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    <title>Atlas Obscura - Latest Articles and Places</title>
    <description>New wonders and curiosities added to the Atlas.</description>
    <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com</link>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <item>
      <title>Oracle of Trophonius in Livadia, Greece</title>
      <pubDate>Sat, 07 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oracle-of-trophonius</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oracle-of-trophonius</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="4608" data-height="3456" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/A6oVNZdG0YsMjass5EwFDCMBMD66ZRvLILrDtRRkOto/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:4608:3072:nowe:0:251/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy8yZGVj/NDhkOS01MTAwLTRk/ZTEtYWVlZi02MGJi/NTc4MjBlNzAwMzEx/NTNhMGNmNWJkYTIz/YTVfaW1hZ2UuanBl/Zw.jpg" /></p> <p>Although the Oracle of Delphi is by far the most famous oracle known today, it was by no means the only place in ancient Greece where individuals could go for prophecies. The Oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia (modern-day Livadeia) was renowned as a place where one could communicate directly with the gods, as opposed to a medium for them.</p>
<p>According to legend, Trophonius was a hero who was swallowed up by the earth while attempting to steal King Hyrieus of Boetia's treasures. That turned him into a god who resided in the cave named after him. Fast forward some time, and the people of Lebadeia are told they are suffering from a plague because of an angry hero. Believing it to be Trophonius, they began worshipping him at his cave.</p>
<p>After several days of sacrifices and preparation, pilgrims coming to consult Trophonius would enter the darkness of his cave. His presence was said to drive people mad, and upon emerging they would ravingly relay his words to a scribe. Such experiences made the Oracle of Trophonius infamous throughout the ancient world.</p>
<p>It is unknown what actually caused this insanity. Some speculate that pilgrims were fed a hallucinogenic substance. Alternatively, sensory deprivation in the pitch-black cave may have caused hallucinations there.</p>
<p>The Oracle of Trophonius was excavated by archaeologists in the 1960s and is now open to the public. Those hoping to recreate the ancient experience, however, will be dissapointed: the exact location of the original Cave of Trophonius is unknown. It is likely that it was filled in or otherwise lost during the sanctuary's latter stages.</p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/fortune-teller">fortune teller</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/ancient-greece">ancient greece</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/mythology">mythology</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Luss Hogback Stone in Luss, Scotland</title>
      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/luss-hogback-stone</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/luss-hogback-stone</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="3000" data-height="4000" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/g2I-FEwU96KDCHFx2tnEHBy1EXlsRZMAh4kD_RzG4XU/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:2829:1886:nowe:171:1486/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy8yMzg2/YzA4ZS0yN2Y1LTRk/OTQtYjA0NC1iZjc2/YTlhNTgwOTdiN2Yy/NjU5ZmNkOTc3NmFl/MjNfMjAyNjAxMTFf/MTMzNTQxLmpwZw.jpg" /></p> <p>In the shadow of a Victorian church lies an 11th-century Norse grave marker, the last tangible whisper of Viking raiders who once terrorised the bonnie banks.</p>
<p>Tucked among the weathered headstones of Luss Parish Church, this peculiar hump-backed boulder is easy to mistake for an eroded rock or forgotten grave. But look closer at its curved silhouette and you're gazing at a miniature Viking longhouse, a stone "hall for the dead" carved to guide a Norse soul to Valhalla.</p>
<p>Hogback stones are an enigma of the Dark Ages. These Anglo-Scandinavian grave markers appear nowhere in Scandinavia itself. They exist only in Britain, concentrated in areas of Viking settlement along the trading routes that once connected York to Dublin. The Luss example sits along the Forth-Clyde corridor, a waterway the Norse knew well. </p>
<p>In 1263, King Haakon IV of Norway launched a massive fleet against Scotland in a final bid to reassert Norse dominance over the Western Isles. His raiders sailed up Loch Long, then in an audacious feat of strength, dragged their longships overland at Tarbet to burst upon Loch Lomond, pillaging the settlements along its shores and catching the locals utterly by surprise. Whether this particular stone dates to that infamous raid or commemorates an earlier Norseman who settled these banks remains a mystery.</p>
<p>The stone's distinctive "shingled" roof ridge and faint interlace carvings on its flanks mark it unmistakably as Viking work. After being unearthed in 1926, it spent decades slowly disappearing beneath creeping moss until a 2015 restoration revealed its ornate details once more. Now raised on a small plinth of gravel, it offers visitors a tangible connection to a time when dragon-prowed ships haunted these waters. </p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/vikings">vikings</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/gravestones">gravestones</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/graveyards">graveyards</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Ayapua Boat Museum in Iquitos, Peru</title>
      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ayapua-boat-museum</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ayapua-boat-museum</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="4032" data-height="3024" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/_dDux4GTasLHF8qu_WVw8cKOTBmBuP1kV_sqhr9OsJQ/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:3314:2209:nowe:362:510/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lZTg2/MjIyMy04NDVmLTQ5/OWYtOWEyYi0wMzlj/MGM2N2U2YWNmYmZk/YmIzMWUxYTNjYTQx/NmFfRkU2OEY4RkIt/OUE2Qy00NTc4LUIw/MkMtODBCQUQyQzAz/QTY1LmpwZWc.jpg" /></p> <p>Before the 1850s travel by boat up the Amazon river, against the current, was nearly impossible, but with the arrival of steamboats new industries became possible. The most lucrative of these was the rubber trade, and from 1880-1912 the Amazon was flooded with adventurers looking to make their fortunes. </p>
<p>Steamboats like the Ayapua were the lifeline of this boom. They functioned as cargo boats, passenger liners, naval vessels, hotels, brothels, and everything in between. The Ayapua itself was built in 1906 in Hamburg, Germany, for the express purpose of carrying up to $2,000,000 worth of rubber per load in today’s money from the Peruvian Amazon to Europe and the United States.</p>
<p>The Amazonian rubber boom, however, was doomed almost before it began. After the British managed to smuggle a load of rubber seeds to their Asian colonies the price of rubber plummeted. Reports of the brutal living conditions and wholesale slaughter of the indigenous rubber tappers also started to reach Europe and Lima, despite the propagandising of the Rubber Barons, and by 1912 most of the adventurers and speculators had fled Iquitos, leaving nothing but mansions, trauma, and steamboats.</p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/ships">ships</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/steam">steam</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Savannah Pirates and Treasure Museum in Savannah, GA</title>
      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:27:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/savannah-pirates-and-treasure-museum</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/savannah-pirates-and-treasure-museum</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt=" Discover coins and other artifacts recovered from shipwrecks." data-width="5381" data-height="3592" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/WsArQARVuhv3sNTMCqavGXoWobhDP_XZMgx6GydSSYo/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lYTNl/OWQ4MjhlZTMzMjhl/NDRfTkVXXzE5MTYu/anBn.jpg" /></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Embark on an adventure like no other at this most nautical of museums, where authentic artifacts and multimedia exhibits combine to bring the history of crime on the high seas to life. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Located in City Market, the museum speaks to Savannah’s rich maritime history, including the motley crew of marauders that once filled its ports. It’s also right below the Savannah Prohibition Museum, making it the perfect spot for history buffs to take in different periods of the city’s past in one day. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Visitors can engage with interpretive panels and audio recordings that reveal the nitty gritty details of pirate life or peruse primary documents to discover the secrets of history’s most infamous voyages. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Real weapons, treasures, and tools—including </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Spanish coins from the El Cazador shipwreck and five carats of emeralds from the Atocha—immerse you in the </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Golden Age of Piracy. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">The museum’s strikingly life-like wax figures also allow you to meet (or even strike a pose with) heroes and scoundrels alike.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">An interactive map shows how pirate history has unfolded around the world; however, the museum places special focus on Savannah’s own pirate ties, including the exploits of </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">Captain Caleb Davis, an infamous smuggler and privateer with Georgia ties. Women pirates such as Anne Bonny and Mary Read are also highlighted, dispelling the misconception that only men could find fortunes on the high seas. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">After brushing up on your history, you can drop anchor and grab a drink at the on-site Pirates Tavern. With its barrels of ale, wood-beamed ceilings, skulls, ropes, and more, it feels like </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">entering into a real buccaneer’s bar—without the perils, thankfully. It even serves up time-tested pirate recipes, including “Hard Tack,” a rock-hard cracker just as salty as the sea.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The bartending ne’er-do-wells, Scarlett Redd and John Boy, sling up brews, wines, and themed cocktails like West Indian Rum Punch, and may even treat you to a traditional sea shanty or two. If the pirate’s life is for you, round off your visit with a toast, and pop into the gift store for your booty.  </span></p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/history">history</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/museums">museums</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/pirates">pirates</category>
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    <item>
      <title>‘Three Figures’ in London, England</title>
      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/three-figures</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/three-figures</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="Photographer and model." data-width="2048" data-height="2048" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/AE-kfgXOjbnvYGK7L-DFO9oahKVElvyL24xwCbo1_Ls/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:2042:1361:nowe:0:505/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy83OTIw/ZjUyYi01NjljLTQy/NjYtODY3NC01YzFi/YzA1MmE1MmE5ZWE3/Mzc3MmE4OWYyZjBh/ZjRfNTg0OTU4NDYw/XzEwMTYyMTE4MzU2/OTQyMDgzXzE4NTI3/NDc1OTEyMjY5MjU0/NjNfbi5qcGc.jpg" /></p> <p>Over the breadth and scope of London,  there are hundreds, if not thousands, of statues. Some depict the heroic efforts of individuals while others memorialize great thinkers or innovators. Still there are a handful of sculptures that honor a moment in time in the capital's rich and varied history. This best describes a grouping of figures along a side street in the Mayfair district.</p>
<p>This piece is entitled, "Three Figures' and is the work of British sculptor Neal French (1933- ). It depicts a photographer, a model, and a curious passerby. The photographer is the renowned filmmaker Terence Donovan (1936 - 1996), whose studio is located nearby at 30 Bourdon Street. The model is Dame Lesley Lawson, (1949 - ) better known as Twiggy. The other figure is symbolic of the everyman.</p>
<p>This figurative sculpture was commissioned by Grosvenor Estate in 2012, it was to inaugurate their offices on nearby Grosvenor Hill. The piece was meant to reflect the areas impact on the 'Swinging Sixties', a youth led cultural revolution that was integral to London during the 1960's. This movement was highly influential in the areas of music and fashion.</p>
<p>This is mirrored in the choice of the subject matter. Twiggy was the "It-Girl" of the time, the poster child of this Mod youth led movement. She is depicted with her iconic pixie cut short hair and wearing a minidress in the style of Dame Mary Quant, (1930 -2023).  This grouping of statues is apart of a sculptural art trail that includes works by Henry Moore, (1889 - 1986) and other contemporary artists.</p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/photography">photography</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/public-art">public art</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/sculptures">sculptures</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Match Museum in Väster, Sweden</title>
      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/match-museum</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/match-museum</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="4032" data-height="3024" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/QhmvrckLNx6Aqz5aHbE0v7OMNWCnXLVNpPCasFbwr3g/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:4032:2688:nowe:0:0/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9mZDg1/MGMwNi04NWI4LTQ3/ZjktODYxZC0zYzgw/Y2MxMzkwZDM0ZmU0/ZTU0NDg1NWYzYTVi/N2NfaW1hZ2UuanBl/Zw.jpg" /></p> <p>Jönköping was once known as Sweden's "Match City" ("Tändsticksstaden") because for over a century that was its most famous export. At one point, a third of the town's workforce was employed in this single industry. Although many might consider matchsticks to be a dull subject, it is clear the residents of this city disagree, as they have turned part of the former Jönköpings Tändsticksfabrik factory into a museum dedicated to them. It is one of only three such museums in the world.</p>
<p>The Match Museum tells the story of matchmaking in Jönköping, which dates back to 1845, as well as across the world. Svenska Tändsticksaktiebolaget, which owned all of Sweden's match factories, once controlled 60-70% of the world's match market. The museum has preserved match-making machines and has opportunities to make one' own matchboxes. There is also a collection of thousands of matchboxes and labels, some of which can be purchased in the gift shop.</p>
<p>Surrounding the museum, the Jönköpings Tändsticksfabrik factory as a whole is the world's only completely preserved historic match factory. It is now home to bars, restaurants, nightclubs, and even a theater and hotel.</p>]]>
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    <item>
      <title>Himeji Castle Shrine  in Himeji, Japan</title>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/himeji-castle-shrine</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/himeji-castle-shrine</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="1536" data-height="2048" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/gmkLOjf2p-QJRQLsNYy8_eczebxa25y-1sXtcZ9l2vQ/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:1536:1024:nowe:0:177/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9jOGJl/MmMxMC1kOWJjLTRk/MjktYWJkNS0wNzNk/MDhjNGU2YTYyMmZi/NDJjMGMwMTM3MWIw/ZGFfMTAwMDEzNTQ5/Mi5qcGc.jpg" /></p> <p>Religion and tradition are deeply connected in Japanese culture, especially with Shintoism where hundreds of not thousands of gods rule over various things. In this case, a spirit looking over Himeji castle is worshiped in the castle itself. </p>
<p>The shrine, which is located at the top floor of the castle is dedicated to Osakabehime, a spirit or yokai who is said to be a lonely kitsune, or an illegitimate child of the princess, or an angry courtesan who met her end at the hands of the lord. While this is not known, it is generally agreed that the spirit hates people and stays away from them as much as it can. Only once a year does it meet the local lord to tell him if the castle will stand for another year. This event is celebrated with a  festival. </p>
<p>The shrine was always near the castle, but it was moved during the first renovation to a nearby temple. However, ever since this happened bad things occured in the castle, and the shrine was quickly moved back to the courtyard. Later during the restoration in the Showa era, the shine was moved to its current place. It still gets many donations and keeps the castle safe. </p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/shrines">shrines</category>
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      <title>Flipper’s Grave in Marathon, Florida</title>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/flippers-grave</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/flippers-grave</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="Flipper&#39;s memorial " data-width="1024" data-height="576" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/Z4Oj3i_peKGtImRX1imlRP0yhpc1HJv-friAfEFexE8/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:857:571:nowe:29:2/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9iNGY0/MGM3OS1iZTdiLTRj/NTYtOTFmNS0xMmMx/MTFmNTRjNWE2MTI0/NWI4OWUyNGJiMTQ5/MzdfRG9scGhpbi1S/ZXNlYXJjaC1DZW50/ZXItZ2FyZGVuLmpw/Zw.jpg" /></p> <p>Beneath a life-sized dolphin statue at the Dolphin Research Center in Marathon, FL lies Mitzi, the silver-screen legend who starred as the original Flipper series.</p>
<p>Her grave, marked by a plaque honoring her as "The Original Flipper," and a larger than life sculpture, is more than a roadside oddity; it is the spiritual heart of the facility and traditionally the first stop on every tour.</p>
<p>What makes this site truly wonderful is the living legacy that surrounds it. Rather than a just a memorial, Mitzi rests in a thriving sanctuary where many current inhabitants are the direct descendants of her co-stars. There is also a bench for visitors to relax next to Mitzi.</p>
<p>For visitors in 2026, the grave serves as a poignant reminder of how one animal's stardom sparked a global movement for marine conservation and research.</p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/graves">graves</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/animals">animals</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/dolphins">dolphins</category>
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    <item>
      <title>The Great Chamber  in Kanab, Utah</title>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-great-chamber</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-great-chamber</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="The Great Chamber offers views over the surrounding canyons." data-width="1200" data-height="800" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/soCWA07k045nELKjVI-sZ4UJG4nZ6HGmg3pCV2XrT0s/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy8zYjFl/YWI0ZS03YTY3LTQ1/YTktOTNlOC02Zjgy/MzhlNjMwN2QwMjc1/ZDIwNjdmMWZiOWQ2/N2FfVXRhaF8wOTAz/LmpwZw.jpg" /></p> <p>Utah’s Great Chamber, a sandstone alcove over 200 feet wide, is the awe-inspiring result of millions of years of wind and sand shaping rock.</p>
<p>The Chamber was created when erosion ate into the side of a Navajo sandstone cliff formed from dunes 180 million years ago in the Jurassic period. The key geologic factor here is "differential erosion," in which softer rock erodes quicker than the surrounding harder rock, enabling wind and floods to scoop out a massive hollow in the cliff face. The wind also blew sand into the alcove's floor, creating a huge dune that fills much of the interior. Visitors who have returned to the Chamber years later say that the sand-scape continues to slowly change, shifting and reshaping. </p>
<p>The smooth, pale sandstone of this cathedral-like structure changes color with the sun's angle, almost glowing in off-whites, soft pinks and yellows when the sun is brightest. Visitors have compared it to the feeling of being in a house of worship with its soaring archways and meditative aura. Photographers suggest that sunrise and sunset provide the most dramatic shadows and views over the Grand Staircase-Escalante region. </p>
<p data-start="2797" data-end="3181">Getting to the secluded Great Chamber takes a little planning. Several local guides and tour companies offer ATV and Jeep tours that make it easy to reach the Great Chamber. To go on your own, you’ll want a high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicle to get to the Cutler Point access area. Some visitors even make it a day-trip from Zion National Park.</p>
<p data-start="2797" data-end="3181">After that, you’ll make the final climb on foot, so consider high boots or hiking sandals and plenty of water; the deep sand and incline can make the hike somewhat strenuous. (It’s at a 6,700-foot elevation, after all.) </p>]]>
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      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/stone">stone</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/geological-oddities">geological oddities</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Reichsburg Cochem in Cochem, Germany</title>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/reichsburg-cochem</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/reichsburg-cochem</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/rGZdalTbxgeUE7VUsJy6XPzK0yAJedr-27vosvpBQV4/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:3024:2016:nowe:0:0/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy81M2Yx/Zjc1ZS00OGYzLTQ4/MDItODNiMS1jMGEx/NGZmNDdlMjNlYjIy/NTkyNGJkZWMwYzVl/OGNfSU1HXzU1NTlb/MV0uanBn.jpg" /></p> <p>Reichsburg Cochem is a hilltop castle in Germany’s Mosel River Valley. It sits on a hill that over looks the city and the neighboring Mosel River. Several vineyards sit along the hillside of the castle and the river which grow the grapes to make the the Riesling wine that the area is famous for.</p>
<p>The castle was built in 1130 and in 1151, King Konrad III occupied the castle and declared it an "Imperial Castle". It was later destroyed by French troops in 1689 during the Nine Years' War and afterwards it sat in ruins for nearly two centuries. In 1868 it was rebuilt in the Neo-Gothic style by German businessman Louis Fredric Ravené.</p>
<p>During WWII, ownership of the castle was transferred to the German government and following WWII, it was then transferred to the West German government. In 1978, the city of Cochem bought the castle and it is now the main tourist attraction in the city. The castle is open for tours throughout the day and the views from the castle are breathtaking.</p>]]>
      </description>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/castles">castles</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Santa Costanza in Rome, Italy</title>
