In the Shawnee National Forest, amazing rock formations peer through the treeline.

A once-booming Mississippi River town with a history of racial violence is now eerie and mostly abandoned.

This twisty sign depicts the chain's first logo.

One of the largest-ever mental hospitals now sits abandoned, surrounded by 25,000 unmarked graves.

The first car-centric shopping plaza in the U.S. brought a little bit of Spain to downtown Kansas City.

What was meant to be a temporary exhibit is now a permanent fixture at the St. Louis Zoo filled with beautiful birds.

Two hundred tons of pioneer artifacts were painstakingly recovered from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Missouri River.

Community bookshelf of 25-foot-tall book spines.

This former tuberculosis research hospital endeavored to cure the dreaded disease with fresh air and positive attitudes.

The world's longest known cave system.

An Art Deco gem that held together the artistic heart of an agricultural community for 92 years.

Quirky water tower advertises the long-gone Brooks Tomato Products Co.

You have to love a museum with a truly dedicated focus. A focus on Superman, for example.

Once one of the world's great cities, Cahokia was a place of religious worship, trade and mass human sacrifice before being mysteriously abandoned.

Recognized the world over as the home of the McCallisters in the 1990 movie "Home Alone."

While he no longer has an eatery to give him context, this off-brand Paul Bunyan still holds his giant hot dog with pride.

The oldest experimental corn field in America is still creating better ways to grow crops.

This grave in a ghost town cemetery marks the death of a witch on a day that never happened.

The legacy of an unsolved, gruesome murder rests beneath the spans of this historic bridge.

The mysterious white squirrels of this Illinois city are treated like sacred cows.

This abandoned Abraham Lincoln statue has also earned the honorary of "World's Ugliest."

The world's largest collection of the world's largest objects is in one small Illinois town.

The multinational Burger King chain is banned from operating within 20 miles of a family restaurant filed under the same name.

This small-town park in southern Illinois has a 1,000,000-gallon swimming pool and a 100,000-barrel oil well.