Places Edited by Ike Allen

Now nearly abandoned, Kaskaskia was once the capital of Illinois and one of the most important towns on the upper Mississippi.

The site of the one of the most deadly train wrecks in American history.

This tiny, hurricane-resistant house in Galveston is one of the city's most notable architectural oddities.

The second largest roadrunner in the world stands 11 feet tall in his West Texas town.

Maryland's first (and last standing) toll house on America's first federal road established the state as the "Gateway to the West."

This crumbling Art Deco movie palace in Mexico City has been abandoned for two decades.

J.R.R Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and other "Inklings" met at the Oxford pub to discuss the now legendary fantasy stories they were writing.

The designer of this railway tunnel added a birthday present for himself.

An eight-sided home built during a brief octagon craze in the 1850s.

On a side street near the interstate is the building where the famous anarchist once owned an ice cream parlor.

This former abandoned hospital, a complex of stunning 19th century buildings, once housed 2,000 psychiatric patients.

The spot where the namesake of the Douglas fir met his mysterious end on a Hawaiian volcano.

This 140-year-old beacon off the Florida Keys marks the wreck of a Navy ship that once roamed the Caribbean hunting pirates.

Stenciled handprints and wall paintings dating back 10,000 years, some of the earliest forms of cave art.

The largest Chinese cemetery in the world outside of China dates back to the 15th century.

A magical work of architecture where a wind turbine enables monks to levitate.

The grassy landscape is home to the world's last truly wild horses.

The Cuban revolutionary looks over the country from its highest peak.

Locals believe the purity of this huge, untouched Arctic lake could be the salvation of human civilization.

These giant volcano sponges in Antarctica are thought to be the world's oldest living animal, at 15,000 years old.

A collection of more than 1,000 teddies from nearly any profession.

A lion given to the prime minister somehow got stuffed and sent to Florida.

An unfinished complex built for children from around the world sits abandoned on the Black Sea coastline.

Descend 2,030 years into the past in an ancient tunnel built to support Jerusalem's most famous wall.