      <pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/santa-costanza</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/santa-costanza</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="8064" data-height="5746" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/rCAsJy6b2bI8rQCSvLmqwrHQ-I9JHwlxkDRhVOygNs4/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:6316:4211:nowe:692:0/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lMTYx/OGU0NS04YmM4LTQz/NzQtOWMyMy0yNjJl/YTA4NDk0ZDk4MmQy/N2QzNTNkZTE2NzIw/NGRfaW1hZ2UuanBl/Zw.jpg" /></p> <p>Located three Roman miles outside Rome's ancient walls, the Mausoleum of Constantina (Santa Costanza) might just be one of the Eternal City's most unique yet underrated churches. Originally built around 350 by the Emperor Constantine to house the remains of his daughter Constantina, it was part of the much larger Basilica of Saint Agnes, only a small portion of which remains today. Santa Constanza later became a church in its own right, making it one of the few remaining ancient churches of Rome not to be in the structure of a basilica. Instead, it is in a circular plan common among ancient Roman mausoleums.</p>
<p>What truly makes Santa Costanza stand out are its mosaics surviving from the 4th century in the apses and ambulatory vault. Some of these mosaics have secular or even pagan themes, giving a glimpse into a time in which Christianity coexisted openly with older religions. The church also once housed two large porphyry sarcophagi, believed to belong to Constantina and her sister Helena. They have since been moved to the Vatican, however a replica of one is still on display here.</p>]]>
      </description>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/ancient-rome">ancient rome</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/churches">churches</category>
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    <item>
      <title>Taipei Bridge Scooter Waterfall in Taiwan</title>
      <pubDate>Wed, 04 Feb 2026 16:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/taipei-bridge-scooter-waterfall</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/taipei-bridge-scooter-waterfall</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="6000" data-height="4000" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/cyoWHthFXG9bQdAohvhVPkHPM3VXKxiET8YHOAteaP0/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/c:5143:3429:nowe:368:18/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3BsYWNl/X2ltYWdlcy9lN2E4/ZTVlNi1lYmFiLTQ3/YzEtODMyMy0zMGFk/YzdlZDhkOTZjNzQ4/ZWFlYjA0NjBkZWE3/OGNfRFNDXzA4NTYu/anBlZw.jpg" /></p> <p>Taiwan is sometimes jocularly called the “Kingdom of Scooters” due to its being home to the highest density of scooters in the world; statistically speaking, 6 out of 10 people ride a scooter in this country, and the roads in big cities are covered all over with them during rush hour.</p>
<p>In Taipei, the morning scooter traffic gets the densest on an unassuming ramp off Taipei Bridge in Datong District, where thousands of riders cascade down onto Minquan West Road every day, carefully avoiding clashing into each other.</p>
<p>This so-called “Scooter Waterfall” has not only become an unexpected tourist attraction, offering an opportunity to capture a unique, strangely photogenic sight, but also an icon of Taipei’s busy city life, the chaos of rush hour and all.</p>]]>
      </description>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/transportation">transportation</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/roads">roads</category>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Welcome to The Obscura Society</title>
      <dc:creator>Atlas Obscura</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:46:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-obscura-society</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-obscura-society</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p>What if Atlas Obscura wasn't just a guide, but also a doorway? The Obscura Society invites you into a living, digital world where stories respond, environments listen and curiosity shapes the experience itself.</p>
<p>Designed as a living, digital space, The Obscura Society is always on. Guests can drop in from anywhere, at any time, to meet others, share discoveries and take part in unfolding stories, whether they’re visiting through a mobile device, personal computer or VR headset.</p>
<p>At the heart of The Obscura Society is an AI bartender who welcomes every guest. Like a great local bar anywhere in the world, they serve imaginative, global drinks such as: Fröccs, Horchata Lojana, Panther Milk, Nectar Soda, Cheese Tea, the Pegu Club Cocktail and more! Share the surprising stories and learn about the cultural origins behind them, all drawn from Atlas Obscura’s vast archive of curiosities.</p>
<p>Surrounding visitors of the world is a richly layered space inspired by real places across the globe. Photographs from Atlas Obscura contributors line the walls, while an interactive world map gives you access to the full Atlas Obscura database. From here, portals open into the complete Atlas Obscura VR app, along with pathways to books, articles and other Atlas Obscura experiences.</p>
<p>It's an evolving digital world that will continue to change over time as your experience also evolves with each visit to The Obscura Society. Every session offers new conversations, discoveries and opportunities to connect with others as you explore the endlessly strange, wondrous and unexpected stories that define Atlas Obscura.</p>
<p></p>]]>
      </description>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Pedro Rodriguez Is on a Quest for Freshness</title>
      <dc:creator>Sam Lin-Sommer</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Fri, 30 Jan 2026 13:15:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pedro-rodriguez-kissimmee</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pedro-rodriguez-kissimmee</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p>When Pedro Rodriguez is in his Kissimmee, Florida restaurant, Sajoma Latin Fusion, he makes sure to check in on the kitchen. And when he does, there’s a rule that all of his cooks must follow.</p>
<p>“I better not catch you with anything that’s artificial,” he says. Sajoma’s sancocho, for example, is made from scratch, not with bouillon, which many cooks use to build flavor quickly.</p>
<p>The approach has paid off. Sajoma has developed an avid following in Central Florida for its approach to Latin cuisine, rooted in good ingredients and creative cooking. Pedro, gregarious and perceptive with a quick smile and a salt and pepper beard, is proud of his brainchild. He’s a grocery supplier by trade; the restaurant business is relatively new for him.</p>
<p>Sajoma is Pedro’s most personal project yet, the capstone of a lifelong obsession with good food and good produce. And it all started on his family’s farm.</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106304/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd">Feeding Off the Land</h3>
<p>Until the age of 12, Pedro grew up in the town of San Jose de las Matas in the Dominican Republic. The municipality is known for its natural beauty and mineral water. “It’s almost like one of the greenest towns there,” he says. Sajoma, as the town is called for short, boasts dramatic hills, lush vegetation, and rolling rivers.</p>
<p>And even in a beautiful town, Pedro lived a particularly idyllic life. His family owned a 120-acre farm with animals like cows, chickens, and goats, and crops including rice, beans, coffee, and yams. “We pretty much used to feed off the land,” he says. Beef was one of the only basic foodstuffs that he recalls leaving their property to obtain.</p>
<p>The family home sat on the top of a hill. From there, Pedro could see a 360-degree view of mountains, greenery, and livestock grazing in the meadow. After school, he would hang around the house and play with the animals on their property.</p>
<p>The men who worked for his family would hunt for crabs in caves. Pedro would go with them on their hunts, but he would watch from the side, apprehensive, as they stuck their bare hands into the darkness for huge, snapping crabs. He enjoyed the result, though: a dish called locrio where stewed crab meat releases its flavors into brown rice.</p>
<p>Pedro grew up loving food, and it’s easy to see why. His mother was—and still is—a great cook who can turn any ingredient into a special meal. And she had the pick of ingredients in their family home. Milk from their own cows, yams dug up from their own soil. Pedro remembers his mother cooking cerdo guisado, or stewed pork, with onions and cubanelle peppers; and pasta with cooked green bananas.</p>
<p>“The food was, like, unexplainably good, because everything was natural,” Pedro says.</p>
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<p>Twenty years ago in New York City, Pedro met his wife, Marisol, who was born in the U.S. to Dominican parents. When they were dating, she cooked him a meal that was, somehow, even better than his mother’s cooking. Pedro went home and told his mother; she was thrilled that her son had found a worthy match. And Marisol shares her in-laws’ dedication to natural cooking. “She does not use anything artificial,” Pedro says. “She’s very big on that.” That means no bouillon, and no pre-made seasonings, like the dried adobo mix that supermarkets sell.</p>
<p>With Sajoma, Pedro’s goal was to let good ingredients sing without any additives. Customers have taken notice. Pedro says that when he walks the floor of the restaurant, diners tell him, “I literally feel like I’m eating this at home.”</p>
<p>He believes this is testament to the power of simple cooking with no shortcuts. “Sometimes people think that you could force flavor. You don’t force flavor,” Pedro insists. With natural ingredients, “Flavor is very easy to accomplish.”</p>
<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd">From the Dominican Republic to the World</h3>
<p>If the Rodriguez family farm was Pedro’s first culinary education, the multicultural restaurants of New York were his second. When Pedro was 12, his parents moved to New York and sent Pedro, his brother, and his sister to the city of Santiago to live with his grandparents. When Pedro was 14, his parents brought their children to the Big Apple.</p>
<p>One might think moving from verdant island to concrete jungle would be difficult. For Pedro, it wasn’t.</p>
<p>He received a warm welcome from his extended family, most of whom had settled in New York by the time he and his siblings got there. His first summer in New York, relatives toured him and his siblings around to the city’s parks and botanic garden. He loved the communal culture of 1980s Brooklyn, where he would wile away the day outdoors, playing ball on the streets and hanging out with his cousins. When Pedro’s mother offered to send him back to the Dominican Republic the following winter, he declined.</p>
<p>Chief among these new experiences were the city’s food offerings. A family member blew Pedro’s mind when he took him for his first glazed donut. “I was like, ‘Holy shit!’” He remembers. “Where has this been all my life?”</p>
<p>Pedro had a similar reaction to his first Chinese meal. Before he learned to speak English, his cousin took him to a restaurant where the staff spoke fluent Spanish with customers before calling out orders to the kitchen in Chinese. Pedro and his cousin bought fried rice with a half chicken and tostones, or fried plantains, and ate it outside on one of their stoops. “I fell in love with that,” he says.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd">Starting Small and Expanding Slowly</h3>
<p>The excited, food-loving child is very much alive in 53-year-old Pedro. He describes with equal relish his recent meal at a Peruvian restaurant as well as the locrio he ate on his family’s farm growing up. But food is also his business. In addition to Sajoma Latin Fusion in Kissimmee, Pedro owns four restaurants in New York and runs a fleet of trucks that he says supply most of New York City’s independent grocers. When asked about his secret to success in business, he uses a distinctly Dominican analogy: “I compare it to baseball players.”</p>
<p>Many baseball players grow up playing on poorly kept fields. A ball might hit a rock, and smack you in the face. “It’s harder when you’re in the minor leagues,” he says. But, “You got to make sure that you could do that. Because once you go to the majors, the field is perfect now.”</p>
<p>The message: “Start small,” he says, master your craft, and expand slowly.</p>
<p>For Pedro, starting small meant working at his uncle’s grocery stores in Far Rockaway, Queens during high school. On Saturdays, he traveled with him to produce markets to stock the store. When Pedro graduated high school, he decided that he would rather spend the next few years growing a business. “What do I know at the time and what do I like at the time? Produce,” he says.</p>
<p>So Pedro bought a van, and started delivering groceries to supermarkets, drawing on the connections he had built while working for his uncle. Soon, he bought a large truck, then two trucks. Today, he runs a fleet of 20 trucks.</p>
<p>The road has not been easy. His equivalent of errant baseballs that threaten to hit you in the face were snowstorms that he had to fight through to deliver groceries. For years, he worked 18-hour shifts, rain, shine or snow. “I’d come home and eat, sleep for three or four hours, and go right back out there,” he remembers. He has since stepped back from physically driving trucks and delivering produce, but still helms the business.</p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106307/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd">A Foothold in Florida</h3>
<p>Over the years, many family members of Pedro’s have moved to Kissimmee. A friend told him about an open lot, wondering whether Pedro would be interested in opening a restaurant there. When Pedro saw the place, disparate threads of his life knit together: his childhood spent eating fresh produce on a Dominican farm; his exposure to cuisines from every corner of the world in New York; the New York hustle that had become his way of being.</p>
<p>“Oh my god, this is perfect,” he remembers thinking after laying eyes on the space. He wanted to build a restaurant that combined fresh ingredients, Latin American cuisine, international influences, and New York service. And he would name it “Sajoma,” after the town that started his journey.</p>
<p>After a period of renovation and menu-tweaking, Pedro opened Sajoma Latin Fusion in August of 2022. The restaurant’s interior is sleek and spacious, with an outdoor patio and plush couches. The team makes sure the produce is fresh, hand-picking it themselves from local independent supermarkets rather than large suppliers. Sajoma’s menu dances between Latin America—especially the Caribbean—and other parts of the world, like Europe, Asia, and North America. Their tuna tartare comes on a bed of guacamole and corn chips; their burger is topped with sweet plantains; and their sancocho is made from scratch with no additives.</p>
<p>A pair of elderly Puerto Rican ladies recently visited the restaurant and made a point of telling Pedro how much they appreciated the sancocho. “We’ve had something like this at a house,” they told him. But “we have never tried anything like this at a restaurant.” They would spread the word to their family, they said.</p>
<p>The word, it seems, has already gotten out. The restaurant has a loyal and growing following, and it becomes a party on weekends, when DJs and bands play salsa, bachata, merengue, and more.</p>
<p>Much of Pedro’s work has been helping the team emulate the type of prompt, attentive service that one finds at a restaurant in New York. Achieving that has taken a lot of repetition, but they’ve pulled it off. “I’m just so proud, you know?” he says.</p>
<p>Pedro says he approaches restaurant ownership as an eater, not a cook. He is actually not much of a chef, having been blessed with great cooking in his mother’s and wife’s kitchens, and in restaurants around the world.</p>
<p>He constantly tries new restaurants, and he acts as the president of a group of around 40 New York supermarket industry professionals that call themselves the “Friday club” because they meet up at restaurants for food and wine every Friday. It’s easy to see why he would be named president: He knows good food and has the gift of gab.</p>
<p>Pedro’s love of conversation and a good time is part of what draws him to the restaurant business, and when he is not checking on the kitchen at Sajoma, he is walking the floor, entertaining guests. He knows what it is to work hard all week and turn to a restaurant to provide delicious food and a space to connect with friends.</p>
<p>“I don’t have to know how to cook,” in order to run a good restaurant, he says. “I have to know how to eat.”</p>]]>
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    <item>
      <title>Inside Thomas Edison’s Botanical Laboratory</title>
      <dc:creator>The Podcast Team </dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:15:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-edison-ford-winter-estate</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-edison-ford-winter-estate</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<div>
<p class="item-body-text-graf"><strong>Listen and subscribe on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-atlas-obscura-podcast/id1555769970">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT">Spotify</a>, and all major podcast apps.</strong></p>
</div>
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<p><strong>Kelly McEvers: </strong>Thomas Edison and his family had a ritual. Every winter, they would leave freezing cold New Jersey and head down to Fort Myers, Florida. Back then, Fort Myers was out there. Think swamps and mosquitoes. It was actually easier to get around by boat than over land.</p>
<p>The Edisons would do vacation stuff: go fishing, go on boat rides, collect interesting plants. And in 1914, they invited a different branch of American inventing royalty to join them. That year, Henry Ford, of the Model T Ford, came down to Florida with his wife, Clara.</p>
<p>Ford must have been psyched because Edison was actually his hero. They’d met briefly years before at a conference when Ford was still a low-level employee at an Edison company. Now they were meeting on something like equal terms.</p>
<p>So to celebrate the occasion, Ford had some Model Ts shipped down to Fort Myers. Everyone went out joyriding around the swamps. The cars flooded, their campsite got soaked. Clara Ford was really afraid of snakes, and there were snakes everywhere. Henry tried to scare them away by shooting off a pistol. Needless to say, it was a trip.</p>
<p>But soon, once the smoke from Ford’s pistol had cleared and the Model Ts had dried out, Edison and Ford would become more than just travel buddies. They were actually about to embark on an enormous inventing project, a project that would turn Edison’s Florida house into a full-fledged botanical laboratory and would become the last great obsession of Edison’s life.</p>
<p>I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is <em>Atlas Obscura</em>, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today’s episode is brought to you in partnership with Fort Myers – Islands, Beaches and Neighborhoods. Maybe when you think of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, you think technology, cars, light bulbs, electricity. But the success of both of their inventions depended on plants. That is why they had come to Florida: to experiment.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited transcript of the </em><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/podcast"><em>Atlas Obscura Podcast</em></a><em>: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on </em><a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=89027X1542228&amp;isjs=1&amp;jv=15.7.1&amp;sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlasobscura.com%2Farticles%2Fpodcast-montezuma-well&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-atlas-obscura-podcast%2Fid1555769970&amp;xs=1&amp;xtz=300&amp;xuuid=f238828fc9c8f1386593b6f8b1d81e7b&amp;xjsf=other_click__contextmenu%20%5B2%5D"><em>Apple Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT"><em>Spotify</em></a><em>, and all major podcast apps.</em></p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106299/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Plants were actually the reason Thomas Edison had fallen in love with Fort Myers in the first place. Around 30 years before that camping trip with Ford, Edison was working away in his Menlo Park lab on one of his most famous projects.</p>
<p><strong>Karen Maxwell:</strong> Many people are under the misimpression he invented the light bulb. He actually perfected it.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>This is Karen Maxwell. She’s the horticulture director at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates.</p>
<p><strong>Karen: </strong>So, at this time, there are about 20 different varieties of incandescent light bulbs, but none of them burned for very long.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> The problem was this teeny tiny piece inside the bulb called a filament. When electricity passes through, the filament heats up and glows and we get light. But none of these early filaments could glow long enough to make a practical light bulb.</p>
<p>So Edison set out to change that, testing thousands and thousands of different materials. Cotton, platinum, cedar, and finally, bamboo.</p>
<p><strong>Karen: </strong>And he had his team—I’m glad I wasn’t one of them then—they stayed up and did shifts to record how long it burned. That filament burned for 1,200 hours. And that made the incandescent light bulb a national product.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> Edison, already a famous inventor, was now a legend. But by the end of the project, his personal life was a mess.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> He was 38 years old, burned out, and had lost his first wife, Mary. Three children. His doctor says, Thomas, you need to go south, take a vacation, and take a break. He ends up arriving in St. Augustine during the winter and finds that is really too cold. It didn’t meet what his doctor had prescribed. So one of his friends takes him further down the river and they end up going by the property, which is currently today what we know as the Edison and Ford Winter Estates. What does he see but stands of bamboo growing along the riverside? He bought it on the spot.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> Edison remarried, and soon he and his second wife, Mina, started transforming the Florida property and its stand of bamboo into their wintertime home away from home. Edison even had an old laboratory shipped down from New Jersey in case inspiration struck while he was on vacation. You know, his lab away from lab.</p>
<p>At first, he did some experimenting with bamboo, but then in 1905, the invention of the tungsten filament for the light bulb made the bamboo one obsolete. Soon enough, though, he would have another project to focus on.</p>
<p>After the Fords joined the Edison family vacation in 1914, it was time for Ford to invite Edison on a trip. They went to San Francisco, and Ford introduced Edison to some friends: a botanist named Luther Burbank, who was interested in plant hybridization, and the tire magnate, Harvey Firestone, of Firestone Tires. It wasn’t long before their conversation turned to rubber.</p>
