Highways can be monotonous. Gas station bathrooms, chain restaurants, billboards for injury lawyers. Then, suddenly, a hand-painted sign promises the “world’s largest” something, and you’re making an exit. These are the moments that redeem the endless asphalt.
Here are 6 roadside attractions that are strange, kitchy, and the perfect reason to pull over for a bit:
1. Cadillac Ranch – Amarillo, Texas
Ten Cadillacs are buried nose-first in the desert outside Amarillo. A millionaire paid a San Francisco art collective to create the installation in 1974, supposedly to chart the evolution of the Cadillac tailfin. Now it’s basically a public spray-paint free-for-all. Bring a can (or buy one there), add your tag, and watch it get covered within hours.
2. The World’s Only Corn Palace – Mitchell, South Dakota
Mitchell decided to brand itself with corn and never looked back. The Corn Palace is a 19th-century ode to agriculture where the exterior is redecorated each year with hundreds of thousands of halved cobs arranged into enormous murals. About half a million people swing by annually. So, yep, you can make an entire tourist economy out of produce.
3. Hole in the Rock – Moab, Utah
In the 1940s, one family spent twelve years carving a 14-room house directly into a sandstone cliff. The place has a chimney, oversized tub, and a Roosevelt bust out front, because why not? Tours still run daily, and the gift shop sells jewelry made by the original owner’s widow.
4. The Enchanted Highway – Regent, North Dakota
For 32 miles, the prairie is interrupted by massive welded-metal sculptures—deer, pheasants, grasshoppers. They’re the work of Gary Greff, a former teacher who taught himself to weld in the 1980s to put his tiny hometown on the map. His pièce de résistance, “Geese in Flight,” weighs over 150,000 pounds.
5. Largest Ball of Twine – Cawker, Kansas
The Midwest has multiple twine balls competing for recognition, but Cawker City’s is the heavyweight. Started by a farmer in 1953, it now weighs more than 17,000 pounds and has its own annual “twine-a-thon.” A farmer’s idle pastime eventually snowballed into a roadside monument built on sheer persistence…and probably boredom.
6. Salvation Mountain – Imperial County, California
East of the Salton Sea, Leonard Knight spent three decades layering adobe and paint onto a desert hillside to create his technicolor shrine. Covered in religious slogans and candy-colored hearts, the mountain has become an unlikely pilgrimage site for travelers, artists, and Instagrammers.
Long stretches of highway can make you a little delirious. These bizarre roadside stops are a great place to re-center, see some weirdness, and then go about your day wondering what the hell you just saw.
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