Category: Unusual Places

In Alaska, one mountain tunnel switches between rail and road traffic. The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel reaches Whittier through Maynard Mountain, and its single lane serves cars and trains in scheduled turns. A rail line runs directly beneath the roadway, giving the passage a rare double life.

A wartime rail link through the mountain

The route began as a railroad project. In 1941, the U.S. Army started building a rail spur between Whittier and Portage, with Army engineer Anton Anderson leading the work. The line connected a deep-water port on Prince William Sound to Alaska’s rail network. Workers completed the spur on April 23, 1943; it included a 2.5-mile tunnel through Maynard Mountain.

The Alaska Department of Transportation’s project history describes Whittier’s role as a supply link during World War II. The tunnel later carried rail traffic while Whittier developed as a port and community.

Turning a railroad tunnel into a road

For decades, the railroad helped vehicles cross the mountain by loading them onto flatcars. A later highway project sought a more direct connection to Whittier. Rather than build a separate highway tunnel, engineers adapted the existing passage for alternating rail and vehicle use.

During the winter of 1998–1999, crews replaced the original rail ties and ballast with precast concrete driving panels. The panels fit around the rails, leaving the track flush with the roadway. According to the state’s virtual drive guide, this arrangement lets a single lane of automobiles travel over the railroad-track area, with trains and vehicles taking turns.

A timetable shared by cars and trains

At the tunnel’s staging areas, vehicles wait for their scheduled opening. Operators manage the direction and type of traffic so the narrow passage is used by one movement at a time. The state describes the tunnel as operating for highway use during much of the day, while rail service uses assigned periods.

That makes a trip through the mountain part of the engineering story: the roadway depends on the same corridor as the railroad, and the schedule coordinates both. The state’s frequently asked questions explain that the highway project was selected after engineering and economic studies as a cost-effective dual-use design.

A practical passage with an unusual second job

Today, the tunnel links Whittier with the Portage Glacier Highway. Its name honors Anton Anderson, the chief engineer whose work helped bring rail access to the port; the state dedicated the tunnel to him in 1976. One corridor now continues that connection by hosting two kinds of travel, with a roadway resting over the rails until the next train’s turn.

Sources

• Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities: Tunnel History
• Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities: Virtual Drive
• Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities: FAQs

West of Casper, Wyoming, a mile-long ridge of sandstone rises from the high plains in a line of tilted slabs. To 19th-century travelers, the formation looked like the backbone of an enormous animal. They called it Devil’s Backbone, Avenue of Rocks, Rock Avenue, or Rock Lane—and then guided their wagons through the narrow passage beside it.

The ridge is a natural landmark on the routes followed by the Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express trails. National Park Service records describe it as a conspicuous feature that emigrants sketched and discussed in their journals. Its broken sandstone beds were pushed up by pressure in the Earth’s crust, leaving a mile of stone fins that still stand out against the surrounding grassland.

A sea-serpent shape on the western trail

British traveler Richard Burton passed the landmark by stagecoach in 1860. He compared its upturned sandstone to the vertebrae of a great sea serpent. That image fit a feature that rose like a jagged spine across a landscape of open sky, sagebrush, and long travel days.

The formation was more than a view. The trail narrowed as it passed between the rocks and a ridge to the east, and the sandstone made the crossing memorable enough to appear in emigrant accounts. A National Park Service itinerary for the region traces the historic trail corridor west from Casper and identifies the surviving signature of emigrant W. H. Stephens at Avenue of Rocks.

Helen Carpenter’s windy passage

Helen Carpenter traveled through the area with her family in June 1857. In her journal, she focused on the wind, which made walking difficult and whipped the women’s skirts around. Some companions tried weighing their hems with stones. Carpenter later recalled that the improvised weights left bruises on their shins, a wry detail that gives the trail a human scale.

Her account makes the place feel immediate: the rocks gave the route its shape, while the Wyoming wind shaped the travelers’ small daily decisions. The ridge could be both a geological formation and a scene of practical problem-solving.

Marks left in stone

Some travelers carved their names into the sandstone as they passed. Weathering and road construction later erased many inscriptions, while faint carvings remain on a few rock faces protected by overhangs. The National Park Service notes that the site is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and asks visitors to preserve its historical character by leaving the rocks unmarked.

Today, the ridge remains a striking landmark west of Casper: a row of sandstone pushed upright by ancient forces, remembered by people who crossed the plains, and still legible in the contours of the trail landscape. Its unusual shape invited comparisons to a sea creature; the journals and surviving traces show how travelers made the place part of their own record.

Sources

• National Park Service: Avenue of Rocks
• National Park Service: Casper to Split Rock, Wyoming trail itinerary

A prairie town welcomed Canada’s centennial with an invitation aimed at the stars: a raised concrete landing pad for visiting flying saucers. St. Paul, Alberta, turned the 1967 project into a lasting landmark—and a snapshot of the community’s inventive centennial spirit.

The pad stands beside the recreation grounds in St. Paul, northeast of Edmonton. The Town of St. Paul dates its opening to June 3, 1967, and says the occasion also brought the title “Centennial Capital of Canada.” The municipal history calls it the world’s first UFO landing pad; the St. Paul Museum places it among a much larger set of local projects created for Canada’s 100th birthday.

