Deadwood, South Dakota
Fortunes were made here. Celebrities died here. The legend endures but the experience of Deadwood, South Dakota is...mixed.
Category Road Trip Adventures
We have zig-zagged across the country and, boy-oh-boy, do we have some gems to share! Browse campsites, off-road trails, scenic outlooks, oddities, museums, hiking trails, and more.
Read MoreDeadwood, South Dakota
Tri-State Museum
Next to the Geographic Center of the Nation (or, at least, its monument) is the Tri-State Museum. This one-room collection of community artifacts in Belle Fourche, South Dakota includes memorabilia and oddities from prehistoric fossils, cattle ranching, WWII, and modern industries.
Geographic Center of the Nation
I had always thought the center of the nation was was Kansas. Yet, there is a contender for the title. In driving through Belle Fourche, South Dakota, we encountered a large sign announcing a monument for the geographic center of the nation. We had to stop.
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
We really aren't into visiting battlefields. Generally, they are macabre, empty fields with little to look at and much to get depressed about. But Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument has some striking points of interest and, frankly, we were driving right by.
Old Time Road Trip
Along with the Museum of the Rockies 300,000 objects spanning 500,000,000 years of history are examples of earlier nomadic equipment that is not that unlike today's features.
Museum of the Rockies
Bozeman, Montana has dinosaurs. The museum of the Rockies is where you find them. Compare T. rex skulls and the transition between an adolescent Triceratops to an adult. See paleontology in action at the show lab where paleontologists are absorbed in cleaning, preparing, and analyzing new fossil discoveries. My favorite curatorial flourish is the partial sculptures where half is a fully fleshed dinosaur with the other side being the bones in situ.
Nevada City Music Hall
Not to be outdone by its neighbor, Virginia City, Nevada City has its own oddity: a collection of music machines. Player pianos to full blown orchestras are on display and some remain accessible to any loose change that you may wish to pop into their mechanized bellies.
Thompson-Hickman Museum
Experience a piece of Montana's gold rush history and the oddities that come with it at Virginia City Historical Museum in Virginia City, Montana.
J.Spencer Watkins Memorial Museum
Most people have a pretty sterile vision of museums. They have institutional white walls and satin ropes. There may be a security guard perched by the entry way to the gallery. The J.Spencer Watkins Memorial Museum is not that museum.
Gypsy Arcade
So many oddities come hand-in-hand with a ghost town. They are sieve for oddity: anything normal comes and goes but the strange curiosities lodge in the town to stay. In the case of Virginia City, that means a Nickelodeon that still charges a nickel to watch Bawdy films of scandalous women show their ankles and get your fortune told.