10457 Best Sights in USA

This gorgeous 1928 landmark building is a TV star—it was in the opening scenes of Dragnet and served as the Daily Planet building in the original Adventures of Superman. During extensive renovations, the original Lindburg Beacon was put back in action atop the hall's 13-story tower. The revolving spotlight, inaugurated by President Calvin Coolidge from the White House via a telegraph key, was used from 1928 to 1941 to guide pilots into the Los Angeles airport. The observation deck, located on the 27th floor, is free to the public and has a stellar view of the greater Los Angeles area.

Over the years, various plans—involving gardens, restaurants, music, and hotels—have been floated to make this a more people-friendly site. Possibly the only thing that would ameliorate Bostonians' collective distaste for the chilly Government Center is tearing it down. Locals got their wish, as the entire City Hall Plaza area (one of the largest civil spaces in Boston) has just completed a several-stage, multiyear makeover. The brutalist redbrick plaza was torn up and revamped to create a more aesthetically pleasing array of tree canopies, terraces, and improved public spaces including a playspace with soft sidewalks, funhouse mirrors, musical structures, a water feature, and the Internet-famous "Cop Slide" (a slide that created a viral video of a police officer's very speedy exit). The plaza continues to be the home of many of the city's famed festivals, rallies, and outdoor concerts.

Although the 1870s City Market was razed years ago, its atmosphere and character are still evident. Adjacent to Ellis Square, the area is a lively destination because of its galleries, boutiques, street performers, and open-air cafés. Local favorites include Byrd Cookie Company, a popular Savannah-based bakery with great edible souvenirs, and Pie Society, offering specialty British meat pies. City Market is also a good spot to purchase trolley tickets, take a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, or dive into history at the American Prohibition Museum.

Indoor ice rinks don't usually grab your attention, but City National Arena, a few blocks north from downtown Summerlin, is worth a closer look. This is the practice facility for the Vegas Golden Knights, who are here daily (when they're home), with practices open to the public and free. The rink also is the center of the region's amateur hockey scene, meaning ice-time is hard to come by on weekends. There are skating and hockey skill classes offered as well. On the second floor, a pub shows Knights games and offers food and drink specials. During big games, the scene up here can get pretty raucous.

There's something for everyone at this beach just west of the Third Street South shopping area, but what gets the most attention is the historical pier, which extends well into the Gulf and offers the best free dolphin-viewing around. Sunsets are a nightly ritual, and dodging anglers' poles is to be expected. The concession stand sells food for humans as well as for fishy friends, and, on the sand below, teenagers hold court at volleyball nets; families picnic on blankets; and a handful of other people swoop up cockles, fighting conchs, and coquinas. To avoid the commotion, head south on Gulf Shore Boulevard, and take your pick of the public access points. The sands here won't have the facilities of the pier—or facilities, period—but the solitude can't be beat. Amenities: food and drink; parking (fee); showers; toilets. Best for: sunsets; swimming.

One look at the spires here and you'll figure out how the area came by its name. The unusual rock formations were spewed from an ancient volcano and have been eroded over the centuries by wind and rain into the marvelous shapes there today—some more than 40 feet tall. You've got to walk through the city to fully appreciate the place—and it's a great, easy adventure to have with kids (make sure you wear tennis shoes or hiking shoes). The park has a visitor center, and a large developed campground ($10 to $14) with 9 RV sites with water and electric hookups, 41 camping sites, picnic tables, grills, flush toilets, and showers. This is a great spot to camp, with sites nestled amongst the huge rocks. An on-site observatory regularly hosts star parties.

The fine City Park has fishing lakes, playgrounds, a carousel, a mini train ride, tennis courts, and a swimming pool.

The history of City Point includes a Revolutionary War skirmish and 10 months as General Ulysses S. Grant's Union headquarters during the Civil War, from which he directed the Siege of Petersburg. It's free to take the open-air, self-guided museum walking tour of 25 wayside exhibits and Grant's Headquarters. The City Point Early History Museum is in a former U.S. Navy church, St. Dennis Chapel, and can be visited by appointment.

Subway tokens, Statue of Liberty figurines, and other artifacts you might find in a New York City time capsule crowd the displays of this quirky, community-run museum inside a former bodega. While exhibitions rotate, one that's found permanence is of actual children's letters addressed to Spider-Man, sent to his comic book address in Queens. 

