Government

These abandoned waterworks are crumbling into the Potomac River.

The tunnel under the Capitol Building where Congress takes out its trash.

The Pentagon is so large that it was planned like a city, complete with internal highway infrastructure.

The only tennis court that falls under the jurisdiction of the central bank.

Right next to departures—how convenient!

One of the largest fleets of armored vehicles in the world, sitting out in the California desert.

The Pentagon sits on a former island that was in Virginia at low tide and D.C. at high tide.

An obscure public service from the U.S. government that redeems burnt, moldy, and soiled old greenbacks.

A micro-communist utopia in Spain with no police, no mortgages and full employment.

A rare wayfinding portmanteau of “Street” and “Avenue.”

The U.S. Supreme Court's secret Cold War relocation facility in the mountains of North Carolina.

Rumor has it the hot dog stand was targeted by two Russian nuclear missiles.

The U.S. Fish Commission’s effort to mass produce carp.

The California secessionist movement has its own foreign embassy, in Russia of all places.

In the basement of the U.S. Capitol Building is a hidden storage room full of ornate floor tiles leftover from the 1850s.

Herbert Hoover's "Brown House" rural presidential retreat was a PR disaster amid the start of the Great Depression.

This hollowed salt dome is the largest oil storage facility in the world, hoarding 250 million barrels of crude oil.