10405 Best Sights in USA

Come to sample spirits named for—and inspired by—the city, like Bywater Bourbon, Irish Channel Whiskey, and the popular St. Roch Vodka. Tours include stories on the history of distilling in New Orleans and run for about 45 minutes. Visitors can book a tour and tasting online or take a seat at the cocktail bar and sample the liquors used in the bartender's tasty concoctions. You'll want to take a bottle or two home with you.

A great orchestra deserves a great concert hall, and that's what Severance is to the Cleveland Orchestra. A $36 million renovation completed in 2000 melded the hall's interior with the art deco style of its exterior, making the performance center as pleasing to look at as it is to listen in. Beginning in mid-September, the Orchestra performs works by contemporary and classical composers.

Established in 1559, Pensacola's first permanent Spanish settlement predates St. Augustine's by six years. The site's center is Seville Square, a live oak–shaded park bounded by Alcaniz, Adams, Zaragoza, and Government streets. Roam 14 brick streets past honeymoon cottages and homes amid a parklike setting. Many buildings have been converted into restaurants, bars, offices, and shops that overlook Pensacola Bay and coastal road U.S. 98, which provides access to the Gulf Coast and beaches.

Seward's museum, community center, and library is a one-stop attraction, with the museum just downstairs from the library. The museum displays art by prominent Alaskan artists as well as relics that weave together the stories of the gold rush, Russian settlements, Alaska Native history, and the upheaval created by the 1964 earthquake. Two movies---one illustrating the disaster, the other about the Iditarod Trail---are played back-to-back daily.

William H. Seward (1801–72), a governor of New York, U.S. senator, and secretary of state under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, lived in this distinguished Federal-style home. The Seward family occupied the house (built in 1816–17) until 1951, and virtually every object here—the furnishings, the library, the tableware—was theirs.

Seward Park, about 15 minutes from the C.D., is a relatively undiscovered gem on the shores of Lake Washington. The 300-acre park includes trails through old-growth forest, mountain views, eagles' nests, a 2½-mile biking and walking path, a native plant garden, art studio, and a small swimming beach. For an informative self-guided tour of the park, available as a printable PDF, visit  www.seattleolmsted.org/self-guided-tours. Turn your park visit into a bike tour on select summer weekends for Bicycle Weekends, when Lake Washington Boulevard (south of Mount Baker Beach to the entrance of Seward Park) is closed to motorized traffic from Friday evening to Monday morning. Check www.parkways.seattle.gov.

Part of the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California Santa Cruz's Institute of Marine Sciences, the center looks more like a research facility than a slick aquarium. Interactive exhibits demonstrate how scientists study the ocean, and the aquarium displays creatures of interest to marine biologists. The 87-foot blue whale skeleton is one of the world's largest.

At the parking area for this 90-acre park, placards and a stone memorial pay homage to wooden Civil War ships the federal government burned here for scrap years after the Civil War. Items salvaged from the ships are still found around town. A trail from here leads through woods and past pocket beaches and coves to a headland where you can enjoy wonderful views of Cobscook Bay and over Passamaquoddy Bay to Campobello Island. You can also see the pens for Eastport’s salmon-farming industry as well as Estes Head, where the city's cargo pier is located. The trail is part of an interconnected network totaling a few miles. There is also a short trail from the parking area to Cony Beach. 

Wild, wooded, and undeveloped, this 7½-mile-long barrier island, the southernmost part of Cape Lookout National Seashore, is made even more magical by myriad seashells along the shore and about 100 free-roaming horses. Folklore offers two reasons for the Banker ponies' presence. One tale claims they swam ashore from a long-ago Spanish shipwreck, but some locals say early settlers first put these horses to pasture on the island. The island hosted various settlements in the 1800s, but storms drove residents inland. Today, gravestones here and there are the only remaining evidence of the people who lived here. Island access is by kayak, personal watercraft, or ferry only, from Beaufort and Harkers Island, and although primitive camping is allowed (at no fee), there are no amenities aside from composting toilets.

