NPR and others. I’ve covered wars. I’ve worked in a lot of intense places. And so when I first got the question for this episode, I thought: Do people really want to hear about the time I was detained by the KGB? I mean, that was because I went down the wrong road near the border with Chechnya. Do they really want to hear about the time I ended up on the road with the ISIS checkpoint? The road in Yemen where the U.S. was dropping bombs from drones? That time in Syria when my fixer said, don’t worry, we’re just going to the back of the front line. The problem with these stories is not just that they are super intense and scary, but—and bear with me here—the problem is that I actually came out of those situations okay. And this has given me a very false sense of confidence that I will always make it out okay. Call it privilege. Call it stupid luck. I call it positive reinforcement for bad behavior. So, at the caldera, I’m on the bad road. It’s bumpy, but it’s not too bad. And I make it to the first hot spring, which was so cool. It’s just this little depression of warm water lined by smooth rocks right in the middle of the snow-covered field with the Sierras on the horizon. Big blue sky. I have the pool all to myself. I started sending selfies to my girlfriends, like, look what I found. And a few people had been in the pool just before me. They were putting on their boots and getting ready to leave, and they said they were heading to the next pool just a couple miles away. They didn’t have four-wheel drive either, but they said they were going to try. Getting to that next hot spring meant turning down another bad road, one that looked like it might be even worse than the first bad road. So, I waved and told the people I wasn’t going to risk it. Yeah, yeah, bye. Have a good time. But then, I got back in the van and I was in such a good mood. And I thought, that first pool wasn’t quite warm enough. And I knew they got warmer the further you drove into the caldera. And the sun was shining and the sky was so blue. So I figured, I’ll try to go a little bit further. When I did get stuck, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Even though it seemed like I was out in the middle of nowhere, I still had a phone signal. I’ll just call AAA. Everything will work out, I thought, like it always does. Seven hours later, I was seriously questioning the way I live my entire life. I don’t believe in luck running out, but it felt like mine had. Pro tip: if you’re out on a caldera on a small dirt road, AAA will not come for you. They consider it off-roading. The road was super narrow, and my tires were super stuck in this very deep rut of snow and ice on kind of a little hill and a turn. The crazy thing was, though, there were other people out there, so I started waving them down. And after a little while, some guys drove up and said they had a tow rope. So they tied my van to their four-wheel drive truck, and they towed me out of my spot. But then I got stuck again. And we kept trying and trying and trying, and then they got worried that they would get stuck. And then it started to get dark. And then they said they had to leave. They had a couple kids in the truck, and they just couldn’t help me anymore. At this point, I have to be honest. I started to think, maybe this isn’t going to work out. I might actually have to spend the night out here. And to be clear, I have been in worse situations. I once spent the night in a school in Syria, in an area that was under heavy bombardment. But this was nature. What if it dumped snow again and I got really buried and no one could find me? I could make it for a while in the van. It has a bed. It has blankets. It has a little kitchen. There’s a fridge with some food in it. And there’s a heater that works even if the van isn’t running. There’s also a bunch of other crap in the van that I wouldn’t need, like maps and spices and mosquito repellent and tents and about six different ways to make coffee. So, I would survive. But how was I going to get out? Before the guys with the tow rope left, they actually gave me the number of a professional who might come and tow me out. For a fee. I called her. She said her truck was in the shop. But she gave me the number of another guy. I called him and he said it was going to cost a lot of money. Like hundreds of dollars. So I tried to get myself out. I let the air out of my tires. I put my floor mats under my tires and tried to use those as traction. I tried to put the chains on, but that only works when you can actually move the vehicle forward to get the chains into place. I tried digging out with a dustpan. Why do I have a dustpan? Eventually, I called the expensive guy back. His name was Tim. He sounded like he knew I was going to call him back. It took him a couple hours to get there, but he finally came roaring up in this jacked up Jeep with a crazy hefty tow rope and these big treads that you put down under the tires to get traction. I was so close to the part of the road that was okay to drive, but it still took like an hour for Tim to get me out. And by this point, it was fully dark. Tim was super cool. He had worked on search and rescue teams. He does marathon training at elevation. He had been in Iraq, too. We traded cool stories. I later even went to his house so he could fix a sensor that had broken on one of my tires. And Tim told me not to be embarrassed. Getting stuck happens to the best of us. But yeah, I was embarrassed and also just kind of sad. I know one of the reasons that I always do the thing is that I don’t worry about the worst case scenario. I joke with people that I don’t have a worry gene. I just do not have the ability to imagine what could go wrong. And that is how I’ve lived my life, how I’ve been able to do all the things I have done over the years. And yes, I acknowledge that I might not have been able to wriggle out of situations near Chechnya and in Yemen if I wasn’t a white middle-class American lady. But now, since this mistake, I can imagine what could go wrong. And maybe the next time, I won’t turn down that road. But what kind of life is that? I mean, who is this person? Other worriers I know say worrying is actually a good thing, a healthy thing. That if you worry all the time, you will be pleasantly surprised when things go right. I don’t buy it. I would much rather assume the best than assume the worst. People will talk to you. People will be helpful. How bad can that road be? I sulked for days about getting the van stuck. I tried to tell the story to my friends, but I thought, it’s not a good story. But then I realized, I did get Tim out of the deal. I made a cool new friend. He put a pic of the rescue on his Instagram page, and I didn’t have to spend the night out on the caldera. I guess in the end, things did go right. Right? Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM Podcasts. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

Kelly McEversApr 13, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The House With No Story

