Places Edited by Harrison Watkins

Once a safe haven for Black patrons and performers—including Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington—during the Jim Crow era, portions of this nightclub and motel have been restored to welcome a new kind of visitor.

This historic home of the shag is keeping a Southern dance tradition going strong.

This maze-like, oceanfront gift shop—the nation’s largest— has been serving kitsch to the Myrtle Beach community for over 80 years.

From the 1940 Ford Coupe that started it all 50 years ago, this collection of over 150 classic vehicles celebrates the spirit and history of American car craft.

If Myrtle Beach is the mini golf capital of the world, this is its crowning glory.

This town at the north edge of Myrtle Beach holds a wealth of Black history.

Take a stroll through this centuries-old tunnel of enormous moss-hung evergreens, nestled among the grounds of America’s first public sculpture garden.

This museum started by a curious collector is now a place for believers and skeptics alike.

For one month, the fields and skies of Gibbon, Nebraska, come alive with one of the largest gatherings of sandhill cranes in North America.

Nebraska’s longest-running summer theater is a musical tribute to cowboy culture.

Kakadu National Park is known for its stunning beauty and its rock art, which represents the longest historical records of any continuous civilization on Earth.

Let these towering termite-building structures tell you where to go.

This sacred site lives up to its name with its majestic, color-splashed sandstone formations.

A historic jail preserves etchings from over a century of incarcerated people in a town with a rough and tumble past.

A living museum of curated gardens honors 4,000 years of agriculture in the Santa Cruz River basin.

An open-air, roadside eatery celebrating a historic indigenous cuisine of complicated significance.

The damming of the Colorado River buried an iconic geologic formation before record-breaking drought brought it back.

One of the best-preserved ghost towns in Arizona speaks to the difficulties of establishing mining towns in the 19th century American West.

This arid landscape was once a lush wetland. Today, it's a paleontological site filled with fossilized mammoths, sabertooth cats, and more.

A bookstore with an entire room dedicated to damaged and forlorn comic books.

This music school doubles as a store for unique, hand-crafted, and hard-to-find instruments.

An old California photo stand has been turned into a shrine to the cozy art of crochet.

One of the few remaining carousels built by master amusement park carver Charles I.D. Looff.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.