Housed in one of Downtown's oldest buildings, this charming, small gallery features mostly local and regional artists.

The handsome home of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Joffrey Ballet is grand indeed, with pink-and-gray Tennessee-marble floors, pillars with carved capitals, crystal chandeliers, and a sweeping staircase to the second floor. Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, the second-largest opera house in North America combines lavish art deco details with art nouveau touches. Tours are given a few times a year.

Nashville’s role in the civil rights movement comes alive in this interactive display inside the library’s main branch. Explore the ways Black Nashvillians protested segregation, challenged racist laws, and contributed to the nationwide fight for equality through the library’s time lines, archival materials, and photos.

An eco-friendly winery built from straw bales, C&C makes small lots of aromatic Alsatian-style wines such as dry Rieslings and Gewürztraminers, plus Pinot Noir blends, Syrahs, and Chardonnays. The outdoor garden is a prime spot for a bring-your-own picnic when the weather is nice.

In addition to fishing, clam digging is popular at Clam Gulch, 24 miles south of Soldotna on the Sterling Highway. This is a favorite of local children, who love any excuse to dig in the muddy, sloppy goo. Ask locals on the beach how to find the giant razor clams (recognized by their dimples in the sand). Ask also for advice on how to clean the clams—cleaning is pretty labor-intensive, and it's easy to get into a clam-digging frenzy when the conditions are favorable, only to regret your efforts when cleaning time arrives. The clam digging is best when tides are minus 4 or 5 feet. A sportfishing license, available at grocery stores, sporting-goods shops, and drugstores, is required for clam diggers 16 years old and older.

A quiet day at the beach gets an adventurous start when you board a tram and careen down a ¾-mile boardwalk through shaded mangroves and a network of canals. At the end is a pretty, secluded patch of sand where the calm surf is perfect for swimming. In addition to sunbathing, shelling, and sand-castle building, you can spring for a kayak and meander around the marsh. Amenities: food and drink; parking (fee); showers; toilets; water sports. Best for: solitude; swimming.

Beside Glen Echo Park's parking lot is this monument to the founder of the American Red Cross. Barton first used the structure, built by the founders of Glen Echo village, to store Red Cross supplies; later it became both her home and the organization's headquarters. Today, the building is furnished with period artifacts and many of her possessions. Access is by a 45-minute guided tour only, typically offered only on Friday and Saturday. Check the park's website to plan your visit.

College walking tours, architecture tours, and art tours are conducted quarterly by Claremont Heritage. The organization gives 2½-hour guided walking tours ($10) by reservation. Self-guided tour maps can be found on the group's website.

Inspired by the work in Balmy Alley, a new generation of muralists began creating a fresh alley-cum-gallery here in 1992, offering a quick but dense glimpse at the Mission's contemporary art scene. The works by the loosely connected artists of the Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) represent a broad range of styles and imagery, such as an exuberant, flowery exhortation to Tax the Rich, several colorful and powerful messages about hot-button political topics, and poignant murals honoring the legacies of George Floyd and Prince.

The Clark Chateau Museum, an elegant 1898 four-story Victorian mansion that was built by William Clark as a wedding gift for his son Charles, is open for self-guided and guided tours. Call ahead to reserve your spot. The house, a replica of one wing of the Château de Chenonceau in France's Loire Valley, displays 18th- and 19th-century furniture, textiles, and collectibles as well as artwork.

A no-wait marriage certificate can be yours if you bring $77 cash (there's an additional fee for credit cards), identification, and your beloved to the Clark County Marriage License Bureau. Unless the office is unusually busy, the process normally takes less than an hour.

Step into the past (quite literally) at this modest museum, a 30-acre site that features a small exhibit hall with a time-line exhibit about southern Nevada from prehistoric to modern times. The facility also offers a collection of restored historic buildings that depict daily life from different decades in Las Vegas, Boulder City, Henderson, and Goldfield. Other attractions include a replica of a 19th-century frontier print shop and a 1960s wedding chapel that once stood on the Las Vegas Strip. There are also buildings and machinery dating from the turn of the 20th century, a nature trail, and a small ghost town. The museum also hosts a memorial to the 58 people killed in the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting. If you can't get to the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, west of the Strip, this is a worthwhile substitute.