Atlas Obscura CEO Louise Story didn't have a plan in Bloomington. She just had the app, her kids, and an open afternoon — and ended up somewhere she never expected. We picked Bloomington because of friends. A couple we'd been close with in New York moved there four years ago when she got a professorship at IU. We wanted to see them. They didn't have an agenda for the day, so I pulled up the Atlas Obscura app and suggested two places: the Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection and the Captain Janeway statue. They'd never heard of either. Four years in Bloomington, and they didn't know their town held more than 30,000 antique puzzles or a bronze monument to a starship captain who won't be born for another three centuries. At Slocum, my kids worked through nearly every puzzle on display in the room—wooden geometries, trick boxes, ancient sliding-tile puzzles. My husband, the family brainiac, got stuck on one called Chinese Rings: six interlocking metal rings threaded onto a U-shaped wire loop. The goal is to remove all the rings, then replace them. It looks simple—just slide them off. But the wires block your way. You can't take them off one at a time. You have to skip rings, double back, work through a precise 31-step sequence. He sat there turning it over in his hands, trying every angle, while the kids moved on to the next table. He never solved it. The kids were merciless. Now they want a puzzle cabinet at home. Then we walked to the Janeway statue, and I became the narrator. I'm not a Star Trek person. I wouldn't have stopped for this on my own. But my kids were with me, and they wanted to know: Why would a town build a statue to someone who isn't real? Someone who won't even be born for 300 years? So I read the plaque. I looked it up in the app. And I told them. Captain Kathryn Janeway was the first female captain to lead a Star Trek series. She commanded a starship stranded 70,000 light-years from home and spent seven seasons making impossible decisions—the kind where every choice has a cost and you make the call anyway because someone has to. She was created by Jeri Taylor, a woman who grew up right here in Bloomington, graduated from IU with an English degree in 1959, and became one of the only female writers and producers in the Star Trek franchise. Taylor fought for representation in a room full of men who told her no. She gave Janeway her own hometown. And when she retired, she donated her life's work to the Lilly Library—the same building where my kids had just been solving puzzles. The statue was crowdfunded entirely by fans. Women who needed Janeway to exist. Who saw themselves in a captain who didn't apologize, didn't explain, just led. I stood there looking at her—this bronze woman on a pedestal in a small Indiana town—and I thought about all the times I've sat in rooms where men doubted me. The boss who once told me he couldn't believe he was listening to a pregnant woman lecture him about cloud computing costs. (I was right. He admitted it later.) The moments when being blonde, being a mother, being from Florida somehow meant I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about. I didn't know, standing at that statue, that I was looking at myself. I was just trying to explain to my kids why a town would honor someone fictional. But that's what sharing does. It makes you see things you wouldn't have seen alone. Our friends kept saying, "We had no idea this was here." There's something wonderful about showing people hidden corners of their own town. After we said goodbye, I had one more stop. Before the trip, I'd texted my mom to tell her we were visiting Bloomington. I knew she'd done two years of college at IU. What I didn't know—what I learned only when she texted back—was that she'd also lived there as a child, ages 2 to 7, while my grandfather did his doctorate. I'm 45 years old. I didn't know this. She sent me a list: 423 Jordan Street, her first house. University Elementary, K-2. The swim team pool with underwater windows where she swam alongside Mark Spitz. Teter Quad. The Hub. The gorgeous limestone campus with the river running through. I was rushing out the door. I barely read it. I saved the address and moved on. We found the house after saying goodbye to our friends—though the street isn't called Jordan anymore. It was renamed Eagleson a few years ago after David Starr Jordan's legacy as a eugenicist came to light. My mom didn't know. The address she'd carried in her memory for sixty years no longer exists the way she remembers it. The house sat up on a hill behind a concrete staircase. A two-story Colonial, painted pale gray, with white columns framing the front door. Evergreens crowded the entrance—junipers and arborvitae that had been growing for decades. A sunroom on one side. A brick chimney. It looked like a professor's house, not a postdoc's. More substantial than I'd imagined for a young academic family in the late 1950s. I pulled up in the car. I looked at it. I took a photo. I drove off. I checked the box. A few weeks earlier, I'd taken my kids through my own Floridian childhood— in the towns of Maitland and Winter Park. I showed them my elementary school and the historic Black town of Eatonville next door, how growing up beside it shaped who I became, why I'd written a book about the Black-white wealth gap, why equality causes have run through my life. They asked endless questions. They wanted to understand. The place unlocked because I was there to narrate it. But at my mom's childhood home, I had nothing to say. My grandparents are both dead. They divorced bitterly, and after the split, neither would speak about the life they'd shared. My grandmother—who I adored, who was gorgeous and put-together and thoughtful in everything she did, coordinated down to her jewelry, nothing unconsidered—she never mentioned Bloomington. It was "before." It didn't exist. And now, writing this, I realize: I never asked. I never pushed her to talk about the years before the divorce. I never asked what it was like to be a mother in her late 20s with a toddler and a husband building his career. I never asked what that house felt like, what the kitchen smelled like, whether she was happy. She died in 2021. I can't ask her now. I wonder—if I had pushed, would she have told me? Or would she have deflected, the way she always did when the past came up? I'll never know. That's part of the grief: not just that she's gone, but that the questions I should have asked went unasked. And now I'm standing in front of her house at 45—the age she was when she lived there, with kids the same ages my mom was then—and there's no one left to answer. Except my mom. Who's still here. Who texted me a whole list of memories. Who I didn't invite. Why didn't I invite her? I could have asked her to meet me in Bloomington. We could have walked up those concrete steps together. She could have told me which window was her bedroom, whether she remembers the backyard, what her father was like before everything fell apart. Instead, I checked the box. I took a photo from the car. I think about all the travelers out there with bucket lists. Checking boxes. Taking photos for Instagram. Driving past houses to say they did it. How many of them are actually feeling a place? Spending time there in a meaningful way? With the right people? So much of my 50-state quest has been meaningful—but I realize now it's because I've been sharing it. The puzzle room came alive because my kids were there. The Janeway statue mattered because I could explain it to them—and because explaining it made me see something about myself. I even showed my friends hidden corners of their own town. In other places, like a horse cemetery in Kansas, I met locals. But the one stop that was actually about family history, I did without a person who could explain it. I rushed. I checked the box. Some places you can discover on your own. But some places—your mother's childhood home, your grandmother's first kitchen—those need a narrator. And if you don't bring one, you're just photographing a house. Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo wrote: "Humans, not places, make memories." I'd go further. Humans don't just make memories—they make places exist. Without someone to tell you what happened there, a house is just architecture. A statue is just bronze. If I hadn't sat down to write this essay, I probably never would have thought about that house again. It would have stayed a photo on my phone, a drive-by on the way to the airport. But writing made me see what I missed. Writing made me text my mom. Writing made me wish I'd asked my grandmother the questions I'll never get to ask. When you get home from a trip, sit with it. Write something down—even if just for yourself. You might discover that the place you rushed past was the one that mattered most. And the people who can narrate your history? They're still here. But not forever. Ask them now. Bring them with you. I took a photo of my mom's house anyway. I'll send it to her. Maybe she'll see something I couldn't. -Louise PS — Have you visited the places where your parents or grandparents grew up? Did you bring them with you? Write me at ceo@atlasobscura.com with your thoughts on what old family places mean in your travels—and whether you've ever regretted not asking the questions while you still could.

