This is one really big nut.

These ruins of a pre-Columbian cliff village are among the most beautiful and well preserved in New Mexico.

Twice a year, visitors can tour the desolate site that birthed the Atomic Age.

Life-sized sculpture of a blue whale made of hand-recycled plastic trash.

The old Route 66 town straddling Texas and New Mexico died along with the Main Street of America.

These Pre-Columbian petroglyphs contain representations of birds, deer, hunters, and even some early Native flute players.

A multi-storied adobe complex has been inhabited for more than a thousand years.

This fast-food outlet is the only space and UFO-themed McDonalds in the world.

Seemingly grown on some other world, these New Mexico rock formations look like a disused science fiction set.

The second-largest cave chamber in the world was discovered in 1898 by a 16-year-old and a friend known as "Pothead."

A museum dedicated to the alleged Roswell Incident.

A clear blue swimming hole with hidden caves, still unexplored.

Explore the largest pure gypsum deposit in the world, and go dune sledding while you're at it.

This larger-than-life portrait in Nevada's silver boomtown is decorated with over 3,000 silver dollars.

Unopened beer cans are left at this monument to honor the Navy men who lost their lives during a training mission.

An iron monument on the 120th meridian as surveyed, one of only four marking the boundary between Nevada and California north of Lake Tahoe.

This enormous fiberglass cow near Death Valley National Park once graced a casino roof in Las Vegas.

The museum is housed inside the historic 1863 Carson City Mint.

The rocks exposed at Valley of Fire State Park also occur in a much less known but equally spectacular area a few miles to the southwest.

An ode to one of the dirtiest jobs during the construction of the Boulder Dam.

Ruins of the original wooden flume that carried water to Virginia City are still visible high on the Virginia Range.

The largest recovered section of Titanic sits in a hotel in Las Vegas.

This former New Jersey bus now exists as a public art exhibit.

These markers are used to document elevation changes around the famed dam.