<p>And the thing was, in order to make cars, you needed tires, and in order to make tires, you needed rubber. Back then, there was no such thing as synthetic rubber. All of it came from plants. Most natural rubber was grown in Southeast Asia, in British and Dutch colonies, and that meant the British and Dutch set rubber prices. The crew became convinced that America needed its own domestic rubber supply. Edison got to work right away.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> So he starts looking for a product that can grow quickly, produce latex. Latex is what makes rubber. Latex is a milky white substance. If you break open the stem, out comes a sticky white milky product. That is latex and that is the basis of all natural rubber.</p>
<p>Over 17,000 plants are brought in and studied. There were botanists, volunteers, they even engaged the Union Pacific Railroad, who instructed every section chief to collect any plants growing along their extensive miles of right-of-way and forward them to Edison’s laboratory.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> The Florida House essentially became a latex distilling factory. Today, if you visit, you can still see a lot of these plants that Edison was experimenting on. There’s a spiny vine called crown of thorns, which looks like a cactus; a scrubby desert shrub called guayule, which is native to Mexico; and the most spectacular specimen, or at least the biggest, was the banyan tree.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> It’s been in place for 100 years. And over the years, it’s grown extensively. We’ve had to maintain trimming so it doesn’t just eat up the buildings. The first impression people have is they’re looking at a forest of trees.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly</strong>: Today, the tree covers nearly an entire acre of land. It’s the largest banyan tree in the continental U.S. But unfortunately for Edison, it just did not produce enough latex.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> In 1928, he discovers, right here in his backyard, the plant that produces the most latex is goldenrod.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Goldenrod is a very fast-growing weed with yellow flowers. Looks a lot like ragweed. So Edison ripped out rows and rows of his wife Mina’s citrus trees to plant goldenrod, which I’m sure she wasn’t thrilled about.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> He mows them all down and he transforms their estate-like atmosphere to just a conglomeration of disorderly beds with markers and irrigation ditches all around, 500 plots of yellow goldenrod. And as you can imagine, that did little to kindle her enthusiasm for his work.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> Speaking of Mina’s view of his work, she was annoyed about the citrus trees, yes, but she was also worried about her husband’s health. Edison was in his 80s now and still keeping pretty long hours.</p>
<p>Mina wrote, “He thinks of nothing else now. He has no time for anything else, no recreation,” and, “Everything turned to rubber in the family. We talked rubber, thought rubber, dreamed rubber.”</p>
<p>There was also some tension between her and Henry Ford. For one thing, Ford had bought the house right next door. That’s why the museum today is known as the Edison and Ford Estates. And another thing: Ford had convinced Edison to let him dismantle his Florida lab and ship it up to Michigan. Because Ford wanted to start a museum dedicated to American innovation, and he said he simply needed his hero’s lab. Mina was not too happy about this. Though, with the help of Ford and Firestone, Edison did end up building a brand new botanical lab.</p>
<p>Still, by the end of the 1920s, Edison’s health got worse. He came down with pneumonia and by the fall of 1931 was bedridden in New Jersey. At one point on his deathbed, as he was slipping in and out of consciousness, someone came in with a package sent from the Florida house.</p>
<p>Inside was a small piece of rubber made from Edison’s goldenrod plants. According to biographer Michele Albion, he had a moment of lucidity, and then sunk into a coma. Just a few days later, he died on October 18th, 1931. The Edison family kept the botanical research lab going until 1934, when it was transferred over to the Department of Agriculture.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> But it turned out his vision of the importance became true because when World War II came about, Japan captured Malaysia, Singapore, and most of the Pacific Rim rubber plantations.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>During the war, there were serious rubber shortages in the U.S. The government rationed gasoline and lowered speed limits just to make tires last longer.</p>
<p><strong>Karen:</strong> But it was shortly after that that synthetic rubber ended the goldenrod destiny. That was in 1944. And It was pretty much what Tungsten did for his carbonized bamboo filament, the synthetic rubber did to his goldenrod rubber research. But he was right. I mean, he kept people going in the right direction. Without that foundation, we probably wouldn’t have been here today.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Today, the Ford and Edison Winter Estates are combined into one big museum property. You can spend hours wandering around the grounds and seeing many of the plants that we talked about in this episode. The bamboo, the goldenrod, the banyan tree, and of course, the botanical laboratory itself.</p>
<p><strong>Karen: </strong>It’s a 21-acre paradise of discovery for people that enjoy gardens and enjoy the different textures, the structures, the colors. There’s something blooming every single day. Many, many things.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly:</strong> In our episode description, we will post a link to more info about visiting the Edison and Ford winter estates. And if you enjoyed today’s show, check out another episode of ours called <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-fordlandia">Fordlandia</a>. It’s all about Henry Ford’s very unsuccessful attempt to start an industrial rubber town in Brazil.</p>
<p><strong><em>Listen and subscribe on</em></strong><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-atlas-obscura-podcast/id1555769970"> <strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><strong><em>, and all major podcast apps.</em></strong></p>
<p><em>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.</em></p>]]>
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      <title>Why Did Henry Ford Build a Midwestern Town in the Amazon Rainforest?</title>
      <dc:creator>The Podcast Team </dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:15:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-fordlandia</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-fordlandia</guid>
      <description>
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<p class="item-body-text-graf"><strong>Listen and subscribe on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-atlas-obscura-podcast/id1555769970">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT">Spotify</a>, and all major podcast apps.</strong></p>
</div>
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<p><strong>Elah Feder: </strong>Johanna, do you ever buy lottery tickets?</p>
<p><strong>Johanna Mayer:</strong> No, never. Not a lottery ticket kind of gal.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> I actually just got shamed by the man selling me lottery tickets for wasting my money.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>You buy lottery tickets?</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>I do buy lottery tickets. And I think what I really like about it is fantasizing that, you know, if I have enough money, I will finally be able to do whatever I want.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>And this is the appeal of being a multimillionaire, Elah.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Right, right.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> You’re not the first one to have this impulse.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>I have this crazy, wild notion that money will give me power. And the story that we’re going to talk about today is about a lot of things. But one of them is a lesson about how even with unlimited money, from time to time, the world refuses to do your bidding. So I want to take you back to the 1920s and tell you about Henry Ford. The 1920s was a time when Henry Ford was incredibly wealthy. Classic story. He started off as a simple Michigan farm boy, started tinkering. And then in 1908, he created the Model T, the first ever affordable mass-produced car, which made him incredibly rich. But it also reshaped America in the process. He decided that well-paid workers weren’t going to quit, so he brought in higher wages. He also brought in the eight-hour workday.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>It’s funny, I was just talking last weekend with my partner about Ford a little bit, where we were like, he is the reason that we have a car-centric society. But he was surprisingly good to his workers. Complicated figure.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>He started off good to his workers. We’ll get there. But in the late 1920s, Ford, despite all of his wealth, he was forced to cave on a couple of pretty big things. He was forced to finally update his cars after years of resisting even a simple color change. Even more humiliating, a defamation suit forced him to apologize to Jewish people, which was very difficult for him because he loved talking about Jews before that. So in the late ’20s, Ford was realizing he was not all-powerful. But then in 1927, an incredible opportunity presented itself. A real chance to enact his vision of society, maybe without having to compromise this time. It was a place called Fordlândia in Brazil. And it didn’t quite make the biography on the Ford website for reasons that I think will soon become clear.</p>
<p>I’m Johanna Mayer, and this is <em>Atlas Obscura</em>.</p>
<p>And I’m Elah Feder. And today, the story of Fordlândia, Henry Ford’s attempt to build a wholesome Midwestern town in the Amazon rainforest.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited transcript of the </em><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/podcast"><em>Atlas Obscura Podcast</em></a><em>: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on </em><a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=89027X1542228&amp;isjs=1&amp;jv=15.7.1&amp;sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlasobscura.com%2Farticles%2Fpodcast-montezuma-well&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-atlas-obscura-podcast%2Fid1555769970&amp;xs=1&amp;xtz=300&amp;xuuid=f238828fc9c8f1386593b6f8b1d81e7b&amp;xjsf=other_click__contextmenu%20%5B2%5D"><em>Apple Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT"><em>Spotify</em></a><em>, and all major podcast apps.</em></p>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/105971/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Okay, I am intrigued. Why the rainforest? Why did Ford decide to build his vision of utopia in the Amazon rainforest?</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>So, it didn’t start out with a town. It started with rubber. So, as you know, cars need rubber for tires, for hoses. Today, most rubber is synthetic. The 1920s, it pretty much all came from rubber trees.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>So I did know this, and I can picture a rubber tree, which I think has a lot of big roots and like a wide trunk and stuff.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Massive.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> But I have never understood exactly how you get rubber from these trees.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> It’s not too complicated. Ancient Mesoamericans figured this out. All you need to do is injure the tree.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> It saps it out?</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> It’s not technically sap. It’s another substance that oozes out of the tree. It kind of looks like coconut milk. It’s sticky and white and full of defense compounds. And that substance is called latex. So if you peel the bark of a rubber tree and let the latex drip out into a bucket, and then you dry it out, you get this bendy, bouncy material that we call rubber. So Ford decides he’s going to grow these rubber trees where they came from: the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Seems like a solid plan.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> It does seem that way. I should say it wasn’t actually Ford’s idea. He was actually being courted pretty aggressively by Brazilians. There was a Brazilian diplomat who really wanted to bring Ford to Brazil. There was a wealthy Brazilian businessman. And the idea was that bringing Ford, this wealthy industrialist, could potentially revive a really impoverished region, the northeast of Brazil.</p>
<p>Ford very quickly agreed, and the company acquired 2.5 million acres of land, which they called Fordlândia. So, Fordlândia was on the east side of the Tapajos River, which is a tributary of the Amazon. This land is really deep in the rainforest. There were no roads, no railways. It took about 18 hours by boat to get there from the nearest city.</p>
<p>So just imagine your classic kind of jungle. Towering trees, thick vines, tons of insects, birds, thousands of species, and, of course, rubber trees.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Okay, goal is to create a rubber plantation. Makes sense to go to the Amazon. The part that I’m snagging on is the Midwestern town aspect.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Right.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> How does that come in?</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> So, a plantation obviously doesn’t run itself. It needs people. You need people to tap the trees, harvest the rubber. And then you need other people to feed those people, provide medical care. If you have families coming with the workers, then you’re going to need schools. You might need entertainment. You really need a whole town.</p>
<p>And at Fordlândia, that’s what Ford created. Although not Ford himself, Ford didn’t go to Brazil. He had a crew of Ford company men who were dedicated to making this place according to Henry Ford’s vision.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> It’s how it usually goes.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> So the town itself, it took a little bit of time to build. People started showing up well before there was a town. People who needed work came, and they brought their families. So they needed a place to live. They slapped together temporary shelters using planks from packing crates for walls and palm leaves for roofs.</p>
<p>But within a couple of years, there was the start of a recognizable American-style town. They had a power plant, a hospital, a neighborhood with wooden houses with sidewalks and street lamps. A little later would come tennis courts, a dance hall, a movie theater, a golf course.</p>
<p>But this was not just a lovely oasis in the Amazon. Because Henry Ford was a man with very particular ideas about how a society should be run. So increasingly, as he got older, he had this nostalgia for his old pastoral life. But at the same time, he hated cows.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> What’s wrong with cows?</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Well, he thought they were very crude and inefficient machines. And he thought—</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Was—</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Sorry, go ahead. I don’t think he was vegetarian.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> That’s what I was going to ask, yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> But he was a big fan of soy.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Okay.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>One time he built a full soy body. He had a suit made out of soy fibers.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> This is a whole other podcast episode.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> The cow thing kind of threw me for a loop. But some of his ideas were actually really good. Like we mentioned, he thought people should be well paid, shouldn’t work super long hours. He also thought it was important that people be healthy. So he didn’t think they should drink or smoke. But he took this wholesome lifestyle thing a little far. He thought, for example, that dancing was good, but should not involve too much touching.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> No sexy dancing allowed.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Yes. Too many people were sexy dancing, which he blamed on Jewish people. So …</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>What?</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> You’re welcome for that. I’m sure a lot of us have our own idiosyncratic spin on what makes a good life. The difference between Henry Ford and most of us is that he actually had the power to make his vision happen, to fashion a world in his image. This is not necessarily a good power for everyone to have.</p>
<p>Henry Ford didn’t just encourage good habits and provide healthy food to his workers. He forced these things on them, not just in Fordlândia, but in all of his facilities. But as you can imagine, workers in the Amazon did not get the royal treatment.</p>
<p>They were supposed to eat Henry Ford prescribed healthy meals at the company mess hall. They had to report any sexually transmitted infections to the company or risk getting caught at random STI inspections. They were not allowed to drink. A team of men would actually do spot searches of people’s homes and confiscate any alcohol that they found.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> It strikes me that this may not be the best route to creating the utopian society that you desire. The difference between Ford’s utopian society, Fordlândia, and a lot of other ones that come up throughout history is that in other utopian societies, people are signing up. They’re actively joining them of their own volition because they supposedly believe in some sort of common vision. Not the case here.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>People just came to make rubber and get a paycheck. They did not come to have every aspect of their lives controlled. There were also unique challenges in the Amazon that Ford’s men did not anticipate. It turns out that you cannot just build an American town exactly as it is in America, wherever you want.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Wait, you can’t?</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>Yeah. Revise life plan. For example, the houses that they had built. People were used to these houses with dirt floors and thatched roofs. These new houses had concrete floors and metal roofs. It impressed the journalists that visited, but they were unbearably hot in this climate. You do not want to be cooking under a metal roof, and you want good airflow. The Ford company provided free medical care for the workers, at least.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Sounds good.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Despite that, a lot of people died. It is hard going in the Amazon. Both the American families and the Brazilian workers, a lot of people died of tropical diseases. People were being bitten by vipers when they were trying to clear jungle. This one guy whose job was to saw timber, he ended up preparing a lot of the wood they needed for coffins. He estimated they were averaging a death a day.</p>
<p>In 1930, so just two years into the project, frustrations were at an all-time high. Ford’s men were also realizing that they weren’t really doing a good job of keeping people in line. In December of that year, 1930, one of Ford’s officials decides they need to make a change. Ford, as you know, wanted people to eat healthy. Apparently, he prescribed that people eat oatmeal and canned peaches for breakfast.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>That sounds good.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>And rice and whole wheat bread for dinner. But—</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Sounds less good.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>People wanted to eat whatever they wanted. And so they were getting food elsewhere. And this Ford employee decided that the solution was to feed them food from the cafeteria and deduct it from their wages.</p>
<p>And that is when people snapped. It started when a guy named Manuel Caetano de Jesus, who was a brick mason, he decided to confront a payroll worker in the dining hall. And Manuel was yelling at him in Portuguese, which apparently this guy did not understand. But then Manuel hands him his badge, which he did understand. And this payroll worker’s reaction is to laugh.</p>
<p>And that’s when the whole place erupts. People are suddenly smashing plates, pots, sinks, and they go and find all the Ford cars and smash them up. According to one person who was there, people started chanting “Brazil for Brazilians, kill all the Americans.” This was a massive riot across Fordlândia. And by the time that things calm down, the place is basically in ruins.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Is that it? Is that the end of Fordlândia?</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Weirdly not. Somehow.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Incredible.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Yeah. So they end up firing most of the workers, but keep a skeleton crew and start to rebuild. And a few years later, they end up acquiring another plot of land nearby and building a second town and more plantations. And Fordlândia chugs along. The bigger problem, at least for the Ford company, is not that the workers hate them. It’s that Fordlândia isn’t actually doing the one thing it’s supposed to do, which is produce rubber.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>God, this has been such a journey, I forgot that they were supposed to be producing rubber this whole time.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>That was the point of all of this. So it does take time, right? And they’d had many false starts. You know, they planted trees in the dry season. That didn’t work well. But eventually they get it together. And by 1940, they have three million trees planted across 30,000 acres of land.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Whoa.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> But here’s the thing. It turns out Brazil is not actually the best place to grow Brazilian rubber trees.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>What?</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>Because Brazil, the place the trees are native to, also has all of the trees’ natural enemies.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Ah, interesting.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>When trees are scattered throughout a forest, the trees manage to grow okay. But then imagine you are a rubber tree-eating bug or fungus, and you come upon all of these rubber trees jam-packed together in one place. You are going to come out and feast. You’re going to reproduce. You’re going to hop from tree to tree. It’s a massive buffet.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Like, here we are!</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> Yeah. So by 1940, 70 percent of Fordlândia’s rubber trees were infected with a fungal blight. They get through that. But then in 1942, they’re hit with caterpillars.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna:</strong> Dun, dun, dun.</p>