The lookout was built in 1932 and was used to station watchmen and -women until 1968. It was restored in the mid-1990s and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. To access the lookout, start at the East Shore Trailhead (just outside the park, in the Arapahoe National Recreation Area), between Grand and Shadow Mountain lakes, and hike approximately 5 miles along the East Shore and Shadow Mountain trails. There's a small fee for parking in the recreation area.

One of the south's best-known plantation homes was built, using enslaved labor, on the bank of Bayou Teche in 1834 for the wealthy sugar planter David Weeks. In 1917 his descendant William Weeks Hall conducted one of the first historically conscious restorations of a plantation home, also preserving truckloads of documents that helped explain day-to-day life here for the Weeks family, as well as for many of the people they enslaved. The result is one of the most fascinating tours in Louisiana, taking place Thursday through Saturday at 10:30 am and 2 pm, and led by a public historian. Weeks Hall willed the property to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1958, and each year the trust selects a different historical topic to emphasize. Surrounded by 2½ acres of lush gardens and moss-draped oaks, the beautiful two-story rose-hue house has striking white columns, exterior staircases sheltered in cabinet-like enclosures, and a pitched roof pierced by dormer windows. The furnishings are 85% original to the house.

The museum is made up of several downtown buildings that nod to Winthrop's colorful mining and ranching past, including "the castle," a late-19th-century log house built by one of the town's pioneer founders. Other structures include a country store, print shop, schoolhouse, women's dress shop, and an open-air display of vintage mining equipment. Although you can go inside the buildings in summer only, the grounds alone are worth a stroll and are open year-round.

This rough trek that leads to the 100-mile White Rim Road was probably first established by ancient Native Americans. In the early 1900s the local Shafer family started using it to drive cattle into the canyon. John "Sog" Shafer is credited with improving the narrow and rugged trail, and it was further upgraded during the uranium boom, in order for miners to haul ore by truck from the canyon floor. But make no mistake: it's still a harrowing descent. Check out the road's winding, 5.2-mile route down canyon walls from the Shafer Canyon Overlook before you drive it to see why it's mostly used by daring four-wheelers and energetic mountain bikers. Off the main road, less than 1 mile from the park entrance, it descends 1,500 feet to the White Rim. Check with the visitor center about road conditions before driving the Shafer Trail. It's often impassable after rain or snow.

Through exhibits and tours, the preservation group details the history of the Shaker movement. The site was home to the first Shaker settlement in the United States; it started in 1776 with about a dozen members and grew to about 350 members at its peak, in the mid-1900s. The 1848 meetinghouse, a clapboard structure with a tin roof, was the third meetinghouse built here. Guided tours ($3; Saturday 11:30 and 1:30) are available June through October.

You can learn about the daily life of the Shakers from one of the largest collections focusing on their culture. The extensive array of clothing and household textiles on exhibit is a highlight. The series of red barns also displays furniture, tools, machinery, and decorative objects from all of the major Shaker communities.

If you're heading southwest from Silver City (or west toward Arizona from Las Cruces), this is a fun stop. Portions of this settlement in the heart of a working ranch just outside the sleepy town of Lordsburg have been preserved as they were in the town's heyday as a gold and silver mining town in the late 1800s. Founded in 1856, the ghost town has been designated a National Historic Site, and original structures such as homes, saloons, and stables still stand. You'll find no snack shops or other tourist amenities in Shakespeare, as owner Janaloo Hill (who grew up on the ranch, and died in May 2005) vowed not to compromise the authenticity of this genuine piece of the Old West. Shakespeare is about 50 miles from Silver City via NM 90 through Lordsburg.

The center, in a log building on the grounds of the Oneida Indian Nation, has exhibits highlighting baskets, beadwork, dolls, and wampum. You may also learn about the role of the Oneida Nation during the American Revolution, when it sided with the rebels rather than with the British.