A town makes a hundred centennial projects

St. Paul’s centennial work began years before the anniversary. The museum’s historical record says the community started preparing in 1964, with its Chamber of Commerce leading a program that eventually grew to 100 projects. The collection ranged from a recreation building and student exchanges to local arts, farm machinery, Ukrainian folk dancing and a community time capsule.

The landing pad had its own place in that catalog: project 65. Its neighbors in the list hint at a whole town leaning into the cosmic theme. Project 66 was a landing-pad float, project 67 offered flying-saucer tokens, and a later entry promised “Martian Hairdos.” The pad was both a playful attraction and one piece of an ambitious civic celebration.

An engineer gave the invitation a shape

Alberta’s engineering association identifies Edmonton civil engineer Alex Mair as the pad’s designer. Its account describes an oval platform raised above the ground, with a large map of Canada and blinking lights intended to guide visitors. The association gives the structure’s weight as 130 tonnes, a substantial piece of civic engineering for an idea delivered with a wink.

The municipal site places the pad’s opening on June 3, 1967. Its present-day description connects the attraction with a tourist information centre and a welcome for visitors. In the 1990s, the Town says, Mayor Paul Langevin opened an adjacent centre. The site now describes that visitor hub as home to a boutique representing more than 50 local artisans.

More than a landing strip

The pad’s design made the joke visible from the road, while its map and flags framed it as a place for the whole country. That combination fits the broader centennial record preserved by the museum: practical buildings, cultural projects, ambitious community plans and a few ideas meant to make people smile.

St. Paul’s landmark still offers a compact way to meet that history. It is a piece of concrete engineering, a tourist stop and a surviving artifact of the town’s 1967 celebration. The invitation remains legible in the monument itself: a small Alberta community made room on the map for anyone curious enough to stop.

Sources: Town of St. Paul, “The Landing Pad”; St. Paul Museum, “Centennial Projects”; APEGA, “Calling All Flying Saucers: Free Parking in St. Paul”.

A train near Brusio, Switzerland, takes a route that looks like a railway trick: it curves around in a full loop, climbs over its own track, and continues through the Alps. The stone viaduct makes the Bernina Railway’s ingenious answer to steep terrain visible in a single view.

The Brusio circular viaduct stands on the Bernina line of the Rhaetian Railway. Its nine stone arches carry the train around a 360-degree turn, with one level passing above another. From the carriage, passengers can look down at the track they crossed moments earlier. From the valley, the railway draws a clear circle across the hillside.

The municipality of Brusio describes the train slipping beneath one of the arches as it completes the loop. Graubünden Tourism maps a 1.9-kilometre walk from the station to the viaduct and back through the village centre, with an estimated route time of 35 minutes. It is a small bridge with a big visual payoff: the railway seems to fold back on itself in open air.

A loop turns a steep climb into a longer route

The Bernina Railway connects Tirano, Italy, with St. Moritz, Switzerland, crossing the Bernina Pass. The Brusio municipal account describes the route’s early engineering challenge: designers had to gain height across short distances while keeping the line’s scenic character in view. The railway uses tunnels for some difficult turns; at Brusio, the hillside allowed an open-air spiral instead.

That geometry gives the train more track over which to climb. Rather than rising sharply in one short stretch, it follows a curve around the valley and reaches a higher level gradually. The line crosses over itself at the viaduct, and a train can continue its journey without a rack railway. The municipality highlights that the Bernina line crosses the Alps without a base tunnel or a high-level summit tunnel, making its visible mountain route part of the engineering story.

The viaduct is one expressive detail in a larger railway landscape. Brusio’s municipal heritage page places it among the Bernina Railway’s major attractions and identifies the railway as part of UNESCO’s World Heritage. Across the Alps, the line brings villages and mountain regions into the same journey.

Built for the journey, admired from the valley

The municipality describes the engineering challenges around Brusio during 1908–1910, when the Bernina Railway’s builders worked across steep terrain and tight elevation changes. Their solution at Brusio remains easy to read from the valley: stone arches carry the track around the hillside and back above itself.

Visitors can experience the curve from both perspectives. On the train, the track passes beneath the carriage as the line completes its turn. On foot, a short circular route from Brusio station reaches the viaduct and returns through the village. Switzerland Tourism describes the walk as a roughly 30-to-40-minute outing, with views of the railway and the surrounding Valposchiavo.

The loop is memorable because its purpose and spectacle are the same thing. A tight turn solves a practical problem of mountain travel, while the open arches let everyone nearby see how the solution works. As the train rounds the curve, the railway becomes its own moving diagram: one track below, another above, and the Alps all around.

Sources: Comune di Brusio, “Viadotto di Brusio”; Switzerland Tourism, “Brusio Spiral Viaduct”.

In Mitchell, South Dakota, a harvest celebration grew into a building dressed for the occasion. The Corn Palace began in 1892 as a way to show visitors the region’s agricultural promise. More than a century later, its walls still turn local crops into large-scale pictures, refreshed each year by designers and a crew of workers.