<p><strong>Elah:</strong> I mean, caterpillars had always been a problem. But for a few years, the workers managed to keep them at bay. But in 1942, there is a total caterpillar explosion that they just can’t keep up with. And just as the situation was starting to get under control, they were hit with a second wave of fungal blight. And combined, it’s a pretty fatal blow. And just a few years later, in November of 1945, the company decides it is time to abandon this project. Apparently, they did not give the local workers much notice. Many Brazilians didn’t even know the Americans were leaving until the day they got on the ships. And that was how they found out they were unemployed.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Oh, my God.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>Yeah. By this point, Ford himself was over 80. He wasn’t doing well. And two years later, he died.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>You said that they just picked up and left and got on ships. What happened to the town? Are the buildings still there? Does anyone still live there? What happened to Fordlândia? <strong>Elah:</strong> So a lot of the story I’ve told you is based on a book by Greg Grandin called <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312429621/fordlandia/"><em>Fordlandia</em></a>, which came out in 2009. When he visited, a lot of the old structures were there. The old factory buildings, the sawmill, the warehouse, they’re kind of falling apart but standing. And a few of the old houses were there, too, apparently full of bats and just covered in guano.</p>
<p>And back when Greg Grandin visited, one of the main sources of income was cattle ranching. Apparently, there were cows grazing on the old golf course. The old tennis courts had been turned into cattle stalls. And the hillsides that used to be planted with rubber trees were turned into pasture land for cows.</p>
<p><strong>Johanna: </strong>Yes, justice for the cows. This was a totally fascinating story, Elah. Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Elah: </strong>Thanks for having me, Johanna. The town of Fordlândia is still around. And since Greg Grandin’s visit, it’s had a bit of a resurgence. An estimated 3,000 people live there. There’s now a tall Catholic church, a guest house, a bar, a restaurant. And scattered throughout, crumbling remains of Henry Ford’s failed American town.</p>
<p><strong><em>Listen and subscribe on</em></strong><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-atlas-obscura-podcast/id1555769970"> <strong><em>Apple Podcasts</em></strong></a><strong><em>,</em></strong><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT"> <strong><em>Spotify</em></strong></a><strong><em>, and all major podcast apps.</em></strong></p>
<p><em>Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.</em></p>]]>
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      <title>Atlas Obscura’s Guide to Sun Valley, Idaho’s Most Fascinating Places</title>
      <dc:creator>Virginia  Brown</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/idaho-sun-valley-fascinating-places</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/idaho-sun-valley-fascinating-places</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p>From top to bottom, Sun Valley is full of surprises. Only in this fascinating pocket of central Idaho can you experience an annual heritage festival that parades thousands of sheep from the mountains to Main Street by day, then discover some of the darkest night skies in the world for mind-blowing star gazing.</p>
<p>In between, you’ll relax in a botanical garden’s meditative nook, and visit the gravesite of one of the world’s most notable writers and explore a moon-like national park full of caves and lava flows. Enjoy this guide to 10 wonderful ways to start your Sun Valley adventure.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;">The Roundhouse</h2>
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<p>The Roundhouse, a staple of Sun Valley Resort since 1939, elevates any dining experience—literally. Located 7,700 feet above sea level on Bald Mountain, the restaurant has been a featured fine dining spot since 1939, and is open seasonally, December through March. The octagonal restaurant, featuring 46 windows, is only accessible only by gondola, and the sweeping views of the entire valley make the views as impressive as the menu. Inside oozes with a ski chalet-style, cozy ambiance, especially the four-sided fireplace. A popular starter, the Fondue For Two, comes with artisan bread, Granny Smith apples, grapes, and gherkins. You can also add specialty meats and vegetables for an extra charge. A Wagyu burger, lobster rolls, scallops, and elk Swedish meatballs all make the menu here.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve</strong></h2>
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<p>Grab your tent and experience the awe-inspiring wonder of Central Idaho’s starry, night sky in the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/searching-for-sun-valley/the-dark-skies-of-sun-valley-id/">Central Idaho Dark Sky Reserve</a>. One of the last remaining areas of this level of nighttime natural darkness in the world, the reserve encompasses just under 1,500 miles of public lands inside the Sawtooth National Forest. Certified by the International Dark Sky Association in 2017, and given its highest “gold tier” status, the reserve features an ultra-dark core, plus dark periphery that helps protect the central dark area. Meteor showers, lunar eclipses, spring equinox and the summer solstice are just a few of the many public viewing events held at the reserve annually. The protected wilderness areas under these dark skies are also home to a stunning array of wildlife, including bears, wolverines, elk, wolves, and sandhill cranes.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Trailing of the Sheep</strong> <strong>Festival</strong></h2>
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<p>Each fall, a woolly throng of sheep, roughly 1,200 in all, parade down the main street of Ketchum, Idaho, for the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/events/annual-trailing-of-the-sheep-festival/">Trailing of the Sheep Festival</a>. The treasured annual event commemorates the time-honored migration of sheep from Idaho’s high mountain summer pastures to the warmer, grazing and lambing grounds found farther south. For five days, the community celebrates the history, culture, and traditions of the region’s longstanding sheep ranchers, which include Basques, Peruvians, and Scots. Signature events include lamb-centered culinary classes, woolmaking workshops, a heritage fair, and national sheepdog trials. The 2026 festival is October 7-11.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve</strong></h2>
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<p>A trip to Central Idaho’s Snake River Plain is just about as close to the moon as most of us will ever get. Aptly described as “a weird and scenic landscape” by President Calvin Coolidge when he established the 750,000-acre federally protected site in 1924, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/craters-of-the-moon-national-monument-and-preserve">Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve</a> features a vast, lunar-like landscape of lava flows, cinder cones, and sagebrush. The unique environment was created thousands of years ago by a series of major eruptions along the 52-mile stretch of deep cracks in the Earth’s crust called the Great Rift. For generations, the park has garnered attention and profound fascination, and the wild terrain even served as a training ground for Apollo astronauts in the 1960s. Today, explorers enjoy discovering the park’s many lava tube caves and trails, and viewing the impressive overlooks while driving along the 7-mile Loop Road. Nature lovers and photographers also flock to the park for its surprising diversity of birds and other wildlife, plus it’s a designated dark sky park.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>Sun Valley Museum of Art</strong></h2>
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<p>In downtown Ketchum, the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/to-do/sun-valley-museum-of-art/">Sun Valley Museum of Art</a> is just one of the many ways to explore the rich culture of the region—off the slopes. Now an integral part of Sun Valley’s arts and culture community, this free museum opened in 1971 and has grown to feature works from greats like Andy Warhol to important pieces from local and regional artists. Equal parts museum and educational hub, the center also features interesting lecture series, live music, films, and hands-on art classes and workshops throughout the year. The exhibit, "Hidden Gems: Idaho Collects," brings art held in private collections in the region into public view through February 28, 2026. The exhibit aims to illuminate the region's community through the art they make and collect</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;">Pioneer Saloon</h2>
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<p>One part time capsule, one part fine dining, the Pioneer Saloon is a beloved go-to for Ketchum locals and visitors alike. Located on Main Street, and affectionately called “the Pio,” the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/dining-shopping/the-pioneer-saloon/">Pioneer Saloon</a> opened in the 1940s as a casino, despite gambling being outlawed in Idaho. Originally called the Commercial Club, the gambling hub closed its doors after just a few years, and the American Legion turned it into a meeting hall. For a short time, the facility also served as a dry goods store until, in 1950, a man named Whitey Hirschman, turned it back into a casino. Containing decades of local lore and history, the saloon won a 2025 James Beard America's Classics Award. Today, the menu consists of hearty steaks, prime rib, ribs, and seafood, including Idaho trout. Order the signature “Jim Spud,” and you’ll get a hot baked potato with teriyaki beef, cheese, and other toppings. There’s even a “Hemingway Margarita” that pays homage to the famed author whose final resting place is in Sun Valley. Amid the rustic décor inside, you’ll find antiques and artifacts, including Hemingway’s hunting rifle, Western posters and artwork, a Native American canoe and arrowheads, and more.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Ernest Hemingway’s Grave</strong></h2>
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<p>Despite Ernest Hemingway’s flamboyant, hard-living nature, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ernest-hemingway-s-grave">famed writer’s final resting place</a> is a simple slab in a Sun Valley cemetery. Known for his heavy drinking, hunting, and womanizing lifestyle, Hemingway lived all over, from Spain and Cuba to Florida, penning works like, “The Sun Also Rises,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and the Pulitzer Prize-awarded “The Old Man and the Sea.” He visited central Idaho many times before moving to the area prior to his death in 1961. Placed alongside his wife, Mary, under two towering spruce trees, the grave is a modest rectangular marker including just the writer’s name and dates of birth and death. In addition to the expected flowers, fans also pay respects by leaving behind booze bottles, coins, matches, and pens.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Sawtooth Botanical Garden</strong></h2>
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<p>For a serene escape, head to the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/services/sawtooth-botanical-garden">Sawtooth Botanical Garden</a> in Ketchum. Located on five acres, the garden, which is also an educational non profit, centers on five major display gardens that represent the varied biomes in central Idaho. One must-see feature is the colorful Tibetan prayer wheel in the Garden of Infinite Compassion. It’s the only such wheel commissioned and blessed by the Dalai Lama in North America and the only one powered by flowing water. The 1,100-pound wheel is said to symbolize peace, healing and the dissemination prayers when turned.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Wood River Museum of History &amp; Culture</strong></h2>
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<p>This free cultural museum in downtown Ketchum celebrates the rich and varied history of central Idaho, from its native people and immigrants to the iconic Bald Mountain and its effect on the local landscape. One exhibit at the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/to-do/wood-river-museum-of-history-and-culture/">Wood River Museum</a>, “A Writer in the New Country: Hemingway in 1939,” highlights Ernest Hemingway’s first trip to Sun Valley, a place that was dear to the writer up until his death in 1961. Sheep shears, a telegraph key, and vintage skis are all part of the interactive Cabinet of Wonders, which houses important regional artifacts. At the museum’s entrance, another exhibit honors the Shoshone-Bannock native peoples, who first inhabited central Idaho.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd" style="text-align: left;"><strong>Ore Wagon Museum</strong></h2>
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<p>This <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/events/ore-wagon-museum/">history museum in Ketchum</a> highlights the importance of ore wagons during the region’s rich mining boom of the 1880s. These sturdy wagons, donated to the museum by the Lewis family, whose Fast Freight Line was integral in transporting silver ore from remote mines to in-town railheads, are reportedly the only of their kind in existence. In honor of its mining roots, the city hosts a heritage festival, Wagon Days, every Labor Day weekend. The beloved event features live music, food vendors, cultural presentations, and culminates with the Big Hitch, a parade of these historic, non-motorized vehicles that served as the backbone of the region’s economy before the development of the railroads.</p>]]>
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      <title>From Bay to Bar: Exploring Panama City’s Legendary Oyster Scene</title>
      <dc:creator>Daniel McDermon</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 01:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/from-bay-to-bar-exploring-panama-city-s-legendary-oyster-scene</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/from-bay-to-bar-exploring-panama-city-s-legendary-oyster-scene</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p>Nothing tastes more definitively <em>of the sea</em> than oysters. Whether they’re served raw, steamed, baked, grilled, stewed, roasted, sautéd, or deep-fried, oysters offer diners a pure connection to the ocean. And every variety is distinct, with flavors and texture that speaks to the exact location and conditions where they grow.</p>
<p>And no place celebrates this meaty, briny bivalve more thoroughly than Panama City, along the coast of Northwest Florida. The city’s storied fishing culture and its prime Gulf location make it the ideal destination for lovers of the finest and freshest seafood available.</p>
<p>They take their seafood seriously here, serving the bivalves in dishes from simple to refined. Every summer, Panama City celebrates National Oyster Day with special events at Hunt’s Oyster Bar, including an oyster eating competition on August 5 and a chance to earn a Golden Oyster keepsake for trying your first oyster.</p>
<p>And there is no shortage of opportunities to connect with that rich legacy any time of year. You can start anywhere along the <a href="https://destinationpanamacity.com/panama-city-oyster-trail/">Panama City Oyster Trail</a>, a collection of local businesses that serve oysters in every conceivable preparation.</p>
<p>Gene’s Oyster Bar, the oldest of the bunch, has been in the oyster business since 1932, according to a longtime employee. It’s been known as Gene’s since 1969, and the place is steeped in history, a classic example of the oyster bar, with shuckers who’ll prepare your food right in front of you.</p>
<p>You can get a classic basket of fried oysters or tuck into a bowl of Grandma’s Oyster Stew. They also serve oysters baked by the dozen or half-dozen, with a variety of available toppings: butter, Cajun spices, bacon, cheddar, or parmesan cheese.</p>
<p>But Gene’s most popular preparation is the simplest: freshly harvested from the waters of the Gulf, kept on ice, and shucked upon request. Saltine crackers, hot sauce, and lemon are all optional.</p>
<p>Gulf oysters tend to be larger than those harvested in the northeast or the northwest.</p>
<p>“What makes Gulf oysters stand out is the salinity,” said Collins Abrams, one of the owners of Hunt’s Oyster Bar and Seafood, which has been in operation since 1966.</p>
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<p>At Hunt’s, you can get your oysters steamed with butter, baked with bacon and jalapeño, or in the classic Oysters Rockefeller preparation, dressed with spinach, parmesan, and mozzarella.</p>
<p>Yet like at Gene’s, the most popular option is freshly shucked raw oysters. “We’re not a restaurant that just serves oysters on a platter of ice,” Abrams says. “We’re an oyster <em>bar</em>, where the focus point is the bar, and the shucker is right in front of you.”</p>
<p>It’s a distinctive experience, contributing to the lively atmosphere. The upstairs at Hunt’s overlooks the nearby St. Andrews Marina, while the downstairs is a blend of restaurant and honky-tonk, with a jukebox providing a customer-chosen soundtrack. The shuckers sometimes like to sing along.</p>
<p>A talent for shucking may just be something that’s in the water around Panama City, as a local man, Honor Allen, has had multiple wins at the U.S. National Oyster Shucking Championship.</p>
<p>And one of Panama City’s own won the 12 Days, 12 Ways celebration finale oyster eating contest in 2025. Four competitors sat down at Hunt’s to eat as many as possible in five minutes. The winner was Angel Colonel, who put down 111, far outpacing the runner-up, who slurped up 79.</p>
<p>For diners who want their oysters along with excellent sunset views along the waterfront, Uncle Ernie’s Bayfront Bar and Grill, with its own signature preparation, fresh oysters sautéd in butter and garlic and topped with romano cheese.</p>
<p>Bayou Joe’s, overlooking Massalina Bayou with 180-degree views of the water and stunning views of the sunset, leans into Cajun cooking, with blackened seasoning, a Cajun shrimp burger, and a New Orleans-style po’ boy sandwich that comes stuffed with fried oysters or shrimp.</p>
<p>Another waterfront destination, Harrison’s Kitchen and Bar, offers a refined atmosphere and a local twist along with its raw oysters, a spin on the classic French mignonette sauce made with local Florida citrus.</p>
<p>If these inspiring oyster eateries have you ready to cook up your own seafood feast, you can find everything you need steps away from the water at the Tarpon Dock Seafood Market, where the fish literally could not be any fresher. The market also serves a fine lunch menu, with po’ boys and baskets of fried oysters, in addition to raw ones. A dozen oysters and an ice-cold beer, served on the very dock where fishing vessels unload: It’s hard to get much better than that.</p>
<p>Fresh Gulf seafood is always on the menu in Panama City, and recent news has made things even better for local oyster lovers. The Apalachicola Bay, not far from Panama City, was recently reopened for oyster harvesting after a five-year hiatus. Locals prize the Apalachicola oysters for a distinctive meatiness and a briny flavor. Though you’re bound to find something delicious for every craving wherever you roam along the Panama City Oyster Trail.</p>]]>
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      <title>The Rebirth of Pennsylvania’s Infamous Burning Town</title>
      <dc:creator>Colin Dickey</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:18:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/centralia-pennsylvania-rebirth</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/centralia-pennsylvania-rebirth</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p>“There’s not much there anymore, it’s pretty much just a crossroads.”</p>
<p>I read the posts online telling me not to bother, but I wanted to go anyway. Certainly I could feel something as we got close: the sense of desperation, of ruin and abandon. So I drove with a small group of friends deep into eastern Pennsylvania—coal country—through towns with names like Frackville, Pottsville, Ashland. Many downtowns had at least one house that had burned to ruin and been left abandoned. It was early June, but clouds covered the sky and we drove through a slight but persistent rain.</p>
<p>We were on our way to Centralia, Pennsylvania. The Burning Town.</p>
<p>The coal that made this valley famous accreted in layers over tens of thousands of years, organic swamp matter turning first to peat, and then compressed over millennia into billions of tons of anthracite—the densest and most pure form of coal—the stuff that made this region of Pennsylvania famous. Mines first opened here in 1856 and Centralia was incorporated as a town a decade later. Through the years bitter labor disputes broke out over exploitative treatment of the (largely Irish immigrant) miners, leading to regular outbreaks of violence. Add to that the boom and bust cycle of the coal industry—and the environmental desolation and impoverishment of the region—and you end up with a town that is deeply scarred, both literally and metaphorically.</p>
<p>But the story that made Centralia famous began in May 1962, when officials set fire to the trash in a local landfill in an open strip-mine pit. This wasn’t the first year they’d done this, and there were firefighters stationed to ensure the blaze didn’t get out of control. After two days, the trash fire seemed to have burned itself out. But this time, for whatever reason (the actual cause was never fully determined), something went wrong. The landfill burn had lit the coal mines beneath the town.</p>
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<p>Over the years, numerous attempts were made to put out the fire. Nothing worked. In all, federal, state, and local governments spent over $3.3 million on the blaze, which raged on, uncontrollably. Over time, residents reported that their basements were strangely hot, and in 1979, the mayor John Coddington lowered a thermometer into an underground fuel tank at the gas station he owned, only to discover that the gasoline was 172 degrees Fahrenheit. And then on Valentine’s Day, 1981, a twelve-year old boy fell into a four-foot-wide sinkhole that opened up in his grandmother’s backyard, barely rescued by his fourteen year-old cousin. A plume of lethal carbon monoxide bellowed out from the hole.</p>
<p>Realizing that topsoil was the only thing separating the town from a massive, raging inferno, the federal government finally decided to clear the town. The United States Congress allocated money for a buyout, which nearly all of the town’s 1,000 or so residents took. By 1990, 63 people remained in the town. Two years later, governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain and condemned all the remaining buildings. By 2021, only five homes were still left standing.</p>
<p>I had come here expecting that we would find ruin and neglect, toxicity and destitution. I expected Centralia to be an exemplar of the <em>eerie: </em>A place where once there had been a town, place of thriving life, and instead now was only absence, an emptiness, a void.</p>
<p>What we found instead, strangely, was beauty. Centralia, despite everything I’d been led to expect, was thriving.</p>
