558 Best Sights in USA

Walt Disney animator Ben Sharpsteen, who retired to Calistoga, founded this old-school but compelling museum whose centerpiece is a diorama depicting the Calistoga Hot Springs Resort during its 19th-century heyday. A restored cottage from the resort, moved to this site, sits next door to the museum but is entered through it. Other exhibits survey life in Calistoga through the decades and author Robert Louis Stevenson's time here in 1880. 

This octagonal museum that dates from 1895 contains priceless Alaska Native items collected by Dr. Sheldon Jackson (1834–1909), who traveled the remote regions of Alaska as an educator and missionary. The collection represents every Alaska Native culture. On display are carved masks, Chilkat blankets, dogsleds, kayaks, and even the impressive helmet worn by the famous Tlingit warrior Katlian during an 1804 battle against the Russians.

The unusual mansard-roof Italianate-style Henry B. Ailman House, built in 1881, serves as headquarters for the Silver City Museum, whose main gallery mural of the mining and ranching community circa 1882 provides a good overview of the area's colorful history. Displays include pottery and other relics from the area's ancient (and now extinct) Mimbres and Mogollon cultures, as well as a nice lot of items from the heyday of the mining era. From the museum's tower you can catch a grand view of the eclectic architecture around town. The store carries Southwest-themed books and gifts, and the museum also has a local-history research library.

On November 22, 1963, shots rang out on Dealey Plaza, at the west end of Downtown, as the presidential motorcade rounded the corner from Houston Street onto the Elm Street approach to the Triple Underpass. Eventually the Warren Commission concluded that President Kennedy was gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone and firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The building is now known as the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, where exhibits explore the life and legacy of JFK, offering context of the politics of the early 1960s and the importance of Kennedy's Texas visit. One of the most popular exhibits is the re-creation of the sniper's nest at the southeast window, viewable but not accessible.

This hilltop museum surveys domestic life in early Skagit County and Northwest Coastal Native American history. There's an interesting gallery showcasing goods commonly found in the region's early general stores, and rotating exhibits interpret the different aspects of the community's rich heritage.

This nicely designed museum—also known as the Trail of '98 Museum—occupies the ground floor of the beautiful building that also houses Skagway City Hall. Inside, you'll find a 19th-century Tlingit canoe (one of only two like it on the West Coast), historic photos, a red-and-black sleigh, and other gold rush–era artifacts, along with a healthy collection of contemporary local art and post–gold-rush history exhibits.

Why get a crick in your neck—or worse, risk looking like a tourist—while appreciating New York City's famous skyscrapers? Instead, visit this small museum, where you can appreciate highly detailed, hand-carved miniature wood models of Midtown and Lower Manhattan; explore the past, present, and future of the skyscraper—from New York City's Empire State Building to Dubai's Burj Khalifa (taller than the Empire State Building and Chicago's Willis Tower combined)—and examine the history of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center. Exhibits continue to evolve, so expect models of current or future buildings, videos, drawings, floor plans, and talks that reveal the influence of history, real estate, and individuals on shaping city skylines.

The National Museum of Natural History has the Hope Diamond, but the National Postal Museum has the envelope wrapping used to mail the gem to the Smithsonian—part of a collection that consists of nearly 6 million postal and philatelic objects. Exhibits, underscoring the important part the mail has played in America's development, include horse-drawn mail coaches, a railroad mail car, airmail planes, and a collection of philatelic rarities. Learn about stamp collecting, and tour Systems at Work, an exhibit that demonstrates how mail has gone from the mailbox to its destination for the past 200 years and features a high-def film highlighting amazing technologies. The William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, the largest of its kind in the world, has an additional 20,000 objects never before on public display, showing how closely stamps have intertwined with American history. The museum is next to Union Station in the old Washington City Post Office, designed by Daniel Burnham and completed in 1914.

An award-winning history museum, it includes a replica 1930s lookout tower, exhibits explaining wildland fire ecology and behavior, firefighting techniques, and the nation's history of smoke jumping, which began here in 1942. Today it's the largest smoke-jumper base in the nation. From Memorial Day through Labor Day the center offers five tours daily, given by guides who provide firsthand accounts of jumping into blazing forests.