The idea paired civic hospitality with a practical display: bring city residents and their rural neighbors together at harvest time, then let the region’s produce decorate the gathering place. The first palace stood on Main Street. Its successor arrived in 1905, and Mitchell committed to a permanent structure in 1919. The present building opened in 1921, carrying the festival forward while also serving the community as an arena and event hall.

A mural assembled one kernel at a time

Each year brings a new mural theme and a fresh arrangement of naturally colored corn, grains, and native grasses. The Corn Palace describes using a dozen colors or shades of corn. The kernels are attached ear by ear, while other plants frame and enrich the pictures.

The design work starts well before the harvest material is ready. A local committee selects a theme, and Dakota Wesleyan University students in digital media and design courses create the mural concepts with faculty guidance. A local farmer grows the corn, and a team of roughly 20 workers installs the new panels as crops become available in late summer.

The work follows the agricultural calendar. Crews begin preparing the building in late spring; new corn murals are typically completed between late August and early October. Growing conditions shape the schedule, so the changing facade reflects both an artistic plan and the year’s crop.

A civic hall with a crop-art exterior

The Corn Palace’s unusual combination is the point: its seasonal decoration turns an agricultural exhibit into public art, while the building remains useful year-round. The venue hosts gatherings, performances, school events, and basketball. The permanent palace was completed in time for the 1921 festivities, and Mitchell hosted its first boys’ state basketball tournament there that winter.

That blend of harvest display and community space explains why the tradition endured. The palace gives local artists a large canvas, gives area crops a starring role, and gives the city a shared landmark whose details change with each new mural season.

Sources

• Mitchell Corn Palace: history and annual mural process
• Mitchell Area Chamber of Commerce: mural materials and production crew
• University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains: Corn Palace history

At the edge of San Francisco Bay, the Wave Organ gives the water a set of pipes to play. The public sculpture at the Marina Breakwater changes its sound as waves move through 25 pipes set at different heights in stone.

A sculpture shaped for the shoreline

A 2008 staff report from California’s State Coastal Conservancy describes the Wave Organ as a project developed by Exploratorium artist Peter Richards with sculptor and master stonemason George Gonzalez, and installed in 1986. Its listening area has stone benches and steps, with 25 PVC and concrete pipes set at different elevations.

The setting is part of the design. The Exploratorium’s archived exhibit page says granite building material already at the jetty was used in the sculpture. Different-length listening pipes extend from the seating areas toward the water, joining the stone terraces to the bay.

When the tide moves, the organ answers

At high tide, water moving in and out of the pipes produces sound. The Exploratorium describes a wave-activated instrument whose sound changes in intensity and complexity with the tides and weather. Each pipe sits at a different height, so the water and air interact with the sculpture as the bay shifts.

The result belongs to its place. A changing tide supplies the movement, and the pipes turn that movement into a waterfront soundscape. The Wave Organ makes the bay’s everyday motion something a listener can pause and hear.

Sources

• California State Coastal Conservancy: Wave Organ Access Improvements
• Exploratorium: Wave Organ

A volcanic pattern with a giant-sized legend

On Northern Ireland’s exposed Atlantic coast, thousands of dark stone columns fit together like an immense natural pavement. Their regular geometry is striking enough to have inspired a giant’s legend. The documented story behind the Giant’s Causeway is just as remarkable: lava, cooling, fracture, erosion and time produced one of the world’s clearest displays of columnar basalt.

A pavement made by cooling rock

The British Geological Survey describes the Causeway as an exceptional display of columnar basalt lava. The site contains around 40,000 large, regularly shaped columns, creating the familiar stepped formations along the coast.

The columns formed during volcanic activity roughly 50 to 60 million years ago. As lower layers of lava cooled, the rock contracted and cracked. Those fractures organized into the repeating polygonal pattern that gives the landscape its deliberate-looking geometry. Many columns have six sides, though natural cooling creates a family of related shapes rather than a machine-perfect grid.

How the pattern reached the sea

The National Trust’s geological history traces a longer sequence. Volcanic eruptions spread basalt across an older landscape. Erosion later cut valleys through the rock, and further lava filled some of those valleys. Glaciers and coastal waves then removed and exposed layers, revealing the close-packed columns visitors see today.

That combination of internal structure and coastal erosion makes the Causeway visually unusual. It reads as a built surface at human scale, while its construction happened deep within cooling lava over a geologic timescale.

Folklore keeps the shape alive

For centuries, the formation has also carried the story of the Irish giant Finn McCool, whose legendary causeway reaches toward Scotland. The folklore gives the landscape an imaginative companion, while the geological account explains its physical origin. Both begin with the same memorable sight: an enormous field of interlocking stone steps at the edge of the sea.

The Giant’s Causeway has mattered to earth science as well as storytelling. Geological studies of the coastline’s exposed layers have helped explain the sequence of volcanic and erosional events in the region. It remains a rare place where a single, walkable pattern makes deep-time processes easy to see.

Sources

• British Geological Survey: The Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast
• National Trust: History of Giant’s Causeway