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<p>The Burning Town has come to stand in as a kind of exemplar of a post-industrial wasteland, a place where human folly reached its apex, scorching the land. All but abandoned, it became known primarily for the vents that poured smoke from the fire below, and for Graffiti Highway—a closed stretch of Route 61 covered in tags, doodles of genitalia, and declarations of love.</p>
<p>When adapting the video game franchise <em>Silent Hill </em>for film, screenwriter Roger Avary used Centralia as a model for both the town’s backstory and its look. For years it drew curious onlookers and legend trippers, while the name “Centralia” itself became an almost byword for late capitalism: a term for that mixture of rapacious profit-seeking and thoughtless stewardship that created America’s own Chernobyl.</p>
<p>Locals see the story a little differently, though their version borrows from similar themes. Phil, a tour guide at Pioneer Tunnel in neighboring Ashland, pointed out that while the grim toil of the mines claimed many human lives, their closure left the valley with little else to offer. He explained how the families that didn’t leave Centralia were harassed, as government forces tried to drive them off their land. Those that stayed had to go to court to defend their right to live on this abandoned land, all because they wanted to keep the mineral rights to their property. So now, people like Phil assume that the government is just waiting them out. Once they’re gone, putting out the fire will be easy enough. “They’ll take all that red hot coals, but also they’re going to get that rich anthracite coal,” he told us. “And I’m sure they’ll sell that. But are the people or the relatives going to get anything? It’s very doubtful. It’ll probably go to the federal government. Or the coal baron, maybe?”</p>
<p>His voice, I noticed after a while, has a peculiar kind of nostalgia for the worst times in the world. Like so many others in these towns, he seems to long for a return, another chance for Pennsylvanians to throw their children back into the maw of the mine. Anything for a chance to get the coal jobs will come back. Anything in service of waking the Mountain once more.</p>
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<p>When we finally got to Centralia, we were met not with destruction or despair, but with what seemed at first simply like nothing. The streets are still laid out, and there are still a handful of houses left, but the graffiti highway has been covered over. Any abandoned buildings have long been torn down.</p>
<p>It’s why, if you ask around these days, folks will tell you there’s nothing to see in Centralia. “I drove through Centralia 2 weeks ago,” one local commented on a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Pennsylvania/comments/1cw0xqc/looking_to_visit_centralia_is_it_still_legal_to_go/">Reddit thread</a>. “I didn’t realize till after I had already passed it. That should tell you everything you need to know.” In another thread a different local <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Pennsylvania/comments/1ikd2rs/i_have_some_questions_regarding_traveling_through/">commented</a>, “What is the draw? It’s just empty ground now.”</p>
<p>But emptiness can tell its own story. Standing on the empty streets of Centralia, I thought mainly of Cal Flynn’s <em>Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape. </em>Flynn travels the world to places that have been forsworn by humanity: not the pristine, untouched wilderness, but places abandoned, like Chernobyl and the exclusion zone that divides the island of Cyprus between its Greek and Turkish halves. Places where, Flynn writes, “nature has been allowed to work unfettered.” Such places are often thriving with plant and animal life. Abandonment, she writes, “<em>is </em>rewilding, in a very pure sense, as humans draw back and nature reclaims what once was hers.”</p>
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<p>What Flynn makes clear is that while we tend to think of human activity on the landscape as not only damaging but <em>irreversible</em>, this may not always be the case. We believe, in our hubris, that we have the power to wreck nature for good. And while it’s true that places like the Bikini Atoll and Chernobyl will be radioactive for unimaginable human lifetimes, that doesn’t mean that other species haven’t moved in and, left unmolested by human activity, found ways to flourish.</p>
<p>Flynn’s book catalogs a variety of ways in which nature has reclaimed places that we’ve left behind, often with surprising speed. When Estonia, for example, became independent of the Soviet Union, some 245 million square miles of collectivist farmlands were simply abandoned. They weren’t plowed over, repurposed, or re-seeded. They simply were left alone. Flora immediately went to work: soon these fields were covered in wildflowers and weeds, and then thorn bushes and brambles, and then the skinny shoots of young spruce trees. Now, thirty-five years later, Estonia is now one of the most forested countries in Europe, having nearly doubled the size of its forests by doing … nothing. Half the country is now a forest, and over 90 percent of those forests have naturally regenerated.</p>
<p>When I say that Centralia is <em>thriving, </em>this is what I mean. It is a landscape pulsing with life, overflowing with lush greenery. The old grid of streets is still visible, and there are still a handful of houses with carefully mowed lawns sitting in defiance. But everything else is the wild and vital province of nature. Turkeyfoot, broom-sedge, and switchgrass and silky dogwood. Young white oaks and linden trees push their way through this cacophony of life. Everywhere that’s not asphalt is a riot of green in every possible shade. And all of this is possible, at least in part, because the state and federal governments have forbidden any new human settlement, giving the wild and the lush and untrammeled room to grow.</p>
<p>Not all of this is just nature. In 2021, the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation planted 250 apple trees in the hope of attracting butterflies. EPCAMR has hosted annual trash clean-ups in the town, but a few years ago turned to planting and furthering the former town’s potential as an unofficial wildlife sanctuary. “We’re trying to get that area designated as a monarch way station eventually,” Robert “Bobby” Hughes, executive director of EPCAMR said at the time. But as vital as this work is, it seems primarily that the rewilding of Centralia is simply the work of leaving it alone.</p>
<p>Standing in what was once a small, otherwise forgettable town, I came to understand how folly, mistake, calamitous hubris, neglect, and plain stupidity—could all be weapons in an arsenal to rewild and reforest the Earth, a future waiting in places we mistakenly believe we have irredeemably scarred.</p>
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<p>Beyond the town itself, the thing people have come to mourn here is the Graffiti Highway, which for years was a strange destination before it was covered over in 2020. It began, as these things often do, as spontaneous tagging and defacement. But over time, more taggers added their names, their designs, their art, and their stories, until it had become a makeshift historical record of the people who live here.</p>
<p>Over time, it had begun to encroach on the natural history that was also unfolding, spilling out beyond the asphalt and into the forest, as trees and plants started to get defaced. It became an attractive nuisance, repeated bonfires and ATV crashes straining local resources, so when coal company Pagnotti Enterprises bought the land in 2018, they chose to bury the road in dirt and erased it for good. There is now, in the words of many Redditors, no reason to go to Centralia. But the company’s decision also obliterated what some saw as a vital piece in the region’s history. Pagnotti’s<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=pagnotti+enterprises&amp;oq=pagnotti+enterprises&amp;gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDM4MjBqMGo3qAIAsAIA&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x89c51a61c01ed687:0x1b1a2cd6c4d6b514,1,,,,"> reviews</a> on Google are uniformly one-star ratings alongside comments like “You ruined graffiti highway,” “ruined a landmark, nice piles of dirt, go die,” and so on.</p>
<p>For those who contributed to the Graffiti Highway, it had marked loves and losses, honored the dead and celebrated the living, all in a hundred different colors. (Park Street in Centralia has since begun to take the place of the old Graffiti Highway, decorated with a variety of tags, but at the moment it has nowhere near the density of the original Graffiti Highway. Some monuments take time to rebuild.)</p>
<p>Kutztown University professor Deryl Johnson has called the story of Graffiti Highway an “epilogue” to the story of Centralia itself, but I’m not sure I agree. The story of Centralia is still very much unfolding—it did not end in 1982, and it did not end in 2020. Now that the highway is gone, the tourist attraction draw of this place has waned, leaving even more space for the natural world to reclaim the land. A new chapter has begun, and there may be other chapters in the story yet to come—chapters whose shape and direction we can only guess at.</p>
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<p>If you think of Centralia in terms of human habitation, it’s a ghost town, a few stubborn holdouts fighting against entropy and inertia. If you think of Centralia in terms of legend tripping and ruin porn, it’s nothing at all, barely a wide spot in the road. But if you think of Centralia as an unintended nature preserve, it is absolutely bursting with life and potential and possibility.</p>
<p>Yet still the ground burns. Just out of the grid of streets that was once the town, down Big Mine Run Road, are the vents themselves: small holes in the sides of the hills like something out of Tolkien that lead down to inferno below. These days, the smoke itself is rarely visible, but when rain filters down to the fires, it comes back out as steam. So on the rainy day of our visit, we watched as these vents let out a small, steady stream of white steam, proof of the heat somewhere beneath our feet.</p>
<p>It was an odd sensation. The wisps seemed peaceful, laconic, almost soothing. And at the same time, it seemed as though at any moment the entire valley would explode. Somehow it felt like both of these things at once.</p>
<p>Looking at these gentle wisps of smoke, it is difficult to picture the smoldering inferno they emerged from. A fire that has raged out of control for sixty years, unending and older than most people you know. You try and you fail every time.</p>
<p>Which is to say, Centralia’s mine fire is a thing that should not be. I can describe to you its history, the actions of the people involved. I can describe to you what the surface looks like, the species of plants, the words etched into the tombstones at the Odd Fellows Cemetery. But the secret, raging, burning heart of the Valley remains elusive.</p>
<p>The plumes are a subtle reminder, easy to miss, that there is a reason for this pristine, thriving wildness all around us. That the coal mines underground are a price that has to be paid, paid to an underworld god that must be forever fed.</p>]]>
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      <title>The Quest to Visit 1,000 Places</title>
      <dc:creator>The Podcast Team </dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-caroline-mazel-carlton-1000-places</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-caroline-mazel-carlton-1000-places</guid>
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<p class="item-body-text-graf"><strong>Listen and subscribe on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-atlas-obscura-podcast/id1555769970">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT">Spotify</a>, and all major podcast apps.</strong></p>
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<p>I’m Kelly McEvers, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places.</p>
<p>So I don’t know about you, but I like to keep track of all the places that I have visited, say, in the past year. I have lists of all the countries that I visit in a given region. Each year I go back to my handwritten calendar planner book because, yes, I still write everything down.</p>
<p>I have kept track of all my trips, and that helps me remember all the places I’ve visited and the people I saw. Most people I know are, of course, more advanced than this. They actually keep digital records like lists of restaurants where they want to go or Google Maps with pins on places.</p>
<p>In case you have somehow stumbled upon this podcast and you don’t know too much about Atlas Obscura, we actually have a map, an Atlas, filled with thousands upon thousands of unusual places across the globe. Each place is submitted by a person, and it is a fun tool to use whether you are on vacation or you want to get to know your own hometown better.</p>
<p>My guest today has visited over 1,000 of these places. Her name is Caroline Mazel-Carlton, and she has been working toward that goal for more than 10 years. This project, Visiting 1,000 places, was about more than just taking items off the list. She says it helped save her life.</p>
<p>Caroline, welcome.</p>
<p><em>This is an edited transcript of the </em><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/podcast"><em>Atlas Obscura Podcast</em></a><em>: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on </em><a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=89027X1542228&amp;isjs=1&amp;jv=15.7.1&amp;sref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.atlasobscura.com%2Farticles%2Fpodcast-montezuma-well&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-atlas-obscura-podcast%2Fid1555769970&amp;xs=1&amp;xtz=300&amp;xuuid=f238828fc9c8f1386593b6f8b1d81e7b&amp;xjsf=other_click__contextmenu%20%5B2%5D"><em>Apple Podcasts</em></a><em>, </em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/0s0c4Z99PwbW8efTmHckyT"><em>Spotify</em></a><em>, and all major podcast apps. </em><em>This episode contains discussions of suicidal thoughts. If you or someone you know is struggling, contact the Suicide Crisis Hotline by calling or texting 988.</em></p>
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<p><strong>Caroline Mazel-Carlton: </strong>Oh, I’m getting teary already. It’s so good to be here. Thank you, Kelly.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly McEvers: </strong>Yeah, welcome. So talk about your first ever visit to an Atlas Obscura place.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline Mazel-Carlton: </strong>Yeah. So one of the first times that I remember using the Atlas Obscura was when I wanted to take my now-husband on a romantic interlude, like a nice weekend away. And so I was looking for spots—bed and breakfasts—and the Atlas Obscura was so helpful because it showed me that not too far away in Fall River, Massachusetts, you can find <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lizzie-borden-bed-and-breakfast-and-museum">Lizzie Borden’s house</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>In case you’re not familiar, in 1892, Lizzie Borden allegedly murdered her parents, Abby and Andrew Borden, in their house with an axe. Lizzie was acquitted. And Caroline believes she was innocent. But the whole thing has become a bit of a folk story.</p>
<p>And the house where the murders took place still stands now as this untraditional bed and breakfast.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>They had this whole getaway that you could have and sleep in Lizzie Borden’s house. They had dummies set up, sort of positioned where, Andrew Borden, what he would have looked like after the crime had been committed. So it was this beautiful Victorian house full of wonderful <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leilas-hair-museum">Victorian hair art</a>, which I’m a big fan of Victorian hair art as well—some great specimens of that there. So it was just an amazing experience.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>And I would imagine that your now husband was into it?</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Oh, yeah, yeah. It was sort of like a litmus test in a way.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>I was going to say, if he passed that, then he knew he was a keeper.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>There’s a beautiful picture of us taken where we were sitting on this like Victorian couch and we have the dummy representing Andrew Borden’s bloody corpse splayed out across our laps. And we’re just brimming with young love. And it’s such a beautiful photograph.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Yeah. I love it. You’re like, this is the one for me.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Absolutely. And I did try, when we got married, I tried to convince my mom to let me use that photo for our save the date. But she said, “No, I’m not into the idea of this bloody corpse photo.” So we ended up using a picture from another trip we took to Paris.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Nice. And I would love to just know where your urge to go places started. What was one of your most memorable trips you took as a kid?</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>So my family growing up, we weren’t the type of family that went to the same beach or the same lake house every year for vacation. One of my family mottos was, “We’ll go anywhere once.”</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Oh, I love that.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>And so my dad has always been a history buff, but he’s never shied away from the weirder and grittier parts of American history. Some of my early memories are definitely wandering around graveyards.</p>
<p>I remember seeing the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skin-of-little-sorrel-lexington-virginia">taxidermied horse</a> of Stonewall Jackson in some weird museum in Virginia. One place we went, and sadly, you can’t go here anymore. My dad has sort of, like, a dark streak, like, dark humor.</p>
<p>And he became obsessed with the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/31-days-of-halloween-floyd-collins">story of this guy named Floyd Collins</a>, who was a cave explorer that actually got trapped and died in the Mammoth Cave system. So my dad and I actually did some caving together and visited the museum that honors this man. A tribute to explorers everywhere, but sadly he did not make it out of the cave.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Mm-hmm. You actually set this goal of trying to visit 1,000 Atlas Obscura places over a decade ago in 2012. And for so many people, you know, travel and seeing the world, there’s all these reasons we do it, but a lot of it is like: I want a change in perspective, or I want to learn more about this culture. I want to be wowed.</p>
<p>For you, it sounds like there was a really kind of specific reason that you did this. Can you take us back to that time and talk about what was going on in your life?</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>So for me, I grew up experiencing a lot of bullying over how I looked or the way that I acted. And I started to struggle a lot with thoughts of suicide. And in fact, for certain parts of my life I was hospitalized and was in treatment programs where you’re not allowed to leave places like that. So it’s kind of a smaller existence.</p>
<p>For me, it was always trying to figure out, how do I survive? How do I find a way to exist in this world? And what I realized is, for a lot of us that grapple with suicidal thoughts, it’s not truly that we want to literally die, but that the life that we’re living needs to end. It’s sort of this desire to be transformed in a way.</p>
<p>For me, trying to figure out how to exist in the world has always been a bit of a battle in and of itself. And I remember one time seeing a book on my uncle. My uncle Doug also loved to travel the world. And he had a book called <em>1,000 Places to See Before You Die.</em></p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Okay.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>And I thought about that. And I thought about the power of saying to myself, you know what? You can’t die today because there’s still places that you haven’t seen yet. So I used that book for a while, but then when I discovered Atlas Obscura, I was like, these sites are actually more interesting to me.</p>
<p>They’re more accessible. They’re weirder. As I visit Atlas Obscura sites, I often learn about weird people like myself. I’ve seen amazing outsider art. So reaching a thousand Atlas Obscura sites before I died became really, really important to me.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Since then, Caroline has visited Atlas Obscura places around the world, from the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-johnny-appleseed">grave of Johnny Appleseed</a> in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to a <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shree-ganesh-darshan-museum">temple complex</a> in Pune, India, with 500 statues of Lord Ganesh. Once, on a 16-hour layover in Hong Kong, she left the airport and took a tram over the mountains to see the world's <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tian-tan-buddha">largest-seated bronze Buddha.</a></p>
<p>She’s been to the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/icelandic-phallological-museum">Icelandic Phallological Museum</a> in Reykjavik and the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-largest-czech-egg">world’s largest Czech egg</a> in Wilson, Kansas, and <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/deyrolle-taxidermy">a taxidermy shop in Paris</a> that Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali would visit for inspiration. Taxidermy holds a special place in Caroline’s heart.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>There’s one Atlas Obscura site I’m going to give a shout out to, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oles-big-game-steakhouse-and-lounge">Ole’s Big Game Steakhouse in Nebraska</a>, where you can be surrounded by taxidermy and also you can eat at the same time.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Which, not going to lie, doesn’t sound great to some people, but I love it.</p>
<p>Today, Caroline works in suicide prevention. with an organization that does peer support, advocacy, and training for harm reduction. And she brought her 1,000 places goal into that work.</p>
<p>Caroline has led trainings around the world, and sometimes on these trips, she and her colleagues will visit Atlas Obscura sites together. Caroline says it is really hard to choose a favorite memory.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Oh, there are so many. I remember one time we were doing an alternatives to suicide training and we were in Tacoma, Washington, and we actually found on Atlas Obscura the grave of Kurt Cobain, who was someone that I looked up to when I was younger, one of my favorite musicians, and who did die by suicide.</p>
<p>But we went there together and it felt like such a special place to be there and honor him and his role in our lives and the way he could give voice to pain in a way that other people could connect with. I also remember a time where I was giving a talk at The Hague in the Netherlands and we visited a museum.</p>
<p>I think it’s called Museum of the Mind, which had been a psychiatric hospital. But then they filled it with art, beautiful art made from former psychiatric patients. So going there and to some of the Van Gogh sites. And it’s just been incredible to do that with some of my colleagues who’ve also struggled with thoughts of suicide.</p>