Two small white buildings with changing exhibits about island history are clustered with heirloom gardens along Main Street at this Mount Desert Historical Society museum. The larger one isn’t historic but has typical New England architectural touches. Hugging the road just beyond the footbridge over the mill stream—the arched white structure is an iconic spot for a snapshot—the tiny 1780s Selectmen’s Building was the Town of Mount Desert's office for many years. Herb and floral plants from the 19th and early 20th centuries bloom in the gardens. The society's Sound Schoolhouse museum, open by appointment only year-round, is a few miles away on Route 198 ( 373 Sound Dr., Mount Desert).

Exhibits in this refurbished textile mill explore the state's natural history, archaeology, and historical development. An iron gate made for the museum by Philip Simmons, the "dean of Charleston blacksmiths," is on display, as is an exhibit on South Carolina's astronauts and artifacts associated with the state's cotton industry and slavery. Newer exhibits are geared toward the younger set, including a 4D theater and nature-oriented rotating films shown in the planetarium.

On part of Rhode Island's Civil War--era governor William Sprague's 19th-century estate, now a town park, this museum founded in 1933 holds 25,000 artifacts dating from pre-European settlement to the mid-20th century. Six exhibit buildings include a print shop, a blacksmith forge, a carpentry shop, and a carriage barn. A living-history farm has Romney sheep, Nubian goats, and a heritage flock of Rhode Island Red chickens, the state bird. Attending the annual chick-hatching is an Independence Day tradition for local families.

Head to this unique Manhattan museum, housed inside Schermerhorn Row's early-19th-century brick buildings, to understand the history of The Seaport—and its importance in making New York the ultimate commercial harbor of early America. The museum's visitor center ( 12 Fulton St.) leads you to fascinating exhibits within the carefully preserved, landmarked spaces, and ties into displays at the printing house around the corner ( 211 Water St.) and inside Cannon's Walk ( 206 Front St.). Many find that The Seaport Museum's main attractions, however, are the four restored tall ships docked in the harbor at Pier 16. Museum visits include access (weather permitting) on the 1907 lightship Ambrose and the 1885 ship Wavertree. There are also public sailings of the 1885 schooner Pioneer. The museum organizes walking tours of the area, too. (Creative nonfiction lovers take note: Joseph Mitchell's collection of early New York stories, Up in the Old Hotel, brings to life tales from the neighborhood and the hotel that once occupied some of today's South Street Seaport Museum spaces.) Consult the website for hours and tours that change seasonally.

At this quirky downtown museum, rooms filled with some of the world's earliest electrical appliances—light bulbs, phones, batteries, motors, radios, TVs—along with photos, news clippings, and interactive exhibits tell the story of how electricity transformed our world. A particularly interesting exhibit sparked by the film The Current War traces the competitive battle for technological supremacy among Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla. On weekends at 2:30, docents present a wildly entertaining electric light show, complete with 12-foot lightening bolts, in the museum theater.

The fifth and sixth levels of the TD Garden house the Sports Museum, where displays of memorabilia and photographs showcase New England–based amateur and pro sports history and legends. Test your sports knowledge with interactive games, see how you stand up to life-size statues of heroes Carl Yastrzemski and Larry Bird, and take a 45-minute tour of the museum. Tours depart every half hour.

Inside this small museum established by entrepreneur and motivational speaker Pat Croce is a collection of more than 800 pirate artifacts, including one of only two Jolly Rogers (skull-and-crossbone flags) known to have actually flown above a ship. Exhibits include a mock-up of a tavern, a captain's quarters, and a ship's deck.

You'll learn about the lives of everyday and famous pirates, their navigation techniques, their weaponry, and the concoctions they drank (including something called Kill Devil, which is rum mixed with gunpowder). You'll get to touch an actual treasure chest; see piles of gold, jade, emeralds, and pearls; and leave knowing full well that there were pirates before Captain Jack Sparrow.

Highlights here include a Seminole dugout canoe, pictures from the Hill Photographic Collection, and a life-size re-creation of the P. P. Cobb General Store. A room is also devoted to the U.S. Navy Amphibious Training Base of World War II, which was located on St. Lucie's beaches. A guided tour of the Gardner House (the 1908 home of the Register family), with furnishings typical of the period, is included in the price of admission.

Learn about the history of the Tampa Bay region, from indigenous Tocobaga people to St. Pete's spring training history to America's first commercial airline, at the St. Petersburg Museum of History. Exhibits include those on Native American primitive shell tools and thousands of baseballs signed by the likes of Babe Ruth. There's also a full-size replica of the Benoist Airboat flown by pioneer aviator Tony Jannus.

