Visitor's Center
Now closed down, until a few years ago this trailer was jam-packed with information on the nearby secret base (the Groom Lake Base, located inside Area 51 of the Air Force's Nellis Range Complex). The Research Center was founded by Glenn Campbell, the independent secrecy-watchdog and UFO researcher...
History is layered at the southwestern-most corner of the state, where an interpretive center sits atop an abandoned coastal battery, at the point where Lewis and Clark stood to view the Pacific at the end of their long journey. Cape Disappointment is the north side of the mouth of the Columbia...
This interpretive center is located at a point overlooking the Dry Falls site, one of the most dramatic formations of the Great Spokane Flood, a series of massive flooding events that shaped the landscape of much of eastern Washington around 15,000 years ago. During the largest floods, perhaps...
A complex of museums and exhibits, located next to a rural RV park, features a display of 7,000 tropical invertebrates, giant insects, and artifacts from tropical areas of the world, collected by the museum's founder, who amassed one of the largest collections of this kind in the world during his...
The Johnson Ridge Observatory is the last of five large Mount St. Helens interpretive centers built along the 50 mile Spirit Lake Highway, which was completely rebuilt after the 1980 eruption. This multimillion dollar, high-tech visitor center, built by the Forest Service, sits on a ridge at the...
The farm where Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (aka the Mormons) was born, in 1805, was located on this hillside in South Royalton. The site is now one of more than a dozen historic sites owned by the LDS Church, and is a pilgrimage site for Mormons. On site...
A tourist attraction/history museum describing the saga of the legendary wild west lawman, Judge Roy "Law West of the Pecos" Bean. The visitors center has elaborate dioramas portraying events, along with audio narration. Outside is the original Jersey Lilly courtroom-saloon where Bean presided and...
The Marsh Billings Rockefeller Historic Site is a complicated place. Located in the town of Woodstock, perhaps Vermont's fanciest town, it is the state's first and only National Park. It consists of a few hundred acres covering Mount Tom, and the farm and houses of an estate donated to the...
A 4,150 foot wide crater, formed by the impact of a meteorite (estimated to have been 200-260 feet in diameter) 49,000 years ago. The well-preserved crater has been used by NASA as a training site for Apollo program astronauts because of its resemblance to the moon's surface. There is a platform...
The largest granite quarries in the world, they say, and possibly in fact (as it all depends on how you measure them), are in Vermont, around the town of Graniteville, south of Barre. Granite has been quarried here since the 1820s, but it took the railway, coming later in the century, to provide a...
A visitors center containing state-of-the art displays about water in Southern California. $2.5 million in video touch screens, and displays of objects, explain the water supply system that supports the population of Southern California (from the point of view of one of the major suppliers, The...
The original five and dime that was the start of Sam Walton's Wal-Mart empire, circa 1945, is located in downtown Bentonville, on the town square. While maintaining its authentic facade, its interior has been transformed from small town store to the Wal-Mart Visitor Center, with a blue vested...