<p>And I really look at this achievement of reaching a thousand sites as something that we did together. And it felt really special because it was all connected to the journey of healing and embracing our weirdness and our desire to live in a world that’s not always, you know, normative.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>So, I mean, you hit the goal, right? You’re over 1,000. You’re at 1,048, to be exact. So what’s next? I mean, how do you, you know, where do you go from there? Do you set a new goal? Are you just going to keep on keeping on at this point? Do you feel like you’re going to travel differently now?</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Yeah. Well, after meeting the goal, I was like, I can rest a little bit because I honestly thought I’m 43. So I thought I would be at least 50 before I hit 1,000. but I hit it much more quickly than I thought I would. But the thing about Atlas Obscura is there’s always more you can do.</p>
<p>And one of the things that I really encourage everyone listening to do is to add sites to the Atlas yourself. It’s a thrill for me to do that. I remember one time I was working in Brazil and we were just in this little town that had no Atlas Obscura sites, but I’m like, I’m going to find something.</p>
<p>And I found this guy with a little, he had a cell phone store, but then he had sort of in the back rooms, all these historical communication devices. Even one of the first Morse code devices and a phonograph. And we got to, through broken English and broken Portuguese, I wrote an article and posted that on the Atlas, and I checked it today, and now eight people have been there.</p>
<p>When you add a site to the Atlas, you really do change people’s lives. You know, I don’t struggle as much in my life anymore as when I started because the world just seems more weird and welcoming.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>Caroline Mazel-Carlton, thank you so much for sharing your story and thank you for the work that you do helping other people too.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Absolutely. I just seek to make this place more welcoming and, you know, people are struggling. My organization, we have alternatives to suicide support groups. There are places you can go to talk where people will listen and not shame you or judge you and where we acknowledge that there’s many paths to healing.</p>
<p>And sometimes that path to healing means walking around a really weird taxidermy store and that’s okay.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>While eating a steak.</p>
<p><strong>Caroline: </strong>Yes. I’m here for it.</p>
<p><strong>Kelly: </strong>That was Caroline Mazel-Carlton. She has visited 1,048 Atlas Obscura places. No doubt many more to come. We will put a link to the Atlas in our show notes, so maybe you can start ticking off your own list of 1,000 places. Also, if you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.</p>]]>
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      <title>On 'Turtle Island,' Indigenous Food Is Not the Past—It’s the Future</title>
      <dc:creator>Sam O'Brien</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Sun, 11 Jan 2026 09:20:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sean-sherman-turtle-island-cookbook</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sean-sherman-turtle-island-cookbook</guid>
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<p><em>Join Gastro Obscura's Sam O'Brien each week for Kitchen Dispatch as she tests new recipes and explores wondrous foods from her home kitchen. <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/newsletters/gastro-obscura">Subscribe to get it in the Gastro newsletter</a>.</em></p>
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<p>One of my favorite parts of researching <em>The Gastro Obscura Cookbook</em> is talking to leaders in the food world about the recipes that matter most to them. When it comes to Indigenous food of North America, few experts rival <a href="https://seansherman.com/">Sean Sherman</a>. An Oglala Lakota chef raised on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, Sherman has devoted his career to studying and promoting Indigenous cuisine.</p>
<p>From his <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/users/hogarth/lists/minneapolis">Minneapolis</a> restaurant, <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/owamni">Owamni</a>—which focuses on native ingredients and eschews post-colonial additions like dairy, wheat flour, sugar, and pork—to his first cookbook, <a href="https://seansherman.com/books/"><em>The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen</em></a>, Sherman has made it his mission to showcase the bounty of Indigenous foodways.</p>
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<p>But his latest project is probably his most ambitious: <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/712577/turtle-island-by-sean-sherman-with-kate-nelson-and-kristin-donnelly/"><em>Turtle Island</em></a>, a cookbook covering the cuisines of Indigenous communities across North America (known as “Turtle Island” to many Indigenous tribes). From Maya turkey <em>pibil</em> of the Yucatán Peninsula to Yurok hot-smoked salmon of Northern California, Sherman’s book covers an impressive swath of Indigenous culinary diversity.</p>
<p>I recently spoke with Sherman about his new book, his mission, and the recipe that he believes best embodies Indigeneity. Here’s an excerpt of our conversation.</p>
<p><strong>Sam O’Brien</strong>: I’d like to start by talking about <em>Turtle Island</em>, which is impressively ambitious in its scope. You’re tackling all these different regions and communities. Can you talk about the process of making it?</p>
<p><strong>Sean Sherman:</strong> The vision was to showcase all this Indigenous diversity that’s still very much alive, erasing these colonial construct borders and looking at this tapestry of diversity. I wanted to create something that wasn’t out there for people as a resource because a book like this didn’t really exist.</p>
<p>It felt like a continuation of my work because <em>The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen</em> was a much smaller project. But that book was really just laying out the initial philosophy of how I was going about approaching Indigenous foods in today’s world and restructuring things, removing fry bread, removing all colonial ingredients like dairy and wheat flour, cane sugar, and beef, pork, and chicken, and just focusing on how you identify and cook what’s regional and Indigenous, and still paying homage to a lot of the tribes and their traditions.</p>
<p>So with this book, I wanted to go a little bit bigger, and I wanted to see the connection of Indigenous peoples everywhere, whether you’re Indigenous in Southern Mexico or Northern Alaska or the middle of the United States.</p>
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<p><strong>SO:</strong> Speaking of that vast diversity, did you learn anything in terms of how the food you grew up eating compares to other communities around North America?</p>
<p><strong>SS:</strong> I didn't grow up with a lot of Indigenous foods, like many people in tribal communities. We grew up in segregated communities as reservation systems. A lot of us grew up with commodity foods from the government, with canned vegetables, meats, and fruits, and empty white carbs like powdered milk and sugar. It's created health epidemics in tribal communities.</p>
<p>A lot of this work about food sovereignty is bringing an understanding of our own foods back to us. We can work on rebuilding our food systems, not be reliant on government food programs that have made us really sick, and bring a lot of pride and connection back to our ancestors.</p>
<p>But envisioning this future means not being stuck in the past and making a couple of recipes or just adopting fry bread, but looking at so much more. Most of the recipes [in the book] were built with a future in mind because we weren’t trying to recreate the past. There’s a handful of traditional recipes in the book, but most of them are just interpretations of what we can do moving forward. To me, this is a futurist book of just looking at what would happen if we included the Indigenous perspective on our food systems and we could really showcase so much vast diversity in the regionality of our foods everywhere.</p>
<p><strong>SO:</strong> Speaking of commodity foods and colonial ingredients, in <em>Turtle</em> <em>Island</em>, it’s striking to see the contrast between how you talk about your experience eating the commodity foods that were forced on you and how you talk about eating Indigenous foods at community gatherings. It’s so vivid reading about foods like wóžapi [a berry sauce] and tȟaníǧa [a bison or beef intestine soup]. How often were you able to eat foods like that growing up?</p>
<p><strong>SS:</strong> We had wóžapi a few times a year. It was typically special, like holidays or birthdays. We would harvest the chokecherries as kids in the summer, and then my grandmother would make big batches of it, and we’d use it here and there. We also had a handful of foods like the tȟaníǧa, the intestine soup, like the thíŋpsiŋla [also known as “prairie turnips”].</p>
<p>So there were a handful of recipes that survived. I didn’t have to go far back into history because this was just my grandparents’ generation that was the first generation stripped away from all their stuff. Because my grandparents were born at the beginning of the century, they grew up speaking Lakota first, but they’re one of the first generations to be pushed through boarding schools and cut their hair, learn Christianity, and just be stripped away with what it meant to be Lakota.</p>
<p>But a lot of Lakota culture has been very strong and survived. We still have a lot of music. Our language is strong. Our stories are strong. But food was missing. So this work was really just trying to figure out why it was missing and what can we do to bring it back.</p>
<p><strong>SO:</strong> I know it’s hard to pick one, but are there any recipes from <em>Turtle Island</em>, <em>The Sioux Chef,</em> or your restaurant that you think especially embody the story you’re trying to share with the world?</p>
<p><strong>SS:</strong> I feel like different readers, especially if you’re from Indigenous backgrounds, will connect with different recipes from different regions. But for me, there’s a recipe called pápa waháŋpi, and it’s a dried bison soup. It’s a really traditional-style recipe, but to me, it tasted so much like home. You have the thíŋpsiŋla, the prairie turnips, from the Great Plains and the Dakotas, and a simple mushroom broth and the dried bison. It was just a really simple soup, but it had so much character to me, and it really spoke to home. It just connected to my soul.</p>
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<p><strong>SO:</strong> I’d love to make it. I know where I live, in Philadelphia, it might be hard to track down an ingredient like prairie turnip. Is it okay to make substitutions?</p>
<p><strong>SS:</strong> Yes. And we offered some substitutions in the book of what people can do to at least try to mimic it. But some of these will be very special, and that’s just the way it was designed. When we wrote this book, the publisher knew that not everybody was going to be able to make every recipe. We don’t have to have instant access to everything because you’re not going to find thíŋpsiŋla in the market. You’re not going to find javelina [wild boar] at your local Whole Foods, and you’re probably not going to find seal meat at Target. Some of these recipes are special; you might need to be in the right region at the right time with the right group of people to experience them.</p>
<p><strong>SO:</strong> I get that. In some ways, the book is a reference that’s telling a story, not just being like, <em>Oh, you have to make this specific recipe</em>. It’s educational in a very beautiful way.</p>
<p><strong>SS:</strong> Yeah. That’s what it was meant to be, to use the power of the language of food to talk about some really important things. And some of these are difficult histories. Some things we don’t learn because we grew up in America. We don’t learn about American history, except through an obscured colonial viewpoint at best. And so there’s so much to talk about everywhere, and there’s so much connection that Indigenous peoples have that they’ve had to go through. And so food is a really great way to be able to convey a lot of that knowledge.</p>
<p class="p1"><em>This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.</em></p>]]>
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      <title>Inside America’s First Destination Ski Town</title>
      <dc:creator>Virginia  Brown</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:23:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sun-valley-americas-first-destination-ski-town</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sun-valley-americas-first-destination-ski-town</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p>In the heart of Idaho, about 150 miles east of Boise, the steep slopes of Bald Mountain tower over a sun-kissed valley. For roughly a century, visitors have flocked to Sun Valley from all over the country for its premiere skiing and snowboarding. But behind these sought-after slopes, there’s an impressive history and one-of-a-kind cultural experiences that make it a unique destination.</p>
<p>Hollywood’s most celebrated stars have traveled to the valley for decades, yet Sun Valley has managed to maintain a laid-back local life and spirit even amid such A-list appeal. That rare blend of low-pretension modernity—coupled with nonstop flights from eight major metropolitan areas, including Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles—make Sun Valley a low-stress, culture-packed getaway.</p>
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<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd">A History of Innovation</h2>
<p>Long before the glistening snow and sun-soaked days helped launch Sun Valley into a skier's dreamland, a sparkle of another sort caught national attention: silver. In the 1870s, the first discoveries of the precious metal attracted prospectors from across the nation.</p>
<p>An anchor of the region, the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/lodging/sun-valley-lodge/">Sun Valley Resort</a>, with slopes that cater to beginners and seasoned veterans in equal measure, has hosted some of the most iconic stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood.</p>
<p>But it was born in part out of necessity: The Great Depression hit the railroad business hard in the region. In 1936, Averell Harriman, the chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad at the time, had the idea to boost traffic on its lines by building an exclusive European-style destination ski resort. At the time there were virtually no U.S. ski areas that had upscale lodging and dining right at the slopes.</p>
<p>To add to the must-see appeal, the resort unveiled the first-ever chairlift on nearby Proctor Mountain. The brainchild of James Curran, an engineer with the railroad, its inspiration came from a surprising place: bananas. While traveling in tropical regions, Curran had seen bananas hooked in bunches and hauled to the dock by pulley systems. Why not try the same with people?</p>
<p>That December, “Life Magazine” featured the new technology, which helped position the resort as a go-to getaway. The lift, which moved skiers 20 feet off the ground for more than 3,500 feet with a 1,150-foot gain in elevation, opened up the sport to people who might not have otherwise had the stamina for the activity.</p>
<p>Cinema’s elite, including Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable, stayed at the resort, and Ernest Hemingway, whose <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ernest-hemingway-s-grave">burial site</a> is also in Sun Valley, finished “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in suite 206 of the Sun Valley lodge. More recently, the region has also attracted business elites and tech giants like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Apple CEO Tim Cook.</p>
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<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd">Laid-Back Local Vibe</h2>
<p>Today in Sun Valley Village, the walkable heart of the resort, that glamorous essence is anchored by an affable vibe and crowd-pleasing activities. The 1937 opera house now serves as a movie theater, which features films by snow and skiboard filmmaker Warren Miller, among other classics. Ice skating enthusiasts may want to check out the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/searching-for-sun-valley/get-to-know-every-ice-rink-in-the-wood-river-valley/">Sun Valley ice rink</a>, a known hangout for Olympic athletes as they prepare for the popular Sun Valley on Ice shows. And additional dining, shopping, and entertainment options abound in nearby Ketchum, located less than two miles down the road (which also has its own free outdoor ice rink, open from late December until mid-February).</p>
<p>Dining in Sun Valley can be as cosmopolitan or low-key as your tastes crave. For a rustic, homestyle pick, <a href="https://www.kneadery.com">The Kneadery</a> in North Ketchum serves up hearty breakfast and lunch dishes and has been a local go-to since 1974. Owners Dillon and Heather Witmer have cultivated an impressive collection of Western art and artifacts for decades, and diners will spot a canoe hanging from the dining room ceiling, while a taxidermied grizzly bear and mounted antlers on wood-paneled walls add to the cozy, lodge-like feel.</p>
<p>For a contemporary option be sure to check out Cookbook, which offers flavor-packed bites ranging from grilled Idaho trout to house-made pesto and inventive pizzas. The restaurant, which was originally located in a 1932 church but has since moved to a larger location, serves up plenty of vegetarian options as well, and is commended by guests for its great service and family friendly atmosphere.</p>
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<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd">Vibrant Off-Slope Culture</h2>
<p>Even if you never hit the slopes, Sun Valley is full of high-quality, even quirky, cultural experiences all year long. The <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/to-do/sun-valley-museum-of-art/">Sun Valley Museum of Art</a> in Ketchum is a regional hub for contemporary and local art, formed in 1971. Each year, the museum hosts resident artists and features exhibitions and events featuring visual arts, film, music, and more.</p>
<p>When the Wood River Valley is blanketed in snow, the region is also host to the <a href="https://sunvalleyfilmfestival.org">Sun Valley Film Festival</a>, an annual, five-day event that has featured legendary filmmakers and Hollywood’s best, including Clint Eastwood, Jodie Foster, and Woody Harrelson, since 2011. Screenings, cocktail and coffee chats, and big-ticket parties honor the greatest names in film and introduce emerging artists. Monthly movies and educational programming are also offered year-round.</p>
<p>Each January, respected culinary masters and rising food stars emerge at the <a href="https://visitsunvalley.com/events/sun-valley-food-wine-celebration-2/">Sun Valley Food &amp; Wine Celebration</a>. The Sun Valley Culinary Institute hosts this popular, five-day event, featuring James Beard Award winners, champions from the Food Network “Chopped” reality show, exclusive chef dinners, cooking classes, and spirited Après Ski events.</p>
<p>The Sun Valley Pavilion buzzes in summer with sound at the <a href="https://www.svmusicfestival.org">​​Sun Valley Music Festival</a>, a month-long event that offers world-class musicians performing in a relaxed outdoor venue.</p>
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<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd">Spirited Character</h2>
<p>Sun Valley residents take pride in their rich heritage, cause for memorable celebrations. As the trees in downtown Ketchum begin to morph from green to fiery orange and red, over a thousand sheep amble along Main Street for the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-trailing-of-the-sheep">Trailing of the Sheep Festival</a>. Each fall, Sun Valley honors the annual sheep migration from the summer’s high mountain pastures to the warmer grazing and lambing regions in the south, an event known historically as “trailing.” The festival is packed with wool-making classes, culinary lessons, live music and folklore, and more.</p>
<p>For Labor Day, Sun Valley residents celebrate another part of their heritage at <a href="https://www.wagondays.com">Wagon Days</a>. Founded in 1958, the tradition honors the history and mining heritage of the region, including one of the weekend’s most anticipated events: the Big Hitch Parade, which showcases antique buggies, carriages, carts, and more parading through downtown Ketchum.</p>
<p>Whether you’re an avid skier or just want to soak in sunny days as you experience a culturally rich pocket of American history, surprises await in Sun Valley.</p>]]>
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      <title>Discover Arizona’s Majesty</title>
      <dc:creator>Margo  Steines</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:57:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/arizona-guide</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/arizona-guide</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p>Arizona is wild in its environmental diversity, boasting five of the six distinct types of ecological biomes. Tundra, forest, woodland, scrub, grassland, and desert biomes are spread across the state, with four deserts, over 210 named mountain ranges, a biblical-scale monsoon season—and, of course, the Grand Canyon. The Sonoran Desert, which stretches across much of the state’s southern half, is a “lush desert,” meaning that it receives rain twice a year, and thus features a visually stunning blend of sepia tones and deep green vegetation.</p>
<p>The state’s rich culture reflects the diversity of its Native populations and the many who have migrated to the area, along with a strong connection to Mexican cultural heritage. The region is the ancestral and current home to twenty-two federally recognized Native American tribes, including Diné (Navajo Nation) and the Tohono O'odham Nation.</p>
<h3>Northern Region: Flagstaff and Holbrook</h3>
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<h3>Behold Arizona’s Sublime Beauty</h3>
<p>The Rainbow Forest includes the largest and most colorful displays of petrified wood in Petrified Forest National Park.</p>
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<p>Ancient geology and celestial discovery converge in Northern Arizona, inviting travelers to reflect on humanity’s place between the stars above and the eons below. Many visitors come for the Grand Canyon, but Northern Arizona contains multitudes. The high-elevation region features rugged mountain ranges, the state’s highest peak, and four distinct seasons, making it a destination for winter sports, mountaineering, and astronomy. The charming city of Flagstaff serves as home base to Northern Arizona University, the regional destination ski resort Snowbowl, and the Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lowell-observatory">Lowell Observatory</a></h3>