Louise StoryApr 14, 2026

Atlas Obscura

We Took Three Kids to Napa. One Joined the Wine Club.

Wine country has a secret life — and it involves a torture chamber, a geyser, and an 11-year-old wine club member Everyone warned me about bringing three kids to wine country. They weren't wrong, exactly. Pull up to Stag's Leap or Mumm and you'll find gorgeous scenery, serious sommeliers, and approximately zero reason for a child to be there. I love wine. My kids do not. We needed a plan. The plan turned out to be a medieval castle. Castello di Amorosa sits at the end of a long drive through vineyards in Calistoga, and when it comes into view you genuinely stop breathing for a second. The stones are too old to be in America. The walls are too thick. The whole thing looks like someone lifted a 13th-century Italian fortress out of Tuscany and set it down, inexplicably, in Northern California wine country, surrounded by crimson and burnished bronze grapevines. Which is, more or less, exactly what happened. The man behind it is Dario Sattui (he was born Daryl, which tells you something). Fourth-generation vintner, ardent Italophile, and a person with a vision so large it took twelve years and over a million antique bricks – salvaged from dismantled Habsburg palaces–to realize. The hinges, the locks, every chain link carefully assembled. And he did it with his wine profits. No tech billionaire money here. Sattui had already built one of the most profitable wineries in Napa at V. Sattui, reviving his great-grandfather's tradition. He could have stopped there. Instead he built a castle, shipped a million bricks across an ocean, and created something so specific, so committed, so genuinely joyful that on a Friday afternoon a family from New York stood in his courtyard while their 11-year-old joined the wine club. That part requires explanation. We did a seated tasting in one of the outdoor courtyards, golden light coming through the arches. What I didn’t know: Castello has a kids' flight. Three glasses, yes, a flight of grape juice, each one poured and presented by a sommelier with complete, genuine seriousness. My kids tried a Muscat Canelli, a Gewürztraminer, and a red blend. The sommelier explained each one as thoroughly as she explained ours. Terroir, tasting notes, the whole thing. My children, who last week argued about whose turn it was to feed the dog, suddenly had opinions about stone-fruit-forward profiles. The atmosphere was nothing like the hushed reverence of some tasting rooms. It was joyous. Everyone around us — families, couples, the staff — seemed delighted just to be there as if the place gave everyone permission to find it magical, and everyone accepted. My 11-year-old was the leader. After finishing his third grape juice flight, he turned to the sommelier and asked to join the wine club. They said yes. He'd receive grape juice only. He is now, they informed him, the youngest member in the history of Castello di Amorosa. I don't know what we've started … After the tasting, my kids insisted on the torture chamber — genuinely, historically detailed — and I recommend letting them lead you through it, because their enthusiasm is infectious. But here's the thing about this corner of California that nobody briefed me on: it's not just a castle. Within about 20 miles of Calistoga, Atlas Obscura will take you on a tour that defies all expectations of what "wine country" is supposed to mean. There is a geyser in Calistoga, California's own Old Faithful, powered by an actual subterranean volcano, that erupts regularly while people are a mile away getting mineral mud baths, apparently unbothered. There is the Monticello Dam, home to the largest drain hole in the world, sitting serenely in a Napa reservoir, looking perfectly pleasant until you look directly into it. There is a hill in Sonoma that you have stared at for years: it's the photograph called "Bliss.” The default Windows XP wallpaper, shipped on over a billion computers. The hill is real. You've seen it every day. You just didn't know where it was. And then there’s Safari West, a wildlife preserve just outside Santa Rosa where giraffes walk past your open-air vehicle and rhinos graze in the distance and you think: I was in a medieval castle four hours ago. Napa does not care about your expectations. This is what using Atlas Obscura as your travel companion does to you: you start out looking for something to do with your kids while the adults drink wine, and you end up somewhere you never could have planned. There's a sister property too — not a castle, but equally kid-friendly. We're already planning the return trip. My youngest would like it noted that she found the torture chamber first. -Louise PS — Have you found somewhere that completely defied your expectations — somewhere you almost didn't go? Have you brought your kids somewhere that turned out to be magic, or taken a chance on a detour that changed the whole trip? Write me at ceo@atlasobscura.com. I want to hear about the places that surprised you.

Louise StoryApr 20, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The Fight to Save Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens

