45 Best Sights in USA

The intersection of 13th Street and Main Avenue marks the northern edge of Durango's Main Avenue National Historic District. Old-fashioned streetlamps line the streets, casting a warm glow on the elegant buildings filled with upscale galleries, restaurants, and shops. Dating from 1887, the Strater Hotel is a reminder of the time when this town was a stop for many people headed west.

A unique assortment of historic buildings, stylish boutiques, coffee shops, antique stores, and restaurants make Wailuku's Market Street a delightful place for a stroll. Brown-Kobayashi and the Bird of Paradise Unique Antiques are the best shops for interesting collectibles and furnishings. Brown Eyed Bella has stylish bikinis and island wear. Wailuku Coffee Company has works by local artists and occasionally offers live entertainment in the evening.

The living-history Nevada City Old Town down the road from Virginia City, preserves the town as it was at the turn of the 20th century, with restored buildings, thousands of artifacts from the gold rush era, and weekend demonstrations. Included in the collection is the Depuis House, from the PBS television series Frontier House. Saturdays and Sundays during the summer, the ghost town comes to life as actors dress up in period wear to engage with guests and give them a taste of life during the gold rush era.

West of downtown, this National Register Historic District is well-endowed with stately Colonial and Victorian mansions. The site of the Catamount Tavern, where Ethan Allen organized the Green Mountain Boys to capture Ft. Ticonderoga in 1775, is marked by a bronze statue of Vermont's indigenous mountain lion, now extinct.

A jumble of historic attractions and bonafide tourist traps—the Sacramento History Museum and the superb California State Railroad Museum representing the former and a Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, and salt-water taffy and T-shirt concessions the latter—occupies several square blocks of the Sacramento River's eastern banks a quarter-mile west of the Capitol. Shining bright metallic gold, the Tower Bridge, designed in the art-deco Streamline Moderne style and completed in 1935, anchors the waterfront's southern flank.

Bounded by Ida B. Wells Drive on the north, Polk Street on the south, Plymouth Court to the east, and the Chicago River to the west, this district fell into disrepair in the 1960s, but a neighborhood resurgence began in the late 1970s. Bibliophiles flock in for the Printers Row Lit Fest, a weekend-long literary celebration held each September. But, at any time of year, you can admire examples of buildings by the group that represented the First Chicago School of Architecture (including Louis Sullivan).

Miners' houses and distinctive shops built in the 1870s line this carefully restored area of Old Helena along with restaurants and a visitor's center. Note the stone pillars and wooden stringers of the Morelli Bridge, spanning a walking trail that leads to the Mount Helena Trail System. You can visit an 1864 hand-hewn log pioneer cabin that now houses a museum of the gold rush days of the 1860s; this is Helena's oldest surviving home.

Roaring Fork was settled by Europeans beginning in the 1830s. At its height, around the turn of the 20th century, there were about two dozen families in the area. Most lived a hardscrabble existence, trying to scrape out a living from the rough mountain land. The Noah "Bud" Ogle Self-Guided Nature Trail, on Orchard Road just before entering the one-way Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, offers a walking tour of a farmstead and the surrounding forest. Highlights include a log cabin, barn, streamside mill, and a wooden flume system designed to bring water to the farm. Among the historic structures on the Motor Nature Trail are the Jim Bales Cabin, the Ephraim Bales Cabin, and the Alfred Reagan House, one of the more "upscale" residences at Roaring Fork.

Amid skyscrapers, the two low-rise blocks of bars and restaurants along historic Stone Street feel more like a village than the center of the financial universe. In summer, benches and long tables blanket the cobblestone street for a more convivial mood, especially on Thursday and Friday night. This was Manhattan's first paved street, and today the cluster of buildings along here—with South William and Pearl Streets, and Coenties Alley—make up the Stone Street Historic District.

The busy red-light district that lasted in New Orleans from 1897 to 1917 has since been destroyed, and in its place stand federal housing projects still partially under renovation. Known as Storyvillle, (named after the neighborhood's creator Sidney Story), the area's splendid Victorian homes served as brothels and provided a venue for the raw sounds of ragtime and early jazz—an extremely young Louis Armstrong cut his teeth in some of the clubs here. The world's first electrically lighted saloon, Tom Anderson's House of Diamonds, was at the corner of Basin and Bienville streets, and the whole area has been the subject of many novels, songs, and films. In 1917, after several incidents involving naval officers, the government ordered the district shut down. Some buildings were razed almost overnight, but it would be years before federal funding would be available for the housing project in the 1930s. Only three structures from the Storyville era remain, all former saloons: Lulu White's Saloon ( 237 Basin Street), Joe Victor's Saloon ( St. Louis and Villere streets), and "My Place" Saloon ( 1214 Bienville Street). Currently, a historical marker on the "neutral ground" (median) of Basin Street is the only visible connection to Alderman Sidney Story's experiment in legalized prostitution. The area is a popular stop on many ghost tours, though what there is to see unfolds in the imagination.

For a glimpse of how the working class lived at the turn of the 20th century, head south of Wicker Park to the Ukrainian Village. In its center, on Haddon Avenue and on Thomas and Cortez streets between Damen Avenue and Leavitt Street, you'll find a well-preserved group of workers' cottages and apartments. At the corner of Leavitt and Haddon Streets, gilded cupolas mark Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral (tours offered occasionally; schedule at  holytrinitycathedral.net), an early-20th-century church designed by renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan.

The century-old stores and warehouses of Union Avenue Historic District make for a commercial district filled with a mix of stores ranging from kitschy to good. Among the landmarks are the glorious 1889 sandstone-and-brick Union Depot. Pitkin Place, lined with fabulous gabled and turreted mansions, attests to the town's more prosperous times. Walking-tour brochures are available at the chamber of commerce.

Honoring the history of the 19th-century Black community of Weeksville, one of the first communities of free Blacks in New York (founded by James Weeks), this Crown Heights museum with an industrial-modern building by Caples Jefferson Architects has rotating exhibitions, botanical gardens, and three preserved houses on gravely Hunterfly Road in the back, dating back to 1838. Tours inside these structures depicting life in the 1860s, 1900s, and 1930s can be booked through their website.

Twenty saloons and bordellos once lined this stretch of Montezuma Street, along the west side of Courthouse Plaza. Social activity is more subdued these days, although live music pulses every evening, and the buildings have been beautifully restored. The historical bars provide an escape from the street's many boutiques.

Dating to 1709, Wickford began as a fishing village, later a modestly busy port, and today retains its Colonial charms with street after street lined with preserved buildings dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, including a number of former sea captain's homes. One of the oldest Episcopal churches in America, the circa-1707 Old Narragansett Church, was originally located about five miles away but moved to Wickford in 1800. Wickford Harbor is a popular haven for pleasure boaters, and the calm waters also attract kayakers and standup paddleboarders. Fresh fish can still be bought off the town dock at the end of Main Street, and a pair of small bridges over tidal coves help define the pleasantly walkable shopping area on Brown Street. Several walking trails access undeveloped areas on the outskirts of town, and the town beach is a short walk or bike ride south along scenic route 1A. Wickford hosts Daffodil Days in the spring, the Wickford Art Festival in July, Wicked Week Halloween festivities late October, and the Festival of Lights in December.