<p>Stargazers flock to Lowell Observatory, a world-class astronomy destination on the edge of Flagstaff. The site has been in continuous operation since the late 1800s, when it was established by Percival Lowell, a financier and astronomer who became obsessed with the possibility of life on Mars. Lowell had the means to fund his fascinations, and thus Lowell Observatory was built, with Northern Arizona selected as its site for its high elevation and dark skies. Pluto was discovered here, and the city’s commitment was recognized in 2001, when Flagstaff became the first International Dark Sky City.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="http://www2.lowell.edu/users/elgb/observing_site.html">Mars Hill and Anderson Mesa</a></h3>
<p>Just west of Flagstaff proper sits Mars Hill, part of Lowell Observatory’s campus and the site of the apocryphal origin story of the theory of dark matter. As you drive up the hill, spot the iconic dome of the Clark Refractor, a telescope dating back to the 1800s. Continue your astronomy tour by heading southeast to spot Anderson Mesa, a flattop plateau in Coconino County that hosts Anderson Mesa Station, a dark-sky astronomical observatory.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/petrified-forest-national-park">Petrified Forest National Park</a></h3>
<p>Is it rock? Is it wood? The answer is yes at Petrified Forest National Park, where hundreds of millions of years of the organic process of permineralization have turned what was once a forest of trees into a wavy psychedelic desert landscape laden with fossils. These artifacts of the Triassic period (the era when dinosaurs are thought to have first appeared) include compression fossils of leaves, seeds, insects, and fish as well as scattered petrified logs.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/850116.htm#6/27.450/-89.143">Rainbow Forest</a></h3>
<p>Nestled within Petrified Forest National Park, the Rainbow Forest features huge, vibrant rocks in deep reds, yellows, blues, and purples. The rocks began life as trees, petrified over hundreds of millions of years, and draw their vivid hues from minerals like manganese, iron oxide, quartz, and hematite. Pop into the Rainbow Forest Museum to learn about the geological and cultural history of the land, which is the historic home of the Ancestral Puebloan people.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.visitarizona.com/places/parks-monuments/painted-desert">Painted Desert</a></h3>
<p>Before you leave Petrified Forest National Park, head to the park’s north side to visit the Painted Desert, another region of the park with unique geological characteristics. Here, find badlands with distinctly visible layers—looking like they were painted with a steady hand. These layers are the result of stratification of shale, mudstone, and siltstone, each of which carry a distinctive pigment.</p>
<h3>Central Region: Clarkdale, Camp Verde, and Jerome</h3>
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<h3>Explore Vibrant Arts, Culture, and Experiences</h3>
<p>Evidence suggests the construction at Montezuma Castle National Monument began in the 1100s. It was occupied until as late as 1395.</p>
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<p>In Central Arizona, Saguaros stand watch over canyons and copper towns, linking ancient ingenuity, industrial ambition, and enduring cultural roots. The region features the sprawling state capital city of Phoenix, but the whole area is rich with Indigenous culture as well as niche historic sites dedicated to preserving the stories of the Wild West. Copper mining was and is a significant industry in the region, and the remnants of the extraction business are conserved in installations like the town of Jerome’s Mine Museum.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/verde-canyon-railroad">Verde Canyon Railroad</a></h3>
<p>The Verde Canyon Railroad, a quirky heritage railroad that runs 20 miles from Clarkdale to Perkinsville, features a vintage diesel locomotive powers that this sightseeing excursion, bringing riders through the vibrant wilderness landscape. In the canyon, keep your eyes peeled for the bald eagles who frequent the area.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://historicbridges.org/b_h_fipsm.php?bsearch=04025">Perkinsville Trestle</a></h3>
<p>As you ride the Verde Canyon Railroad, you’ll pass over a series of gorges formed by the Verde River. These steep valleys are spanned by metal trestles—making for extraordinary vistas from the open-air viewing cars. When your rail car traverses the Perkinsville Trestle, the tracks, directly underneath the car, are obscured to riders, creating the feeling that the railroad has taken flight.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.arizonacopperartmuseum.com">Arizona Copper Art Museum</a></h3>
<p>The deposits of copper embedded in Arizona’s earth have enticed miners since Native people harvested ore to make tools and jewelry. Since the early 1900s, industrial mining has pulled copper from the land. The former mining town Clarkdale is home to the Arizona Copper Art Museum, which stands as a testament to the creative uses of the mineral. On a visit, check out the distillery room, where you’ll find elaborate copper vessel systems for winemaking.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/montezuma-castle-national-monument">Montezuma Castle National Monument</a></h3>
<p>Pull off the highway in Camp Verde to stop by Montezuma Castle National Monument, a historic site that honors and preserves the prehistoric cliff dwelling architecture of the Indigenous Sinagua people. Built into a limestone cliff is a multi-level 20-room dwelling that is noted as one of the best-preserved examples of pre-contact architecture.</p>
<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.nps.gov/moca/planyourvisit/exploring-montezuma-well.htm">Montezuma Well</a></h3>
<p>Within Montezuma Castle National Monument lies a giant hole: Montezuma Well. Nearly 400 feet from shore to shore, the “well” is in fact a huge, naturally occurring spring-fed limestone sinkhole full of carbonated, arsenic-laden water. The well serves as home to five species of fauna that exist nowhere else in the world, including the water scorpion.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jeromes-sliding-jail">Jerome’s Sliding Jail</a></h3>
<p>In Jerome (population 464), the main attraction is a small jail structure that was erected in the early 1900s on the slope of a mountain. Dynamite from nearby mines caused the jail to literally slide down the hill until finding stasis on the main thoroughfare. Now a visitor’s attraction, the jail harks back to the days of the Wild West, when hard-drinking rabble-rousers would sleep it off within the cell’s walls.</p>
<h3>Southern Region: Bisbee, Tubac, and Patagonia</h3>
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<h3>Experience Arizona’s Welcoming Warmth and Ties to Nature</h3>
<p>The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge is home to hundreds of species, including the pronghorn antelope, mule deer, and puma.</p>
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<p>Where wild canyons bloom and hummingbirds hover, artists, dreamers, and makers create in harmony with the desert’s vivid, living canvas. Known for its miles of Saguaro cacti, Southern Arizona is home to a large swath of the Sonoran Desert, about 370 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the city of Tucson.</p>
<p>The Sonoran Desert is home to a diversity of flora and fauna, including prickly pear, Gila monsters, roadrunners, and the western diamondback rattlesnake. For more sedate engagements with local culture, Tucson is a dining hotspot: a UNESCO City of Gastronomy, a designation awarded to sites of global culinary significance.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.bisbeebreakfastclub.com">Bisbee Breakfast Club</a></h3>
<p>Bisbee Breakfast Club locations can be spotted across Southern Arizona, but Bisbee is the home of the original. Within the nondescript beige building, the charmingly weathered interior is classic American diner with a Southwestern twist. Nosh on regional Mexican favorites like huevos rancheros and fan-fave house specialties like the Copper Queen Skillet, a mashup of eggs, potatoes, and seemingly every kind of breakfast meat: bacon, ham, sausage, and spicy sausage gravy.</p>
<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="http://www.oldbisbeebrewingcompany.com">Old Bisbee Brewing Co.</a></h3>
<p>For a bite and a brew in the kitschy town, the Old Bisbee Brewing Co. offers an eclectic and sophisticated menu of draft beers, brewed on-site. Strict IPA buffs will appreciate the heady Double Hopped IPA, while those with more experimental tastes may delight in the Mayan Stout, brewed using a heritage Mesoamerican bean.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.tubacarts.org">Tubac Center for the Arts</a></h3>
<p>Luxe meets rustic at Tubac, an arts and leisure complex tucked between the Tumacácori and Santa Rita mountains. Find the ritzy side at Tubac Golf Resort &amp; Spa, where golfers flock to the 27-hole course and spa-goers indulge, but the arts and the grounds are the real draw. Explore Tubac to find four galleries, a performance space, and arts library, plus a trail system that connects with the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.fws.gov/refuge/buenos-aires">Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge</a></h3>
<p>Near the border town of Sasabe, 117,000 acres of public grassland desert serves as an ecological reserve. Habitat restoration makes the refuge a safe haven for 50+ mammal species, with the land sheltering endangered species including the masked bobwhite quail. Find an open-access trail system as well as guided hikes, and complimentary public-access campsites. Keep your eyes peeled for deer, javelina, coyotes, skunks, rabbits—even the occasional jaguar.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://tucsonbirds.org/paton-center/">Paton Center for Hummingbirds</a></h3>
<p>Patagonia’s Paton Center for Hummingbirds is a conservation space for more than 250 bird species, including the rare violet-crowned hummingbird. The 1.4-acre woodland site began its life as the yard of a pair of local birdwatchers, who in the 1970s began inviting others to join them in marveling at the tiny avian pollinators. From there, the local Audubon Society acquired the property, which is lovingly managed as an oasis for birds and birders alike.</p>
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<h3 class="article-second-subheading-pre-rd"><a href="https://www.nps.gov/chir/index.htm">Chiricahua National Monument</a></h3>
<p>Find rocks on rocks on rocks at Chiricahua National Monument, where physics-defying rock stacks give an otherworldly feel to the ecological environs. The result of a historical volcanic event, the area’s rock formations (officially known as hoodoos and rhyolite pinnacles) look like blocks stacked by the hands of giants. Travelers can take in their weird splendor from 17 miles of maintained trails and campground facilities.</p>]]>
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      <title>20 Places to Travel and Transform Yourself in 2026, from Atlas Obscura</title>
      <dc:creator>Atlas Obscura</dc:creator>
      <pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2025 05:58:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/20-places-to-travel-and-transform-yourself-in-2026-from-atlas-obscura</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/20-places-to-travel-and-transform-yourself-in-2026-from-atlas-obscura</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p>Looking for your next adventure? These 20 extraordinary destinations might just change how you see the world in 2026. Each place on this list asks something of you—patience, curiosity, humility, wonder—and gives something back in return. They’re not just trips; they’re invitations to travel differently, and to come home changed.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>1.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/fes-el-bali"> <strong>Fes el-Bali in Fez, </strong>Morocco</a></h2>
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<p>Step through the<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-blue-gate-of-fes-fez-morocco"> Blue Gate</a> into the world's largest car-free medieval city—9,400 winding alleyways where 150,000 people live as their ancestors did. Getting lost among leather tanneries and spice souks forces you to surrender control and trust strangers, a reminder that not everything worth finding can be Googled.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> March-May or September-November for mild temperatures</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>2.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/waitomo-glowworm-caves"> <strong>Glowworm Caves in Waitomo, New Zealand</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Float silently through pitch-black caves beneath thousands of bioluminescent larvae creating nature's own planetarium. The <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/video-wonder-new-zealands-twinkling-glowworm-caves">boat journey</a> requires complete silence—no talking, no cameras. In our age of constant documentation, experiencing something you can't immediately share teaches you that some moments are meant to be felt, not captured.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> December-March (summer) for warmer weather above ground.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>3.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/kallur-lighthouse"> Kallur Lighthouse in Kalsoy, <strong>Faroe Islands, Kingdom of Denmark</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Eighteen volcanic islands with dramatic cliffs,<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/gasadalur-village-2"> grass-roofed villages</a>, and more sheep than people. Hike to Kallur Lighthouse or photograph Múlafossur waterfall cascading into the ocean. Weather changes every hour—all four seasons in a single day.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> June-July for longest days and accessible trails.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>4.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cappadocia"> <strong>Cappadocia in Aksaray, Turkey</strong></a></h2>
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<p><br />Volcanic eruptions created fairy chimneys, hidden<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/derinkuyu-underground-city"> cave churches with Byzantine frescoes, and underground cities</a>. One such city was even <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/derinkuyu-turkey-underground-city-strange-maps">discovered by a local resident</a> during a home renovation project. Take a hot air balloon ride at sunrise, explore the underground cities carved eight levels deep, or stay in a cave hotel.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> April-May or September-October for ideal balloon weather.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>5.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/into-the-glacier"> Langjökull<strong> Glacier Ice Caves near Húsafell, Iceland</strong></a></h2>
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<p>November through March, Iceland's glaciers reveal crystalline caves in impossible shades of blue. Because ice constantly melts and refreezes, you never see the same cave twice—each visit is literally once-in-human-history.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> January-February for most dramatic ice formations.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>6.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/petra"> <strong>Petra, Jordan</strong></a></h2>
<figure class="  "><img class="article-image  " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106230/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p>Walk through the narrow Siq canyon and emerge facing the Treasury—a 2,000-year-old facade carved into rose-red rock. This Nabataean city features hundreds of tombs and temples carved into sandstone. Climb to the Monastery or hike to <a class="underline underline underline-offset-2 decoration-1 decoration-current/40 hover:decoration-current focus:decoration-current" href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/little-petra">Little Petra</a> for solitude.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> March-May or September-November. Early morning light makes the sandstone glow.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>7.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cerro-fitz-roy"><strong> Cerro Fitz Roy in El Chaltén, Argentina</strong></a></h2>
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<p>The Patagonia logo mountain. This 3,405-meter granite spire offers saw-toothed peaks and glacial lakes in impossible turquoise. The trek to Laguna de Los Tres delivers sunrise views that turn granite into a golden shade of pink. If you want extra adventure and you have time to take your journey northward, start in El Chaltén and then journey to the small town of <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nahuelito-argentina-loch-ness-monster-bariloche-patagonia">Bariloche</a>, where Argentina's own Loch Ness monster is rumored to live.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> December-February (summer) for most stable weather.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>8.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bagan"> <strong>Bagan in Nyaung-U, Myanmar</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Over 2,000 Buddhist temples and pagodas built between the 11th-13th centuries dot ancient plains. Rent an e-bike to explore, climb select temples for sunrise, or take a hot air balloon ride. Less crowded than Angkor Wat, equally impressive.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> November-February (cool, dry season) for comfortable exploration.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>9.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salar-de-uyuni-bolivian-salt-flat"> <strong>Uyuni Salt Flat in Daniel Campos, Bolivia</strong></a></h2>
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<p>The world's largest salt flat—4,000 square miles of blinding white hexagons. During rainy season, thin water transforms it into the world's largest mirror, reflecting perfect sky. For more inspiration, check out these beautiful <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/salt-flat-landscape-bolivia">photos</a> and <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/satellite-calibration-salar-de-uyuni">satellite images</a>. Standing on these salt flats, where ground becomes sky and distance becomes meaningless, you understand that Earth still breaks every assumption about what's possible.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> December-April for mirror effect, May-October for hexagonal patterns.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>10.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/plitvi-ka-jezera-plitvice-lakes"> <strong>Plitvice Lakes in Plitvička Jezera, Croatia</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Sixteen terraced lakes connected by waterfalls cascade through forested canyons in shifting shades of azure, green, and blue. Wooden walkways let you walk directly over crystal-clear waters.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> May-June or September for lush greenery and fewer crowds.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>11.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/jigokudani-park-japan"> <strong>Jigokudani Monkey Park in Yamanouchi, Japan<br /></strong></a></h2>
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<p>Wild Japanese macaques soak in natural hot springs with snow falling around them in "Hell's Valley." They look <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/welcome-to-the-monkey-park">hilariously human</a>—eyes closed in contentment, grooming each other. A hike through snowy forest leads to nature's most charming spa.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> December-March when snow creates dramatic contrast.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>12. <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/route-66">Route 66, USA</a><br /></strong></h2>
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<p>In 2026, the<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/route-66-highlights"> Mother Road</a> celebrates its 100th birthday. The 2,400-mile stretch from<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/beginning-end-historic-route-66-chicago"> Chicago</a> to<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/route-66-end-trail"> Santa Monica</a> retains vintage motels, neon signs, diners, and quirky attractions—pure Americana.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> April-May or September-October for mild weather across climate zones.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>13.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/root-bridges-cherrapungee"> <strong>Root Bridges in Cherrapunji, India</strong></a></h2>
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<p>In one of Earth's wettest places, the <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/living-root-bridges-india">Khasi people - truly artisans - </a>grow bridges from rubber tree roots over 10-15 years. Some are 500+ years old and still strengthening. The double-decker bridge requires 3,000 steps but teaches that patience beats speed, that working with nature trumps dominating it, and the best solutions might take longer than a single lifetime.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> November-February (dry season) for safer paths.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>14.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/havasupai-falls"> <strong>Havasupai Falls in Supai, Arizona, USA</strong></a></h2>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106240/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p>Hidden in the Grand Canyon, waterfalls pour into pools so turquoise they don't look real. Calcium carbonate creates desert-meets-Caribbean waters. Requires 10-mile hike and advance permits from the Havasupai Tribe.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> March-May or September-October for mild temperatures.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>15.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/socotra-island"> <strong>Socotra Island, Yemen</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Split from Africa millions of years ago, over a third of the plant species here exist nowhere else. Dragon's blood trees look like Dr. Seuss illustrations alongside desert roses and pink dunes. Standing among these otherworldly trees reminds you that isolation creates irreplaceable uniqueness worth protecting.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> November-March for comfortable temperatures.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>16.</strong> <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/hallstatt-austria"><strong>Hallstatt, Austria</strong></a></h2>
<figure class=" contains-caption "><img class="article-image with-structured-caption " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106236/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p>An Alpine village so picturesque that<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hallstatt-china"> a Chinese mining company built a replica</a> to bring some Europe into Asia. The original Hallstatt - in Austria - is well-worth a visit. It features<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/salzwelten"> ancient salt mines</a> and the<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hallstatt-charnel-house"> Charnel House</a> with painted skulls. And... maybe you'll get to the Chinese one next.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> May-June or September for smaller crowds.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>17.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ta-prohm"> Ta Prohm near Siem Reap, Cambodia</a></h2>