A hobby project turned commercial nursery, these lily ponds escaped dredging and became a national treasure. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Kelly McEvers: Gina Geffrard has a very specific memory about the first time she encountered the place we’re talking about today. Gina Geffrard: In 2019, I filmed an episode of House Hunters. And one of the houses on the show is across the street from the gardens. I remember talking to the producers of the show, asking what is across the street. And they didn’t really know, so we did research and we found out it was Kenilworth Park. Amanda McGowan: You were on House Hunters? Kelly: That’s our producer, Amanda, following up on the most important detail here. Gina: I love that that’s the follow up. But yeah, it’s been a while now. I filmed in 2019 and it aired in 2020, but it was a really fun experience. Kelly: Gina was on House Hunters looking to buy in Washington, D.C.—specifically in the Kenilworth neighborhood, which is northeast of downtown along the Anacostia River. The neighborhood had this park that got Gina’s attention. It had lots of trails. It was near the river. So pretty soon after moving in, Gina would go running and biking there. It seemed like a normal park, until she started exploring. Gina: I didn’t realize what I was looking at when I first saw or entered the gardens. And even many more times after, I still didn’t realize where I was. Kelly: One day, Gina saw this gravel path ... Gina: … and to the left and to your right are more trees. Maybe there’s some flowers growing on the ground, a lot of green grass, and then eventually you pass a second set of gates. And then when you walk through that second gate, in front of you is just a huge, vast number of ponds. If you come in in the summer, especially June and July, and even in August, you’ll see these ponds filled with water lilies and lotuses, and it’s a sight to behold. Kelly: This is Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens: a sort of secret oasis in Washington, D.C. right next to a much larger urban park; so people often miss it. Today, by the way, Gina is not just a fan of the place. She’s actually the interim executive director for the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. That’s an organization that cares for the park alongside the National Park Service. Gina: One of the reasons why we’re a hidden gem is because we are hidden. Parks are pretty common in the city. The D.C. area actually has a large number of parks for the number of people that reside here, but you rarely see a garden, and you rarely see an aquatic garden; in fact, we’re the only aquatic garden that’s a national park in the country. Kelly: I’m Kelly McEvers and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. This episode is brought to you in partnership with Washington.org. And today we’re going to a very unusual national park: a floating park, an oasis of ponds filled with lilies and lotuses. And we’re also going to dive into its backstory, which goes all the way back to a Civil War veteran and his daughter, who fought the federal government to protect her father’s legacy. This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens truly come to life in the summer. B R O N / Shutterstock Gina: We had some students come in last week for a field trip, and some chaperones—their parents—came and they didn’t know about the gardens. And when they walked through, the first thing they said was: “There’s a lake back here.” When the plants are not in bloom, it looks like a bunch of lakes. Kelly: Here’s Gina Geffrard again. Gina: When you want to see all these flowers and plants blooming, and birds and butterflies, the summer is the time to come. The lotuses are the star because they grow so tall. That’s really what you see when you come to the gardens, because it’s not just small little plants. There are these huge, beautiful flowers that bloom in a variety of colors. Kelly: So how did the only aquatic garden national park come to be? It goes back to the Civil War and a veteran named Walter B. Shaw. Walter was originally from a little island off the coast of Maine, but in 1863, he joined the Union Army and the following year, he saw some very intense fighting in Virginia. During the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Walter got shot. Doctors were able to save his life, but they did have to partially amputate his right arm. After the war, Walter stayed around Washington D.C. He actually completely relearned to write using his left hand, and he got a job working at the U.S. Treasury Department as a clerk. About a decade went by, and Walter and his wife saved up some money and bought a little plot of marshy land next to the Anacostia River. And something about this land inspired Walter because soon he started, as he called it, playing in the water. Gina: He decided to dig a pond with one arm and planted these flowers, and they started blooming so lovingly. So much so, he dug more ponds with one arm. And the plants started to thrive some more. And he then created a business called W.B. Shaw Lily Company. Kelly: At first, this was Walter’s side hustle, a hobby. He spent time perfecting his growing methods. One old newspaper article said he had trouble with turtles eating the roots of his plants, but over time, he built the business up. And in 1902, he started selling water lilies full time. Walter shipped his lilies around D.C. and even further out to cities like New York and Philadelphia. The Waldorf Astoria Hotel was apparently a big customer. You have to wonder how they would have mailed delicate plants like this in the days before refrigeration or two-day shipping. One article from the time revealed Walter’s method. He would cut the flowers first thing in the morning at 5 a.m., tightly wrap each one in thin sheets of lead, and then in wax paper, and supposedly this way they could stand up to a week of travel. When they arrived at their destinations and were put in water, they would come back to life. While Walter was out digging his ponds and caring for his lilies, he had a frequent companion: his daughter, Helen. She was about 5 years old when they moved to the marsh, and throughout her childhood, she went out and helped her father dig his lily ponds, learning all about the plants and the business. As a young woman, Helen got married and had a child, but tragically, both her daughter and her husband died within a few years of each other. After that, Helen started running the family business. Gina: When Helen Shaw took it over, it really boomed. Helen started building structures on the property, so the greenhouses you’ve seen are from the time when she owned the business, including the visitor center, which is original, and two of the hothouses, which are original. Kelly: And Helen expanded the gardens from nine ponds to 42. She sourced new lilies from all over the world, eventually selling 3,000 to 5,000 lilies every day. She was even the first woman in D.C. to hold a commercial driver’s license, which she used to deliver flowers. Gina: And then she also opened up the gardens to the public. So this is when we have not just the selling of the plants and the flowers, but people from the public coming to see this beautiful place that they created. This was the 1930s, right? So if you can imagine at that time, there were still many challenges for women in America. And so for her to not only run a business, but to have the business thrive and also fight the government for it. She fought the government for her garden. I mean, she was pretty fierce. Kelly: So let’s talk about Helen versus the federal government. In the late 1930s, the government decided they wanted to own more land along the Anacostia River because they wanted to expand public riverfront green space and also do this massive dredging project of the river’s mud flats as a way to combat mosquitoes and malaria. All of this would have destroyed the aquatic gardens. Helen spent nearly 20 years in a legal battle over the garden’s future. Gina: We do have writings from Helen Shaw Fowler and her attorney at the time, kind of going back and forth. He advised her to sell. She did not want to. Ultimately she did. The government purchased the land from Helen—begrudgingly on her part—and so Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens has been owned by the National Park Service since. Kelly: In the end, though, the government did not end up tearing up the gardens like they’d originally planned. Instead, they turned it into a national park. Gina: And we probably could thank Helen for saving the gardens by opening them up to visitors, because people then knew what was there. It could be fair to say that had it remained a private business, and people didn’t know about it, it could probably be something completely entirely different today. Kelly: So then what happens when a neighborhood garden becomes a national park? As the Shaw Lily Company, the park was part of daily life in the area, a place of recreation, a place of work. But after it became a national park in 1938, the neighborhood around it started changing. Gina: Eventually the Kenilworth neighborhood over the decades becomes a predominantly Black community. And because it’s a national park site, I believe this is when they start building the fences that are currently around the gardens for a variety of reasons. And the fences, they kind of bring some tension in the community. Kelly: And there was more going on next door. In the early 1940s, the federally appointed D.C. government made a piece of land right next to the aquatic gardens into a giant landfill where trash was openly burned. The landfill stayed open until 1970, and environmental cleanup only began in the late 1990s. But throughout all these changes, the gardens were still meaningful to people in the community. Gina: We’ve heard from many residents of the Kenilworth neighborhood, of the Eastland Gardens neighborhood, of the Parkside neighborhood. Really fun stories from the 60s and the 70s, when they used to sneak into the gardens in the wintertime because the ponds would freeze and they would ice skate around over the ponds. Hearing those stories is really fun. And the gardens do mean a lot to the people in the neighborhood, but sometimes the relationship is not what it should be. Kelly: Locals worked hard to connect the gardens with the community, like Walter McDowney, also known as “Ranger Mack”: a park ranger who grew up across the street. He created a junior ranger program to bring neighborhood kids into the gardens. Still, Gina says that by the early 2000s, most visitors to the gardens were from out of town. This was around the time the Friends of the Aquatic Gardens formed. Gina: So a bunch of volunteers who loved gardening, who loved plants, who loved the park, got together and informally started Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. And as the nonprofit grew, it not only helped build volunteerism, but it helped to bridge the relationship between the National Park Service and the community—and until this day, we’ve been doing the same thing. Kelly: Today, there are many ways to enjoy the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. Photographers and birders love it. There are fitness classes, so you can do yoga and Pilates among the lilies. And just last year, the Friends piloted a program to keep the park open late in the summer. Gina: So for a very long time, the park hours were 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. So you can imagine if you were working, you really never got to go to the gardens. Last year, the Friends group helped to pay to staff the gardens so we could be open until 8 p.m. Kelly: The biggest event of the year is in July, the Lotus and Water Lily Festival, which draws thousands of people every year. It’s been nearly 150 years since Walter B. Shaw dug his first lily pond. And today, the gardens he left behind are as beautiful as any national park, but also part of people’s regular daily lives. Gina says she’s actually had a chance to meet one of Shaw’s descendants and get his take on what the park is like today. Gina: He loves the gardens. He loves the gardens, and I have asked him like, what would your great, great grandfather think about this? And he’s just like, “Well he would be overjoyed,” you know? A lot of people, when they start a business, even if they have the wildest dreams, you never really know what could happen. I’m pretty sure that Walter B. Shaw, when he started a hobby, did not think there would be a 20,000-person festival occurring, just celebrating this garden, celebrating his creation. I hope we’re doing a good job in making them and their ancestors proud. Kelly: Entry to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens is free and does not require an entrance pass. As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, Washington, D.C. is of course right at the center. Where else can you walk to brunch through America’s oldest urban national park or enjoy a nightcap with a few of our nation’s monuments? Check out Washington.org to plan your D.C. getaway. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM Podcasts. This episode was produced by Amanda McGowan. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