At the halfway point of the Shark Valley loop or tram tour, you’ll see (and likely be persuaded to scale) the observation tower, which, at 50 feet, is the highest accessible point in Everglades National Park. From the summit you’ll be able to see roughly 20 miles in any direction; do the math and that's 1,600 square miles of Everglades goodness. As you take in the River of Grass in all its subtle glory, observe waterbirds as well as alligators and maybe even river otters crossing the road. The tower has a wheelchair-accessible ramp to the top. If you don't want to take the tram from the Shark Valley Visitor Center, you can either hike or bike in, but private cars are not allowed.

Local pioneer history is documented at this remarkable museum, the creative vision of historian and poet Sharlot Hall. Along with an original 1863 ponderosa pine log cabin and the mansion which housed the territorial governor in 1864, the parklike museum complex contains several additional restored period homes and a transportation exhibit housed in a former auto repair shop circa 1937. Territorial times are the focus, but natural history and artifacts of the area's prehistoric peoples are also on display.

With 11 miles of hiking trails, this 1,147-acre property—a mixture of forests, meadows, wetlands, ponds, and streams—provides myriad hiking opportunities. The visitor center shares its space with small hawks, an owl, and other animals in the live-animal display in the Natural History Exhibit Room.

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. 

Road-trippers traveling along I–5 often stop at the second-largest concrete dam in the United States—only Grand Coulee in Washington is bigger than Shasta Dam, completed in 1945. The visitor center's 20-minute film and exhibits explain the engineering and construction, but even if the facility isn't open, the photogenic view north to snowcapped Mt. Shasta makes the dam worth the detour. The landmark's history-laden guided tours were set to resume by 2024.

Six miles west of downtown and straddling Highway 299 lies the former town of Shasta City, which thrived in the mid- to late 1800s. This park's 19 acres of half-ruined brick buildings, accessed via trails, are a reminder of the glory days of the California gold rush. The former county courthouse building (whose exhibits include rare California landscape paintings), jail, and gallows have been restored to their 1860s appearance. The Litsch General Store (1850–1950), now a museum, displays items once sold here.  Next to the store in a wooden shack, family-run Shorty's Eatery (closed Monday and Tuesday) serves up good sandwiches and Filipino dishes.

Based here and in New York, this institute was founded in 1990 by environmental health scientist Dr. Susan Shaw to study how pollution affects humans, the oceans, and the planet. Programs for all ages are offered, including guided walks along the beach, as well as an environmental speakers series throughout the summer.

These open meadows and broken woods shelter kildeers, Northern harrier hawks, several types of flycatchers, a few warblers, woodpeckers, eastern kingbirds, and bluebirds. In spring, listen for the evening mating rituals of American woodcocks. In fall, watch for the occasional peregrine falcon—a few breeding pairs nest in the nearby cliffs. In spring through late summer, visitors can see bobolinks and Eastern meadowlarks nesting.

Sourcing his grapes from vineyards throughout the state, South Valley vintner Sean Sheehan welcomes serious local fans and visitors from afar to his Old Town tasting room—an inviting destination for those seeking the best in “old vine” wines in a convivial but intimate space. Lighter, brighter, and spicier components bring a special experience to tastings of the award-winning and notable favorites like a Cinsault Dry Rose and Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Reserve or the Riesling-based Cielo Dulce. A popular presence at festivals throughout the year, Sheehan Winery tastings here in Old Town might feature cheese board and charcuterie pairings (or you may bring your own), or simply focus on a delicious seasonal rotation of the finest reds and whites.

A scenic 13-mile drive on paved and gravel roads crosses the Sheep Creek Canyon Geological Area, which is full of upturned layers of rock, craggy pinnacles, and hoodoos. Watch for a herd of bighorn sheep, as well as a popular cave alongside the road. In the fall, salmon return to Sheep Creek to spawn; a kiosk and several bridges provide unobtrusive viewing. The area, 28 miles west of Greendale Junction off U.S. 191 and Highway 44, is open from May to October.

This 7-mile dirt road in the Stronghold Unit is ideal for mountain biking, but should be attempted only when dry, and riders must stay on the road. The terrain is level for the first 3 miles, then it climbs and levels out again. At the top you can take in great views of the area.