189 Best Sights in USA

This historic site contains the remains of four structures once part of Braddock's Point Plantation. John “Saucy Jack" Stoney forced enslaved people to build the plantation in the 1790s; it was eventually bought by William Baynard in 1840. Union troops occupied the plantation home during the Civil War, and the home was burned in 1869. The 6-acre site, which includes the ruins of the main house, the plantation overseer's house, and a house used by enslaved people, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. Now located within the Sea Pines Resort, Baynard Ruins Park has a small parking area as well as trails and interpretative signs that describe the historical and archaeological significance of the area. If you are staying in Sea Pines, you can ride your bike to the site and explore at your leisure. Guided tours are also available through Sea Pines.

Within the Stronghold Unit, the Stronghold Table, a 3-mile-long plateau, is a historic site, sacred to the Lakota and inaccessible. It was here, just before the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890, that some 600 Sioux gathered to perform one of the last known Ghost Dances, a ritual in which the Sioux wore white shirts that they believed would protect them from bullets.

Just across Liberty Street from the World Trade Center site, the “Ten House” firehouse is officially known as Ladder Company 10 and Engine Company 10. On the morning of September 11, 2001, firefighters on duty here were among the first to respond to New York’s terrorist attacks. The companies lost six heroes that day. The “Ten House Bravest Memorial” stands inside the firehouse to commemorate their ultimate sacrifice and that of other Ten House heroes. Around the corner on Greenwich Street, the 56-foot-long bronze bas-relief FDNY Memorial Wall serves as a tribute to 343 firefighters who perished on 9/11.

The Tennessee Antebellum Trail, which has more than 54 historic sites, plantations, and Civil War battlefields, is a 90-mile loop tour that begins south of Nashville in Franklin and continues through historic Maury and Williamson counties. Nine sites are open to the public daily. The official website includes downloads of a detailed brochure and map.

This park includes a Lewis and Clark camp on a floodplain overlooking Lolo Creek. The explorers stayed here from September 9 to 11, 1805, and again from June 30 to July 3, 1806. Archaeologists in 2002 found evidence of a latrine and a fire hearth, making this one of only a few locations with a physical record of the expedition's camp. Tepee rings suggest that Native Americans used the riverside location, too. Self-guided tours meander through cottonwoods and the historic campsite. Daily interpretive presentations and guided tours run during the summer.

There's an archaeological display of portions of the original 1752 fort at this museum, as well as artifacts and detailed exhibits on the history of the early colony. The park includes picnic areas, gardens, an adobe rowhouse built in 1897, and Tubac's well-preserved 1885 schoolhouse. The Tubac Visitor Center is also housed here.

Encompassing mission ruins, the church of San José de Tumacácori, and a portion of the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, this park became a national monument in 1908. Guided tours of the beautiful church and grounds are available daily at 11 and 2, January through March, and information on both the mission and the historic trail is available at the visitor center. A small museum displays some of the mission's artifacts, and often during winter and spring months fresh tortillas are made on a wood-fire stove in the courtyard. Creative educational programs, such as full-moon tours, bird walks, and a Junior Ranger Program, are offered throughout the year. An annual fiesta the first weekend of December has arts and crafts and food booths.

These 153 wooded acres on the Ridgefield–Wilton border are where the noted American Impressionist painter J. Alden Weir (1852–1919) lived and worked from the early 1880s. From May through October, rangers give tours (Wednesday–Sunday) of the Weir home, studio, outbuildings, gardens, and grounds, where the artist set many of his paintings and congregated with such notable fellow painters as Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. The grounds are open every day, from sunrise to sunset, year-round.

This is a reconstruction of Waiilatpu Mission, a Presbyterian outpost established on Cayuse lands in 1836. The park preserves the foundations of the mission buildings, a short segment of the Oregon Trail, and, on a nearby hill, the graveyard where the Native American victims of an 1847 measles epidemic and subsequent uprising are buried.