The Podcast TeamApr 22, 2026

Atlas Obscura

Route 66: The Mother Road

America’s Historic Route 66—the Mother Road—has become a drive of legend. Join us to see what keeps travelers coming back. Since the early 1920s, when word first spread of a highway that would run from Chicago to Los Angeles, Route 66 has defined the American dream—symbolizing the country's sense of freedom, ingenuity, and continuous transformation. Join us as we drive the "Mother Road" from start to finish, exploring everything from outsider art to indigenous history. Episode 1: The Mother Road We start our journey in Chicago, Illinois and unravel how the Mother Road came to be, hitting up a number of classic Route 66 roadside attractions along the way: Lou Mitchell’s, The Route 66 Hall of Fame, The Route 66 Experience, and Springfield, Illinois’ International Route 66 Mother Road Festival. Episode 2: The Giants of Route 66 Among the many roadside attractions you’ll find on your Route 66 journey, the “Muffler Men” or “Giants” of the Route are among the most beloved. With “3D Advertising,” Route 66’s iconic sentinels sold everything from tires to hot dogs. We explore a number of famous Giants in Illinois, including those at the American Giants Museum. Episode 3: Quirk & Kitsch on 66 Quirky roadside attractions add a whimsical twist to any road trip, and Route 66 has a treasure trove of them. In Illinois, we explore an old prison built by its prisoners, a classic road side drive-in serving up corn dogs (that aren’t really corn dogs), and load up on souvenirs at an antiques mall. Episode 4: It's Electric We cross from Illinois into Missouri, where we discover the charm of the Show-Me State. For the next 300 miles, we cross Missouri from east to west, learning just how this state gave Route 66 the nickname “the Electric Highway.” Episode 5: Arts & Craftsmen of the Route Route 66 has inspired countless songs, provided an audience for artworks large and small, and spun a number of tales over the years. We spend some time appreciating these—in some cases, very unusual—creative endeavors as we drive through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Episode 6: New Mexico’s Retribution Road Crossing into New Mexico, we drive the original alignment of Route 66 up to Sante Fe and then down to Albuquerque. The original alignment was changed in 1937 and became known as The Retribution Road. Why? Join us to find out! Episode 7: Cultural Crossroads in New Mexico New Mexico is home to 23 indigenous tribes, and relics of the Old West dot the landscape. We dig into the state's rich cultural heritage as we make our way west from Albuquerque. Episode 8: Arizona & The Whimsical West In Arizona, we uncover the truth behind the mysterious black and yellow jackrabbit signs, drive through the Jurassic past, and even get inspired by a big green tiki head. If your motto is “for the plot!” you're sure to love the Copper State. Episode 9: Stay to Play Accommodations are an important part of any road trip, and Route 66 has some of the most iconic stays in America. From retro campers to palatial hotels, if you’re looking for memorable getaways on your epic American adventure, we've got you covered. Episode 10: Relics of the Wild West Bandits, cowboys, and lawlessness were romanticized in post-Civil War America, enticing many to venture to the Wild West. At the center of this expanse was Arizona Territory, known for its ruthlessness but also its sense of freedom, opportunity, and discovery. Episode 11: The Nature of Route 66 Mother Nature, while not the central hero of the Mother Road's story, has always been a supporting character. Admittedly, we’re going to be somewhat liberal in how we define “influenced by nature” but, hey, it’s Route 66, baby. And we’re truckin’ along through California on our last few hundred miles. Episode 12: Old West Meets Old Hollywood Throughout our journey on Historic Route 66, you may have noticed another mode of transportation running parallel to us—yep, that’s right, the railroad. The symbolism is hard to miss: two modes of transportation running side-by-side, one representing the past and one representing the future. Driving through California, we see where the Old West meets Old Hollywood; the intersection of the former Western Frontier and a Glamorous Free Future. Episode 13: The End of the Route This is it gang. The end of the road. The final stretch. We're nearing the end of our adventures on Historic Route 66, but there’s still more to explore as we roll into our final destination. Come along as we make a pit stop in Rancho Cucamonga and get our game on in Pasadena before exploring our final destination: Los Angeles!