As Las Vegas grew, so did the amount of treated water released by its wastewater treatment plant. Recycled water making its way back to Lake Mead carved out a \"wash\" that needed to be constrained by a series of porous dams (known as weirs); the county turned it into a 2,900-acre refuge in 1999. Its wide-open spaces offer the unique charm of being able to see the Strip one minute, then be completely disoriented as you descend down winding paths surrounded by tall grass. All sorts of birds and critters call the place home, from great blue herons to beavers. The area is open daily from dawn to dusk; there's an impressive Nature Center (open from 9 to 3) complete with a small museum and children's area. But there's no restaurant or food service beyond a few bags of chips in the gift shop. Dogs and bicycles are allowed on the outer loop trail, but not in the inner core of the preserve.

William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition climbed to the top of this limestone bluff in 1805 and took three compass readings. The maps he made from these readings became an important resource for future travelers. A ¼-mile gravel loop trail takes visitors to the top of the bluff, where interpretive signs include a replica of Clark's sketched map of the area.

Swarms of surfers have co-opted these choppy tides almost immediately south of The Breakers' private beach club. With almost no public parking nearby and a lack of basic facilities, this beach caters principally to locals who come here by foot from their posh crash pads. But if you're staying at The Breakers or visiting the main municipal Palm Beach, walk south or north, respectively, and witness the throng of boards in and out of the water and surfers riding the wave crests. Amenities: none. Best for: surfing.

The Native American wing of this museum contains a beautiful collection of northwestern California basketry. Artifacts from Eureka's Victorian, logging, and maritime eras fill the rest of the space.

This Greek Revival structure dates from 1836, making it Chicago's oldest surviving building. It's a clapboard house in a masonry city, built for Henry and Caroline Palmer Clarke to remind them of the East Coast they left behind. The Doric columns and pilasters were an attempt to civilize Chicago's frontier image, while the everyday objects and furnishings inside evoke a typical 1850s–60s middle-class home. The house has been moved three times from its original location on Michigan Avenue between 16th and 17th streets: the last time, in 1977, it had to be hoisted above the nearby elevated train tracks. In 2022, the house was renamed to affirm the profound role of Bishop Louis Henry and Margaret Ford in preserving the house as a significant part of Chicago’s history.

The 48-million-year-old fossil beds in this small section have yielded the oldest remains in the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The drive to the beds traverses forests of ponderosa pines and sparsely populated valleys along the John Day River before traveling through a landscape filled with spires and outcroppings that attest to the region's volcanic past. A short trail that runs between the two parking lots contains fossilized evidence of an ancient subtropical forest. Another trail climbs ½ mile from the second parking lot to the base of the Palisades, a series of abrupt, irregular cliffs created by ancient volcanic mud flows.

The headquarters of Astoria's historical society, the graciously restored Queen Ann–style Flavel House offers a glimpse of what life was like for the wealthy in the late 19th century. The organization's other sites include the Heritage Museum ( 1618 Exchange St.), which occupies a 1904 Colonial Revival building that originally served as city hall and now contains two floors of exhibits detailing the history of the early pioneers, Native Americans, and logging and marine industries of Clatsop County, the oldest American settlement west of the Mississippi. Artifacts include finely crafted 19th-century Chinook and Clatsop baskets, otter pelts, a re-created Prohibition-era saloon, and historic logging and fishing tools. There's also the small but engaging Oregon Film Museum ( 732 Duane St.), housed in the old Clatsop County Jail, which celebrates the state's long history of filmmaking and contains artifacts from and displays about prior productions. The building featured prominently in the cult classic The Goonies. The museum also showcases such classics as The General, The Great Race, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Paint Your Wagon, Animal House, Free Willy, Kindergarten Cop, and Twilight. And the Uppertown Firefighters Museum ( 2968 Marine Dr.) is filled with old equipment, including hand-pulled and horse-drawn fire engines, and a collection of photos of some of the town's most notable fires.

The exhibits here explore commercial fishing and the cannery industry, the era of fish traps, the social life of Petersburg, and Tlingit culture. Don't miss the 126½-pound king salmon—the largest ever caught commercially—as well as the Tlingit dugout canoe; the Cape Decision lighthouse station lens; and Earth, Sea and Sky, a 3D wall mural outside.