107 Best Sights in USA

This 138-room complex is the best-preserved site in the park; however, the alcove surrounding Spruce Tree House became unstable in 2015 and was closed to visitors. Until alcove arch support is added, visitors can view but not enter this site. You can still hike down a trail that starts behind the Chapin Mesa Archeological Museum and leads you 100 feet down into the canyon to view the site from a distance. Because of its location in the heart of the Chapin Mesa area, the Spruce Tree House trail and area can resemble a crowded playground during busy periods. When allowed inside the site, tours are self-guided (allow 45 minutes to an hour), but a park ranger is on-site to answer questions.

So named because of a crumbling prehistoric stairway leading up from the dwelling, Step House is reached via a paved (but steep) trail that's ¾ mile long. The house is unique in that it shows clear evidence of two separate occupations: the first around AD 626, the second a full 600 years later. The self-guided tour takes about 45 minutes.

Although researchers believe it was probably a ceremonial structure, they're unsure of the exact purpose of this complex, which has no doors or windows in most of its chambers. Because the building was not quite half finished when it was left in 1276, some researchers surmise it might have been constructed to stave off whatever disaster caused its builders—and the other inhabitants of Mesa Verde—to leave.

The Three Chiefs Culture Center (formerly The People's Center) allows you to experience the rich cultural heritage of the Salish, Kootenai, and Pend d'Oreille tribes. The Center includes artifacts, photographs, and recordings; runs educational programs; and offers guided interpretive tours, outdoor traditional lodges, and annual festivals. A gift shop sells both traditional and nontraditional work by local artists and craftspeople.

Rhode Island's first and only museum devoted to Native history and culture contains crafts, historical items, and photos related primarily to the Narragansett, Niantic, Wampanoag, and other southeastern New England tribes.

You can visit a well-preserved complex of 13th-century Salado cliff dwellings at this site, which was nearly destroyed during a wildfire in 2019. A team of archaeologists and firefighters saved the site's two dwellings, but 88 percent of the Monument's almost 1,000 acres burned. You can visit the Lower Cliff Dwelling on your own, but must sign up for a ranger-led tour to see the Upper Cliff Dwelling. Tours are offered from Friday to Monday, from November to April.

Gathered from Tlingit and Haida village sites, many of the Native totems in the center's collection are well over a century old—a rare age for cedar carvings, which are eventually lost to decay in Southeast's exceedingly wet climate. Other work by Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian artists is also on display inside the facility, and outside stand several more poles carved in the three decades since it opened. The center offers guided tours and hosts classes, workshops, and seminars related to Northwest Coast Native art and culture.

This museum offers a quick orientation to the prehistoric and modern indigenous populations of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado Plateau, including an excavation of an 800-year-old Pueblo site. Of special interest are split-twig figurines dating back 2,000 to 4,000 years and other artifacts left behind by ancient cultures. A ranger leads daily interpretive tours of the Ancestral Pueblo village.  The museum is closed for renovation. Although it was scheduled to reopen in Spring 2025, that date is uncertain due to unexpected budget cuts in 2025.

Impressive in scope, Tuzigoot National Monument is a complex of the Sinagua people, who lived on this land overlooking the Verde Valley from about AD 1000 to 1400. The pueblo, constructed of limestone and sandstone blocks, once rose three stories and incorporated 110 rooms. Inhabitants were skilled dry farmers and traded with peoples hundreds of miles away. Implements used for food preparation, as well as jewelry, weapons, and farming tools excavated from the site, are displayed in the visitor center. Within the site, you can step into a reconstructed room.

A stone obelisk marks the mass grave at the site of the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, where several hundred Sioux---including many women and children---were killed by U.S. Army soldiers after a skirmish broke out at what had been a peaceful encampment. Only a handful of visitors make pilgrimages to the remote site today, which is simple and largely unchanged from its 1890 appearance. The short dirt road leading up the hill to the site from the highway is sometimes too rutted to drive. If you go, be advised that this is a place of deep solemnity for many people. Visitors should be quiet and respectful.

Families from the Sinagua and other Ancestral Puebloans are believed to have lived together in harmony on the site that is now Wupatki National Monument, farming and trading with one another and with those who passed through. The eruption of Sunset Crater may have influenced migration to this area a century after the event, as freshly laid volcanic cinders held in moisture needed for crops. Although there's evidence of earlier habitation, most of the settlers moved here around 1100 and left the pueblo by about 1250. The 2,700 identified sites contain archaeological evidence of a Native American settlement.

The national monument was named for the Wupatki (meaning "tall house" in Hopi) site, which was originally three stories high, built above an unexplored system of underground fissures. The structure had almost 100 rooms and an open ball court—evidence of Southwestern trade with Mesoamerican tribes for whom ball games were a central ritual. Next to the ball court is a blowhole, a geologic phenomenon in which air is forced upward by underground pressure.

Other sites to visit are Wukoki, Lomaki, and the Citadel, a pueblo on a knoll above a limestone sink. Although the largest remnants of Native American settlements at Wupatki National Monument are open to the public, other sites are off-limits. On Saturdays November through March, free guided 2.5-mile hikes to backcountry pueblos and petroglyphs are offered (reservations required). A 1.3-mile hike to East Mesa is also available during this time. Between the Wupatki and Citadel sites, Doney Mountain affords 360-degree views of the Painted Desert and the San Francisco Volcanic Field. It's a perfect spot for a sunset picnic.

This 2,500-square-foot, re-created cedar post-and-plank clan house, dedicated in 2016, is a space for the Huna Tlingit clans—whose ancestral homeland is Glacier Bay—to gather for meetings and ceremonies. Visitors can also come to learn about traditional food, art, crafts, dance, and other aspects of Tlingit culture. In summer tribal interpreters are here from 1 to 3:45. Xunaa Shuká Hít (roughly translated as "Huna Ancestor's House") was a collaborative project between the National Park Service and the Hoonah Indian Association.

This six-building complex just outside Toppenish has a fascinating museum of history and culture related to the Yakama Nation, which occupies a 2,200-square-mile reservation. (It's a little bigger than the state of Delaware.) Holdings include costumes, basketry, beadwork, and reconstructions of traditional lodges. Tribal dances and other cultural events are often staged in the Heritage Theater. The complex also includes a gift shop, restaurant, and library.

The cultural center hosts a range of community and art events, including classes, movie screenings, summer camps, concerts, and summer Saturday markets. It's open only when events are held, but the on-site library and the gift shop run by the Kuskokwim Art Guild are open most days of the week.

This former archaeological site includes portions of an Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) village occupied most likely sometime between AD 1050 and 1200, a small but informative museum with artifacts discovered on-site, and a reconstructed pueblo dwelling.

For nature lovers, the main attractions of the Flathead Indian Reservation are fishing and water recreation on numerous lakes and streams and bird-watching in Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. A tribal fishing license is required, and is available at most licensing agents.