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<p>This hidden temple near Angkor Wat is being slowly consumed by jungle. At Ta Prohm, massive tree roots cascade over 12th-century stone and <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dinosaur-angkor-wat">curious carvings</a> stir controversy. Nature's patient reclamation—neither destroying nor preserving, but transforming—teaches that endings and beginnings are often the same thing. What could be viewed as overgrown has become beauty.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> November-February (dry, cool season).</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>18.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/marble-caves-of-chile-chico"> <strong>Marble Caves in Puerto Río Tranquilo, Chile</strong></a></h2>
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<p>Six thousand years of water carved swirling marble caverns reflecting Lake General Carrera's turquoise water in otherworldly blue. Best explored by kayak.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> December-February when glacial melt intensifies the blue.</p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>19.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/eduard-bohlen-shipwreck"> Eduard Bohlen Shipwreck in <strong>Skeleton Coast, Namibia<br /></strong></a></h2>
<figure class="  "><img class="article-image  " src="https://assets.atlasobscura.com/article_images/106217/image.jpg" alt="article-image" width="auto" data-kind="article-image" /></figure>
<p>Where the Namib Desert meets the Atlantic, rusted shipwrecks dot beaches alongside seal colonies and<a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/namibia-lions-hunt-seals"> desert-adapted lions</a>. This coastline—where sailors once perished and wildlife now thrives—proves that what looks like desolation to some is home to others.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> May-October for wildlife viewing and cooler temperatures. And for adventure, you can even stay in a <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shipwreck-lodge">"shipwreck."</a></p>
<h2 class="article-subheading-pre-rd"><strong>20.</strong><a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/zhangye-national-geopark"> <strong>Zhangye National Geopark in Zhangye Shi, China<br /></strong></a></h2>
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<p>Rainbow mountains striped in red, yellow, orange, green, and blue—millions of years of mineral deposits creating nature's abstract painting. Best after it rains, when colors intensify.</p>
<p><strong>Best time to visit:</strong> June-September for vibrant colors after summer rains.</p>
<p data-start="498" data-end="812"> </p>
<p>Each of these destinations offer more than photo opportunities—they're invitations to see where humans and nature have collided and created extraordinary things. They’re invitations to pause and reflect. They're invitations to change and grow.</p>
<p>The world welcomes you for a transformative 2026. Let’s Go.</p>]]>
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      <title>Nectar Soda</title>
      <pubDate>Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/nectar-soda</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/nectar-soda</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="An Aglamesis nectar soda." data-width="4344" data-height="4043" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/gLqA8RaTQNIL0MupnRjPCWB4QRxXZdJs1eCFvMqaXY8/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3RoaW5n/X2ltYWdlcy80YTQw/MzA1NC04MjBhLTQw/MmEtYmU5My1iYWZi/YWU5ZGViNDc5Y2Rk/YjY1YjA4NGY1MmFm/YzRfQWdsYW1lc2lz/IG5lY3RhciBzb2Rh/IG9uIHRhYmxlIDIu/anBn.jpg" /></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though Cincinnati is best known for breweries, another effervescent beverage has a long history in the Queen City: the nectar soda.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Home to the oldest pharmacy college in the U.S. west of the Alleghenies, the</span><a href="https://lloydlibrary.org/research/archives/eclectic-medicine/"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Eclectic Medical Institute</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (1845-1952), and</span><a href="https://lloydlibrary.org/about/a-brief-history-of-the-lloyd-library-and-museum/"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Cincinnati was long on the forefront of the pharmaceutical industry. The city had a number of apothecaries with soda fountains, as well as confectioners serving countless carbonated concoctions—some claiming to cure a variety of ailments, and others simply providing customers with something sweet and refreshing to drink.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Enter the nectar soda. The flavor is a combination of vanilla and bitter almond, and the drink is pastel pink in color—a nod to the hue of almond flowers, according to </span><a href="https://dannwoellertthefoodetymologist.wordpress.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dann Woellert</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a Cincinnati food historian, etymologist, and the author of </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cincinnati-Candy-History-American-Palate/dp/1467137952"><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cincinnati Candy: A Sweet History</span></em></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Nicknamed the “</span><a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpcincinnatienquirershell/historical-newspapers/august-2-1942-page-55-108/docview/1882746511/sem-2?accountid=39387"><span style="font-weight: 400;">drink of the gods</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">,” the bitter almond flavor of nectar soda balances out what would otherwise be overly sweet vanilla, creating an addictive taste that grows on you with each sip. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Nectar sodas have been served in Cincinnati since at least the late 1870s, though, like many iconic foods and beverages, its precise origins are murky. The only other U.S. city to embrace nectar sodas was New Orleans, but unlike Cincinnati, the tradition fizzled out in the Big Easy in the mid-20th century. Plus, Woellert says that the Queen City popularized them first. “They were served in Cincinnati nearly a decade before New Orleans,” he says.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While the Cincinnati nectar soda has multiple origin stories, each crediting a different pharmacist or confectioner, Woellert has concluded that </span><a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpcincinnatienquirershell/historical-newspapers/april-13-1947-page-98-151/docview/1882885311/sem-2?accountid=39387"><span style="font-weight: 400;">John Mullane</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> created the flavor after traveling to Quebec City to learn the art of confectionery from a prominent Canadian candymaker. He began serving nectar sodas in his confectionery shop in downtown Cincinnati in the late 1870s.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, why did the nectar soda end up in Cincinnati and New Orleans, of all places? Wollert suspects that the bitter almond and vanilla flavor was used by the French Acadians who settled in both Quebec City and New Orleans.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though nectar sodas aren’t as common as they were in the early 20th century, when they could be found at countless confectioneries and pharmacy soda fountains across Cincinnati, they’re still served at establishments throughout the city and the surrounding area. Nectar sodas have been on the menu at ice cream and chocolate shop </span><a href="https://www.aglamesis.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Aglamesis Brothers</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> since it opened in Cincinnati in 1908, if not shortly thereafter. That’s according to company president and CEO Randy Young, who is also a third-generation family member. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s unclear when nectar sodas were added to the </span><a href="https://digital.cincinnatilibrary.org/digital/collection/p16998coll32/id/2220/rec/19"><span style="font-weight: 400;">menu</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at </span><a href="https://www.graeters.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Graeter’s</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a Cincinnati ice cream and chocolate shop that opened in 1870 and now has locations throughout the city and the Midwest, but Chip Graeter, chief of retail operations and a fourth-generation family member, says that they were especially popular throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In a </span><a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpcincinnatienquirershell/historical-newspapers/january-28-1947-page-2-26/docview/1882876222/sem-2?accountid=39387"><span style="font-weight: 400;">January 28, 1947 article</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cincinnati Enquirer</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Tom Moore, the head of the soda department at Dow Drug Store—which operated 32 soda fountains throughout the metropolitan area at that time—said that “nectar is one of the most popular flavors in all of their stores, and has been for many years.” Five years prior, </span><a href="https://www.proquest.com/hnpcincinnatienquirershell/historical-newspapers/august-16-1942-page-63-99/docview/1882739776/sem-2?accountid=39387"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dow ran an ad</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in the same newspaper which read: “Be glad you live in Cincinnati, the only place in the country where you can enjoy a Dow double-dip nectar soda.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Originally, nectar syrup was made by combining half-and-half or milk with water, bitter almond extract, vanilla extract and red food coloring. While Aglamesis eventually switched to a dairy-free shelf-stable syrup, Graeter's recipe has never changed—it still contains milk and needs to be refrigerated. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Both Aglamesis and Graeter’s make nectar soda by mixing nectar syrup with a dollop of whipped cream, adding a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream, then topping it off with some soda water and more whipped cream.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Though Young says that nectar sodas are most popular with older adults, they’re also a hit with members of younger generations who try them. “People who grew up with them still love them today,” Graeter says. “We still make them in all of our stores, but they're not nearly as popular today as they once were, simply because milkshakes and smoothies have taken over.”  </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">According to Young, there is a commercially available descendant of </span><a href="https://www.coca-cola.com/us/en/brands/barq-s"><span style="font-weight: 400;">the nectar soda</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “Commercial soda companies like Barqs and others came out with their version of cream soda—a bright pink soda—which got its flavoring from nectar soda,” he explains.</span></p>]]>
      </description>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/soda">soda</category>
      <category domain="https://www.atlasobscura.com/categories/drinks">drinks</category>
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      <title>Tiquira</title>
      <pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:17:00 -0400</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/tiquira</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/tiquira</guid>
      <description>
        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="" data-width="5456" data-height="3632" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/AVz4e7Gut8Wj5dEAKjG4GdVeQ-Naog6rw3iXhMFXb0k/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3RoaW5n/X2ltYWdlcy9mMjk5/MWM1Mi05NDFkLTRk/ODYtYjMxZC0xZTU1/OTI0ZjI2M2Q3MDUx/Mzk4NTM2MTc1YzZh/ZDhfRFNDMDk5MTUu/SlBH.jpg" /></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Indigenous Brazilians have fermented alcoholic beverages from the cassava root for thousands of years. These beer-like beverages go by names like </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">cauim</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">caxiri</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">tarubá</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Fermentation is an important step in cassava processing—the raw root has chemicals that can turn into cyanide in the human body. Native peoples found that a bit of human saliva and some naturally occurring yeast could eliminate these toxins and improve the nutritious value of the tuber. When the technology of distillation arrived to the Munim River region (now in Maranhão), locals who already drank lightly alcoholic cassava beverages began to distill them. </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tiquira</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was born. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The name <em>tiquira</em> is likely derived from the Tupi word </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">tykyre </span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">meaning "to drip." But it is a curiosity that the spirit has flourished in only one Brazilian state, Maranhão. Margot Stinglwagner, founder of </span><a href="https://www.guaajatiquira.com/en/index.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Guaaja Tiquira</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the first modern brand to produce the spirit starting in 2016, says “It’s a spirit that is also unknown in Brazil. A few people have heard about tiquira—but usually only people who have gone to Maranhão once.” Accordingly, the state moved to declare the spirit as a piece of Cultural and Intangible Heritage </span><a href="https://www.al.ma.leg.br/noticias/48515"><span style="font-weight: 400;">in September 2023</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Part of the reason that tiquira has remained so isolated is that cachaça, Brazil’s rum, is far easier to produce. Because the rum comes from sugarcane, the sugar for fermentation is already there. “With cassava, you don’t have sugar,” Stinglwagner explains. “You must first transform the carbohydrates into sugar and then you can ferment and distill it.” To achieve this end, Guaaja Tiquira uses food enzymes instead of the traditional human saliva. Guaaja also differs from other distillers because they use full cassava roots where most tiquira moonshiners rely on processed </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">farinha de mandioca</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">, or cassava flour. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The majority of people produce it illegally,” laughs Stinglwagner. “The state does nothing about it.” Outside of the urban center, tiquira is invariably a homemade product. Generally, tiquira makers don’t separate the "heads" (the first drops of liquor from a distillation, which contain harsher alcohols including toxic methanol and other pungent and volatile flavor compounds) from the "tails" (the final liquid produced from distillation, which has a low alcohol content and can have unwelcome bitter flavors), meaning the spirit is stronger and may contain more toxins and impurities. Some even macerate marijuana into the combined spirit to produce the doubly-illicit <em>tiquiconha</em>.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maranhenses believe that you cannot get wet or bathe after drinking tiquira, lest you become faint or dizzy. Zelinda Machado de Castro e Lima, one of the great chroniclers of folk culture in Maranhão, has recorded other traditions surrounding the drink. Firstly, it is typical to pierce a cashew with a toothpick and soak it in a glass of tiquira for several hours. It is then sucked as a sort of boozy lollipop. She also writes about the belief that those drinking coffee should avoid tiquira, while locals say that fishermen on the coast used the liquor to sanitize wounds incurred on the job. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Finally, there is the curious question of the color of tiquira. In the tourist markets of São Luís, the spirit is always blushing a translucent violet. “They say that the color of tiquira is from tangerine leaves, but we tried to do it and the color from the leaves is not stable,” says Stinglwagner. “It is also not a strong color. The norms and laws for tiquira prohibit the addition of the leaves.” The violet color may be artificial (perhaps from food dyes), but some tiquiras do have a citrusy flavor. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tiquira today is still largely relegated to the world of moonshining, but with the government’s recognition of the spirit and new legitimate ventures like that of Guaaja Tiquira, Brazil could be seeing more of the cassava liquor outside of its home in Maranhão. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“All the people say to me, ‘What is this new spirit?,’” says Stinglwagner. “I say, ‘It’s not a new spirit, it’s the oldest spirit from Brazil.’”</span></p>
<p><strong>Know Before You Go</strong></p>
<p>Tiquira is widely available in the downtown markets of São Luís, Maranhão. Both the local Mercado Central and touristic Mercado das Tulhas have many vendors selling tiquira. The commercial brand, Guaaja Tiquira, is also available in São Luís at Empório Fribal, in addition to Copacabana Palace and Fairmont Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and Mocotó Bar e Restaurante in São Paulo. </p>]]>
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      <title>Maultaschen</title>
      <pubDate>Wed, 21 Feb 2024 11:00:00 -0500</pubDate>
      <link>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/maultaschen</link>
      <guid>https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/maultaschen</guid>
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        <![CDATA[<p><img alt="Maultaschen can contain a number of different fillings. " data-width="2500" data-height="1875" width="300" height="200" src="https://img.atlasobscura.com/ra2_Vn6gdr9tweWqKKQljzyxXDXHA_0H-9IkiLmOorM/rs:fill:300:200:1/g:ce/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/ar:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9hdGxh/cy1kZXYuczMuYW1h/em9uYXdzLmNvbS91/cGxvYWRzL3RoaW5n/X2ltYWdlcy8zYzNl/ZTFjZi0wMDRmLTQ3/NGUtYTVmMS0yY2My/ZjQxZDFhOWVmZjJh/YTFkNTcxYzIwNmJl/MjdfTWF1bHRhc2No/ZW5fMi5qcGc.jpg" /></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The origins of Germany’s </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maultaschen</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> are deliciously devious. Legend has it that, in the late Middle Ages, a lay brother named Jakob invented the stuffed pasta dumplings at the Maulbronn Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in 1147 by Cistercian monks in southwest Germany.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One direct translation of Maultaschen is “mouth pockets,” though “Maul” could just as easily refer to Maulbronn. Maultaschen are usually square dumplings (though sometimes they're rolled) and can be fried in a pan or served in broth. Commonly described as Germany’s version of Italian ravioli, they allegedly emerged as a way to use up an unexpected bounty of meat that Brother Jakob stumbled upon in the forest outside the monastery walls.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The twist? Although they abhorred waste, these monks weren’t allowed to eat the meat of four-legged animals, especially during the Catholic fasting period of Lent in the spring. So Brother Jakob minced the meat with herbs and onions and wrapped everything inside pasta dough, hiding the forbidden flesh from the eyes of his fellow monks—and even from the eyes of God.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In Swabia, the region encompassing much of Baden-Württemberg and part of Bavaria where Maultaschen originated, one of the colloquial names for the food references this deception directly: </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Herrgottsbescheißerle</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> means “little God-cheaters.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Everyone in Swabia has their version of the legend with more or less embellishment. Ludwig Nestler holds a master’s degree in heritage conservation and works for the State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg, a government organization that oversees monuments like Maulbronn Monastery. His version of the tale includes a sack of stolen meat dropped in the woods by a fleeing thief, which inspires Brother Jakob’s trickery in the kitchen. But he acknowledges that there’s no undisputed “historically correct version” of how Maultaschen came to be. Similarly, everyone in Swabia has their own Maultaschen recipe, with unique ingredients for the minced filling, called </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brät</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Traditionally the Brät is made from pork mixed with herbs, onions, and occasionally bread crumbs for texture and stability,” says Nestler. Swabia, however, “was a rather poor region with limited amounts of meat due to rather unfertile land, so being adaptive and innovative has always been a part of the people’s nature.” As Maultaschen became popular, fish and seasonal vegetables like spinach, carrots, beets, and mushrooms became common inclusions.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today, the European Union ties Maultaschen to Swabia with a </span><a href="https://www.tmdn.org/giview/gi/EUGI00000013631"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Protected Geographical Indication</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which lists required ingredients the authentic product should feature, but even the necessary inclusions are pretty loose, such as “pork and/or beef and/or veal” for meat Brät and “typical regional vegetables” for meat-free Brät. It speaks to the way the dumplings developed as subsistence food, used to stretch leftovers and reduce food waste.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today, Germans throughout the country enjoy Maultaschen in dozens of flavors in all seasons thanks to grocery stores that stock packaged varieties made by companies like Ditzingen-based Bürger, whose mascot, </span><a href="https://www.buerger.de/buerger-welt/erwin/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Erwin</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, is a </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maultasche</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (the singular form of the plural Maultaschen).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But the dumplings remain most popular in southern Germany. Maulbronn Monastery offers a special tour that pairs Maultaschen with wine from the monastery’s vineyards. And many locals, including Nestler’s family, still make them from scratch on special occasions—even during Lent, when meat might otherwise be off the menu. There’s no telling if it’s a fraud good enough to fool God, but it’s worth a shot.</span></p>]]>
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