Original Stanley Steamer cars built by identical twin brothers Francis and Freelan Stanley—Kingfield's most famous natives—are the main draw at this museum inside a 1903 Georgian-style former school. Also well worth the stop here are exhibits about the glass-negative photography business the identical twins sold to Eastman Kodak, and the well-composed photographs, taken by their sister, Chansonetta Stanley Emmons, of everyday country life at the turn of the 20th century.

Adjacent to Sutter's Fort but run separately, this small but engaging museum explores the lives and history of California's indigenous peoples. Arts-and-crafts displays and other exhibits portray the state's earliest inhabitants.

Historical artifacts in the Stevensville Museum include the belongings of early settlers, particularly the missionaries who came to convert the Native Americans of the West. Other exhibits provide an overview of the area's original cultures (Salish, Nez Perce, and Lemhi Shoshone), background on Lewis and Clark's two visits, and a look at later residents, from orchard farmers to today's cybercommuters.

What started off in 1901 as the tin-roofed George W. Parks General Merchandise Store and in 1946 became Stuart's Feed Store (the name is still emblazoned on the pine facade) is now the Stuart Heritage Museum, an interesting trip down nostalgia lane with Americana artifacts, photographs, and goods detailing the town's history, just steps from city hall.

If you want to check out a cross section of American life, drop by the Whitefish train station at 6 am as a sleepy collection of farmers, cowboys, and skiers awaits the arrival of Amtrak's Empire Builder, en route from Seattle to Chicago. Inside the half-timber depot is the Stumptown Historical Society's Whitefish Museum. The focus here is the Great Northern Railway, the nation's first unsubsidized transcontinental railway that passed through Whitefish. On display are lanterns, old posters, and crockery, as well as reminders of local history, such as the books of author Dorothy M. Johnson and photos of the Whitefish football team from 1922 through 1954, plus some real fun (look for the fur-covered trout). You can pick up a walking-tour map of Whitefish's historic district here.

This museum celebrates the extraordinary life and legacy of Susan B. Anthony, who played a pivotal role in winning women the right to vote. In addition to viewing suffrage mementos, you can learn about the abolition and temperance movements, in which she also participated. 

Located in the gold-domed Swain County Courthouse dating from 1908, this charming museum has displays on the history of settlers of this mountain area, including a one-room schoolhouse and a log cabin. It also serves as a visitor information center for both Bryson City, Swain County, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Exhibits at this downtown museum explore the history of mountain climbing in Denali as well as the town's eclectic history. Residents founded the organization in 1972 to protect the original Talkeetna schoolhouse. The group publishes a walking-tour map and operates a gift area, too.

Tampa has long been a baseball city. The first Tampa team was organized in Ybor City in 1887, and the love of the game grew with the influx of Cuban immigrants who flocked to the area to work in the then-thriving cigar industry. Housed in the childhood home of Al Lopez, Tampa’s first Major League Baseball player, manager, and Hall of Fame inductee, this museum honors baseball heritage with exhibits that highlight, among other things, the city's factory, inter-social, municipal, Cigar City, and Negro leagues. 

From the early civilizations that once flourished on its shores to the 2000 presidential vote recount, the Tampa Bay region has long played integral roles in the history of Florida and the rest of the nation. The interactive exhibits here let you peer back in time at the people and events that helped shape the area. You'll learn about the Tocobaga and other coastal peoples, as well as the Spanish explorers who encountered them. You'll get insight on pirates with the help of a massive replica ship.

Information and artifacts also highlight the Seminole Wars, Ybor City's cigar industry, and the Florida crackers who once drove their cattle in areas now saturated with busy roads and shopping centers. Exhibits also cover sports teams that have called Tampa Bay home, not to mention the war heroes and politicians of the 20th and 21st centuries. When it's time for a bite to eat, you're in for a treat: the café here is a branch of Columbia, Tampa's most famous and historic restaurant.

In 1774, Judge Tapping Reeve enrolled his first student, Aaron Burr, in what became the first law school in the country. (Before Judge Reeve opened his school, students studied the law as apprentices, not in formal classes.) This school is dedicated to Reeve's achievement and to the notable students who passed through its halls, including three U.S. Supreme Court justices. There are multimedia exhibits, an excellent introductory film, and restored facilities.