Atlas ObscuraApr 28, 2026

Atlas Obscura

In the Middle of Somewhere

At Atlas Obscura, our team trips aren't retreats—they're Advances. Where are you? Two friends texted, separately, within an hour of each other. Western Nebraska, I said. So you're in the middle of nowhere, both of them wrote back. I really paused. I had flown into Denver and taken a nine-seater plane to Alliance: a tiny plane, a tiny airport, a tiny place. And just before the texts came in, I had been looking at the Atlas Obscura map and counted eight other places within a ninety-minute drive that I wanted to go to. I was bummed that I didn't have time to stay. So I texted my friends back: No, I'm in the middle of somewhere. One week later I was in the northwest corner of Alabama, where the Tennessee River bends, and I told that story to my Atlas Obscura colleagues on the first morning of our company offsite in Florence. Most of them had never been to Alabama before. We had built the trip around a corner of the state most travelers don't have on their default map. Helen Keller's birthplace at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia. FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, where Aretha Franklin recorded "I Never Loved a Man" in a single day in 1967. Lunch under a literal rock overhang at the Rattlesnake Saloon. And after dark, in the rain, Dismals Canyon — one of the few places on earth where you can see Dismalites, the bioluminescent larvae that turn cave walls into a green-starred sky. Almost every place on the itinerary was already on the AO map. Leaving our mark on the Rattlesnake Saloon: A Place of Wonder! What happened is hard to put into a recap, so I'll skip the recap. What I want to tell you is what kept happening around the places. At Ivy Green, our guide Keller Johnson-Thompson — Helen Keller's great-grand-niece — talked about Helen for thirty straight minutes, and Alecia Dalessio told me afterward she could have listened for another thirty. Dan Sobo bought bookmarks for his daughters with a Helen Keller quote printed on them — the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart — and quoted the line back to all of us the next morning. At Dismals Canyon, our guide Kevin Cheek — Dismals Canyon's chief operating officer — led us through the woods in total darkness, to a slot in the rock so narrow we squeezed through one at a time, holding hands. Above us, the glowworms hung like a green galaxy. Before we entered, Kevin asked the fairies for permission. I'm not sure if he was joking. I don't think it matters. Making our way into the Dismalites’ home. Jacquelyn Blackwell is from Florence. She has been there a hundred times. She saw her own town through fourteen pairs of new eyes and discovered things she'd never done before. Holyn Thigpen called her parents from the airport on the way home and told them everything. Her parents are now planning the same itinerary. Sam O'Brien started thinking out loud about her own quest. Daniel McDermon left, in his words, "almost giddy." Sara Ewell pointed out that the conversations we had on the buses and over slow lunches couldn't have happened on Zoom — and probably wouldn't have happened at all. Rachel Carson, in her 1965 book, The Sense of Wonder, argued that children meet the world with a freshness adults train themselves out of, and that the way to recover it is to find a companion. Not a teacher. A companion — someone who hasn't lost the habit of asking what's that? The companion, she said, only needs to keep asking. That's what we do at Atlas Obscura. That's what Kevin did with us at Dismals Canyon. That's what Keller did. That's what Jacquelyn did for all of us in her own hometown. And that is what kept happening on the bus rides, where someone who had stood next to you ten minutes ago at a glowworm cave was now telling you a story about their own family. An infectious passion for wonder. Two friends told me, separately, that I was in the middle of nowhere. They were operating on the ordinary map. We reject the ordinary map. There is no middle of nowhere — there is only the middle of somewhere. If you think otherwise, you just need to put on your wonder lens. The 50-state quest is, at its heart, an argument for using that lens. So is the Atlas Obscura map. So was Florence, Alabama, last week, with fourteen people who had never been there. Forty-six states down. Four to go. Idaho, Iowa, Washington, Alaska. - Louise The full Carhenge dispatch from Nebraska is coming in my next post. Sign up for our daily newsletter here to be sure you don't miss it.

