Places Edited by Daniel McDermon

After emancipation, former slaves paved the roads of their newly built settlement with these bricks.

Behold the uncanny sight of the Golden Arches—rendered in black.

The “capital city of the Kingdom of Skullbonia” features a general store and a mural spotlighting the town’s bareknuckle boxers.

An 1857 brewery on the banks Mississippi River, now just a ruin with no roof, no windows and only one corner of the building still standing.

A small but elegant example of early highway engineering in the American Southwest.

The largest interactive exhibition in the U.S. exploring human history through the lens of power, punishment, and psychology.

A collection of over 100 statues of people who fought for the freedom of South Africa.

Thermal lake of unbelievable color that looks like a drop of paint.

An old adobe structure first built in the 1890s is a desert watering hole plastered with dollar bills and odd West Texas finds.

The highest mountain in Hokkaido was the setting for one of Japan’s strangest unsolved mysteries.

A beautiful piece of history in a very remote area that allowed ranchers to move their herds.

A lineup of a dozen or so Japanese light tanks from WWII.

A piece of I-45 graffiti has become one of Houston’s unofficial slogans.

It celebrates the four men from South Africa who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

An early 20th-century school building whose clock tower and carved symbols quietly tell the story of the trades once taught inside.

Once an important military landmark, this centuries old fort regained its popularity in modern times due to an iconic Bollywood film.

The oldest western-style houses in Japan are centered around the industrialist Thomas Glover.

The Princess Mishawaka statue and story honor the legend of a Shawnee Indian heroine and promoted tourism in the 1930s.

A memorial dedicated to the famed North Pole explorer appropriately sits at the far edge of Arlington National Cemetery.

Two unremarkable-looking rocks on a cobblestone street are actually ancient wanderers; one a 150-million-year-old limestone, the other a 1.8-billion-year-old granite.

This roadside establishment in between Houston and the Louisiana border has the largest alligator in captivity

A ruined hilltop watch base in the Aravalli ridge above Jaipur, where broken fort walls and a forgotten lookout overlook Man Sagar Lake, reachable only by scrambling through cactus-covered desert trails.

From an earlier era, a small community was established and was prosperous but drifted away, leaving only the bank vault behind.

Forgotten forts that were pivotal in Singapore’s military history.