Louise StoryApr 29, 2026

Atlas Obscura

What the Light Knows

Since her father’s passing, Atlas Obscura CEO Louise Story has witnessed an unexplainable ray of light each April—this year, at a handmade Stonehenge in Nebraska. This green dot was persistent—following me for 15 minutes and moving around to meet me no matter where I stood. The first time it happened, my father had been dead for one week. My mother and I were in the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, in April, trying to do something with ourselves. We were walking an overlook with long views across the ridgelines when something appeared in the air in front of us. Not in a photograph. Not on a screen. In the air. A shaft of colored light — blues and greens — moving as we moved, present in a way that had no business being there on a clear afternoon with no rain, no prism, no explanation. My mother raised her camera toward it. I have that photograph. She is standing at the stone wall, back to me, pointing her camera at something that should not be there. She saw it too. We both did, with our own eyes. And then after a few minutes it was gone. We hadn’t changed anything. It just left. Tennessee, 2021. I know what some people will say. Lens smudge. Camera artifact. But you can’t smudge a lens you’re not holding. You can’t artifact something two people are watching with their naked eyes in open air. And you can’t explain why it disappeared without anyone touching anything. And if it was only a smudge on my lens — why is my mother up there separately photographing it? I’m a journalist. I spent decades at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. I don’t report things I can’t stand behind. This is what I can stand behind: Every April since my father died, around the anniversary, it comes back. Different states. Different phones. Different landscapes. Always April. Always a few minutes. Always gone the same way it came — without explanation, without asking permission, without saying goodbye. I’ve stopped trying to explain it. I’ve started just showing up. My parents prided themselves on taking us everywhere. Every great trip, every wonder — their children came too. Some parents, my father said, used vacations to take a break from their kids. They never wanted to go anywhere without us. When I was eight years old, they took me to Stonehenge. My father stood at those ancient stones and said something I have carried my whole life: I have read about this place in books all my life. I have imagined it. I have dreamt of coming here. Now I’m 37 and I’m here. Then he looked at me. You are learning of this place for the first time in person. When you read about it at school, you’ll say: I’ve been there. Then he said: I wonder who is the richer? He meant it as a real question. He had spent a lifetime reading about this place, imagining it, longing toward it. He arrived at 37 carrying all of that. I arrived at eight carrying nothing — no context, no anticipation, no idea what I was standing in. But when I sat in a classroom years later and opened a book to Stonehenge, I would not be meeting it for the first time. I would be recognizing it. Every fact would attach itself to something I had already felt with my own body. He had the knowledge first, then the place. I would have the place first, then the knowledge. I have thought about that question my entire adult life. I am still thinking about it. This morning I got up before dawn to drive to a field in Nebraska. Carhenge sits outside Alliance, in the sandhills, and it is exactly what it sounds like: a full-scale recreation of Stonehenge built from 38 vintage American cars, painted grey, hoods buried in the earth, chassis pointing skyward, some with other cars welded across them as lintels. It is absurd. It is also, at sunrise, genuinely and inexplicably beautiful. There was no one else there. Just me and 38 cars and the Nebraska sky beginning to change. I want to slow down here, because this is the part that requires slowing down. The cars are grey. At the moment I arrived, in the blue-dark just before dawn, they were silhouettes — massive, strange, prehistoric-feeling against the pale Nebraska sky. Then the sun began to rise. A silhouette of vintage cars. What happened over the next 90 minutes is the reason I stayed 90 minutes. The light did not simply illuminate Carhenge. It transformed it, repeatedly, in real time. The grey turned amber. The shadows stretched long and then longer across the frost-pale grass. The sun cracked the horizon and poured through the gaps between the sculptures in long flat rays. Then it climbed and the quality changed again — softer, more golden, the rust beneath the grey paint catching fire. Every twenty minutes I thought: I have now seen Carhenge. Every twenty minutes the light shifted and I was seeing something new. Most people stop for ten minutes, take a photo, and drive on. I understand this. I have done this. But Carhenge is not a ten-minute place. Carhenge is a place that keeps becoming something else, and if you leave before it's done with you, you have not actually been there. I stayed. And because I stayed, I was there when the light came. In the photographs — twenty of them, taken as I moved around the site — there is a soft green circle sitting low in the frame, in the frost-covered grass. Not the sun. Not a reflection. A round, quiet, luminous presence at the bottom of the image, consistent across every shot no matter where I moved. After about ten minutes it was gone. I hadn’t changed anything. It just left. The same way it left in Tennessee. The same way it always leaves. Standing in that field, I did what anyone does. I pulled out my phone and looked up what I was actually standing in. Carhenge was built in 1987 by a man named Jim Reinders. He gathered his family on the Nebraska homestead where he had grown up. Together they painted 38 cars grey and arranged them in precise correspondence to the original Stonehenge — same dimensions, same orientation, same proportions. They unveiled it at the summer solstice. He built it as a memorial to his father. I read this sentence standing in the frost in Nebraska with the sunrise still happening around me, five years after my father died, on the anniversary of his death, at a stone circle made of American cars, with a green circle of light in my last twenty photographs that was now quietly gone. There are moments where you stop trying to make meaning and simply stand inside it. This was one of those moments. My father would have had a lot to say about Carhenge. He would have appreciated the audacity of it — one man’s decision to take one of the most ancient monuments in the Western world and rebuild it in the Nebraska sandhills out of 1962 Plymouths. He would have appreciated that Jim Reinders didn’t ask anyone’s permission, didn’t wait for funding, just gathered his family and built the thing. He would have stood here a long time. He would have wondered who was the richer — the people who made the pilgrimage to the original, surrounded by thousands of other seekers, or the people who made a different kind of pilgrimage, driving through the Nebraska sandhills before dawn and arriving to find the whole place entirely to themselves. No crowd. No noise. Just the light, and the cars, and the frost, and the silence of something ancient — or something built to feel that way — with no one else there to witness it. Carhenge at daybreak. I think about that question differently now than I did at eight years old. I think maybe the answer is: the people who stay long enough to let the light change. I don’t think he would have come this morning without it. But the light was there. And so was I. And for about ten minutes, in the frost-covered grass of a Nebraska field, at a circle of cars built for a father by his son, so was he.

Louise StoryMay 5, 2026

Atlas Obscura

The Candy Shop Where You Can Taste History

From wartime chocolate to ancient sesame brittle, True Treats offers delicious, edible lessons. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Kelly McEvers: Today we’re going to talk about a candy store in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. And about how candy stores have always played a big role in the town’s history. Back in the 1840s, a German immigrant named Frederick Roeder set up a little sweet shop in Harpers Ferry. He sold cakes, candies, and pies and lived right upstairs for about 15 years. But then came the morning of July 4, 1861 .By that time, the Civil War had arrived. Union troops were moving in. Roeder ventured outside his shop to check out the scene. Some say to get a look at the Union flag flying just across the river. He was a Union sympathizer himself. He was hit by a ricocheting bullet. And then he died. Which means the town’s first civilian casualty of the Civil War was the local candy shop owner. And today, the connection between candy and history is still going strong in Harpers Ferry. There’s a plaque marking the site of Roeder’s old store. And just a few steps away down a street called Hog’s Alley is a place called True Treats. It’s a candy shop, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.It’s also sort of an edible timeline of the history of candy. Susan Benjamin: We are not a candy store. We’re a museum where you can eat the displays. I’m Kelly McEvers and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today’s episode is brought to you in partnership with the West Virginia Department of Tourism. And today we’re going to eat our history. We will meet candy scholar Susan Benjamin, who founded what she calls the only research-based historic candy shop in the country. She’ll introduce us to some surprising sweets that have shaped American history, from abolitionist sugars to World War I’s chocolate energy bars. That’s coming up after this. This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Enjoying the candy from True Treats is like eating your way across history. islander_shots / Used with permission Kelly: Susan Benjamin is a candy scholar. So basically, she has the job that every kid dreams about. And it’s no fluke that she ended up in Harpers Ferry. History buffs will recognize the name. It is where abolitionist John Brown led his famous raid back in 1859. Visitors can still see the armory he raided and lots of Civil War sites. Downtown Harpers Ferry even looks a lot like it did back in the 1800s—narrow streets and old brick buildings. It’s the perfect place for true treats, which bills itself as the country’s only research-based historic candy store. Susan: Our retail store is located in a building that opened in 1843 and was part of the Civil War itself. So you can imagine just how beautiful it is, not updated at all other than to keep the building straight. Kelly: That’s Susan. Susan: When you walk into our store, people think it’s really cute and really “old-time” and expect to see, “Wow, I’m so happy to see a real retro candy store!” Whoa, no, we’re not retro! We have retro, but we start before then. Kelly: What Susan calls “retro candy” is stuff you might have found in the Five and Dime store: gummy sharks, lemon sours, tangerine drops, circus peanuts, stuff like that. But at True Treats, there are also older and less familiar sweets: beet sugar crystals, World War I ration bars, medicinal hard candies. In fact, the oldest products on the shelves come from thousands of years ago, like something called pastelli, which looks like peanut brittle, but with sesame seeds. Susan says Homer describes it in The Iliad as a honey and sesame pie. This is a researcher’s approach to candy. In another life, Susan worked under the Clinton and Bush White Houses on communication initiatives. And before that, she was an academic in Massachusetts. Susan: I’m from Boston. Who would know? Kelly: But that was before she came down to West Virginia and fell in love with the history of candy. She’s even written a book on the subject called Sweet as Sin: The Unwrapped Story of How Candy Became America’s Favorite Pleasure. And she arranges the shop in a very specific way. Susan: You can start first in history and walk chronologically all the way through the various time periods of candy. The history’s on the label, and what’s really important is that people get an experience of the history of candy because it’s never what they expect. Kelly: Susan says the way to experience the shop is to walk through, pick out things that interest you, then go sit down in the front of the shop and eat your way through history. Susan: Often whole families or groups of people sitting around little tables, sampling everything and reading the labels. And if I’m there, I’ll come over, or one of my employees who knows the stories will come over, and we’ll tell them a little bit more about it. Kelly: There are hundreds of different candies and teas and other sweets in the shop and on their website. So a lot to choose from. But to give you a little sample, let’s just take a quick walk through the timeline of candy history in chronological order. The oldest section comes first. You’ve got the sesame brittle candies from The Iliad, but also a lot of ingredients native to the Americas. There are candies made with maple sugar. Native Americans were processing maple sap into sugars and sweets long before the Europeans arrived. And… Susan: … the cacao nib, which is really important because that comes from Mesoamerica and the Native Americans. Kelly: Chocolate really took off in colonial America, specifically as a hot beverage. In other words, hot chocolate. People would mix it into milk or cream and grate spices on top. Martha Washington made hers out of steeped cacao shells. Susan says that as the Revolutionary War got underway, the drink became political. Susan: Chocolate was actually a vehicle during the American Revolution in their boycotting of teas, of the British tea, and they needed alternatives. And one of the alternatives was chocolate, and they really pushed, “Everybody’s got to have chocolate. They’ve got to drink that.” Kelly: In the 1780s, Thomas Jefferson even declared that chocolate would one day become a more popular drink than coffee or tea in the U.S. It didn’t happen, but not a bad idea. Moving on to the 1800s, the Civil War is coming. An intriguing story that pops out from this section also has to do with boycotts. As the country became more and more divided over slavery, people looked for ways to strike at the system economically. Susan: What happened with the abolitionists is they looked for a number of ways to boycott the economy of slavery, by taking away the produce or finding alternatives to the produce that were funding slavery through its sales, and obviously cane sugar was a big one. So what they did instead was they found alternatives and they promoted those. Kelly: Groups called “free produce societies” formed and promoted alternatives to cane sugar like honey, corn syrup, and syrup made from a grain called sorghum. The most interesting-looking alternative can be found at True Treats. It comes in a small glass jar and looks almost like golden raisins: these little orange pink crystals. Susan: Beet sugar! So today, a huge amount of the sugar that we have is actually beet sugar, and that goes in the candy. Kelly: Moving on to the early 1900s, things start to look a little more recognizable. We start to see candies wrapped up with brand names as industrialization comes to the candy world. Susan: But at that point you would have things called cough drops, the Pine Brothers cough drops, the Smith Brothers cough drops. Is it a medicine or is it a candy? Well, yes, both, right? And today when we take these Halls or these various medicines that have been around for a really long time, what you’re getting is essentially a candy. So why worry about it, you know, but there was that crossover. Kelly: There are also some interesting chocolate bars, including some brands that are new to me, like one called Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews. It looks a little like a Payday, but it’s made of peanuts and molasses. This one actually has a military connection. Susan: During World War I, people were making candy bars, and they were called “stuffed chocolate,” but they were basically candy bars that didn’t just have chocolate but had nuts and caramel. And they wound up being in one of the first rations during the First World War. So they sent Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews and a couple others. They sent it off to the World War I soldiers.They came back saying, “I love these candy bars. These are so great.” Kelly: Including these chocolate bars in rations wasn’t just for a morale boost. It was meant to be a quick source of energy: high fat, high calorie, easy to eat. And chocolate bars continued to be known for that after the war was over. Susan: During the Depression, they were marketed as an inexpensive meal in a bar. That’s how they marketed them. Kelly: Fun fact: The Mr. Goodbar was one of these. It was created by the Hershey Company in 1925 and advertised as a tasty lunch. By this time, we’re coming back around to the modern age or close to it. This is when we get into the retro candy, the kind of stuff you see at the Five and Dime or in your parents’ or grandparents’ candy dishes: Malted milk balls, rock candy, bubble gum cigarettes (you really don’t see those anymore). This section, Susan says, is a crowd favorite. Susan: What they really, really love is when they read the story of the retro candy. And what they do with that, and what they do with eating that is they talk about their grandparents, and they talk about where they lived, and they talk about the candy store on the corner. Kelly: For Susan, this is what the store is all about: Learning about the past in a new and unusual way. Susan: It’s a visceral experience of history. When you eat the candies, you know where they’re from, when they’re from, a little bit about the role they played, and then you get to be able to smell, taste, and enjoy it, and get more if you want, you know, it’s that kind of experience. Kelly: And maybe the next time you have a candy bar, you’ll think about World War I. True Treats is open daily. They also have an extensive website if you are craving Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews or some of the other interesting sweets we talked about on today’s show. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Sirius XM Podcasts. This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer. The production team for this episode includes Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Manolo Morales, Jerome Campbell, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

The Podcast TeamMay 20, 2026