Leonard Knight built a folk art landmark in the California badlands

New York artist Donald Judd turned Marfa, Texas, a small town in the middle of the West Texas desert, into an internationally recognized artists' oasis.

Black Rock City is a remarkable portable town

While Burning Man hosts many impressive and unique architectural feats, these buildings also have notable issues of safety, accessibility, and reliability.

'Ghost towns' are rarely known for ghost sightings

Instead, they're places an industry has abandoned, leaving many of the town's buildings decrepit and abandoned. That doesn't mean they're completely empty; some folks prefer the pace and look of ghost towns, which often lean into their Old West aesthetics. The Vox documentary explores ghost towns in Nevada, which is home to more than 600.

The history of Solvang, California's little Danish village

Just north of Santa Barbara sits a curious California gem: Solvang, a small town constructed in the Danish Provincial style. This video tour of the village provides a fascinating history of how the town became a miniature Copenhagen and does so in a unique way: by trying to recreate vintage photographs of the town. It makes for an entertaining and educational tour.

'Coral Castle,' Florida's self-built monument to a lost valentine

Latvian Ed Leedskalnin moved to the US shortly after his teenage fiancée ditched him. He quickly began work building a romantic tribute to this tragic episode via massive oolitic limestone. Working mostly at night, the Latvian cultivated an air of mystique as bystanders grew curious over his methods. Today, the castle stands as a bittersweet monument to unrequited love.

Burning Man's artists and architects create without seeking profit or fame

Each year Burning Man's Black Rock City sees major achievements in design. Many creators remain anonymous and do not seek fame, profit, or acclaim, valuing the process of creating, and seeking to cultivate culture and identity.

Burning Man has become a playground for Silicon Valley's tech workers, sometimes influencing the work culture of the country's biggest companies.

Photographing abandoned structures in the southeastern US

Leland Kent is a photographer and historian who has captured hundreds of buildings across the southeast United States over the last 10 years in order to preserve the past before it's too late. His subjects include decommissioned power plants, closed youth jails, vacant plantation homes, and more, and he has published several city-focused books. Get lost in Kent's dramatic portrayals of once-lively structures in this extensive and gripping gallery.

Larry Harvey wanted an authentic, creative community when he founded Burning Man

Larry Harvey, the co-founder of Burning Man, wanted to create a bohemian retreat from everyday society by offering a break from commercialization while providing time to focus on autonomy, shared experience, and "transcendence."

Burning Man Explained

Every year, tens of thousands of people journey into the Nevada desert to build a temporary city centered on radical creativity, art, and community at Burning Man.

See a gallery of the otherworldly artwork created at Burning Man, which is intended to be transient.

The bison with mystery origins on California's Santa Catalina Island

Bison roam the 75 square-mile channel island of Santa Catalina about 25 miles south of Los Angeles in the Pacific. It's not clear exactly how they got there, but one theory says 14 of them were dropped off as part of a Hollywood film production. Generally beloved by the locals and vacationers, their numbers ballooned to nearly 600 but dwindled amid resource scarcity. What now? See the state of conservation efforts here.

Marfa, an art colony in the West Texas desert with a population of around 2,000, has its own NPR affiliate.

Half of the residents of Coober Pedy—a small mining town in South Australia—live in underground homes to avoid the area's scorching temperatures.

The first motel appeared in 1925

The Milestone Mo-Tel was designed by Arthur and Alfred Heneman. The two architect brothers in San Luis Obispo noticed Americans choosing road trip vacations—which grew in popularity in the 1920s—but had limited sleeping options outside of campgrounds. The Milestone Mo-Tel was later renamed the Motel Inn.

The Sundance Film Festival is named after a Robert Redford character

Redford purchased a plot of land in Utah in 1969, calling it Sundance Mountain Resort, a nod to his role in the film "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Soon after purchasing the land, he began hosting workshops to develop young artists. The Sundance Film Festival (originally called the Utah/US Film Festival) was first held in 1978 and was intended to draw attention to independent cinema.

Why Nevada is home to a real-life 'Simpsons' house

The home, a strikingly accurate recreation of the cartoon family's home on Evergreen Terrace, was built for a 1997 promotional contest. Back then, it was painted to look exactly like it did on TV, but the contest winner declined to move in, choosing a $75,000 cash prize instead.

Listen to a podcast that explains why Elon Musk is creating a company town called 'Snailbrook' for SpaceX and some of his other companies in Bastrop, Texas, a small community roughly 45 minutes outside of Austin.

Taliesin offered Frank Lloyd Wright an oasis away from gossip and scrutiny

After a public affair that damaged his reputation, Frank Lloyd Wright built a hideaway for himself and his mistress. This grand Wisconsin structure is now a National Historic Landmark after experiencing two major fires, each followed by major renovations.

The slow disappearance of America's roadside attractions

Roadside attractions, as defined by Jane Stern, are quirky, oddball landmarks. Instead of corporate entertainment, charms like a giant twine ball, a shabby dinosaur sculpture exhibit, or hand-painted oddities beckon travelers off the interstate. These roadside attractions have declined in recent years, but Stern commemorates their value and reflects on the joy of discovering unusual and homemade wonders in this piece.

Ranchos were large land grants in California to Spanish, Mexican leading families

They were typically given to leading families or retired soldiers as means of settling the land with loyal people. The hundreds of ranchos have since shaped land-use policy in the area, determining plots of major cities and ranches today.

Meet the Marree Man, one of the world's largest works of art

In the summer of 1998, a pilot flying over the Australian outback discovered a geoglyph 1.7 miles long featuring an aboriginal man hunting. The massive work of art is one of the world's largest.

Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams collaborated on a project documenting Mormon communities in Utah, but the artists were unhappy with how Life magazine framed the work.

One roadside attraction invented modern mini-golf

Garnet Carter and his wife Frieda owned and operated Fairyland, a roadside attraction on Lookout Mountain in Georgia. While other mini-golf courses tried to mimic the regal courses of its parent game, the Carters built obstacles and decorations from items they had around Fairyland, effectively inventing the leisure-minded version of the game.

The skinniest house in America was built out of spite

John Hollensbury was a brickmaker in the early 1800s, living in Alexandria, Virginia. He also had the misfortune of living next to an alley around 7.5 feet wide where horse-drawn carriages scraped against his wall and rowdy loiterers stood by. To solve his problem, he built what is now known as the Alexandria Spite House. Read more about the home created to end neighborhood riffraff.

Googie architecture, a cousin of mid-century modernism, was a popular style for American roadside attractions.

See the extraordinary and ephemeral installations from Burning Man 2025

Despite having to work in a muddy desert for just a few days, Burning Man attendees manage to create large, abstract, and visually incredible works of art.

In 1949, O’Keeffe moved to the tiny desert village of Abiquiu, New Mexico

After nearly 15 years of trying to buy an idyllic hacienda from the church, she succeeded and moved in in 1949. The three-acre property featured a view of the Chama River Valley, which inspired many of her paintings.

Sculptor and painter Charles M. Russell focused on the Old West

The Montana artist, known for his realistic portrayals of cowboys and Native American life, began to gain national attention after traveling to New York and establishing connections in the art world. Still, he spent most of his time in Great Falls, Montana, where he completed approximately 4,000 works.

The Bakersfield Sound challenged the music's creeping respectability

As country music leaned towards the slick Nashville Sound in the 1950s, several artists operating outside that city reacted with rougher sounds more reminiscent of honky tonk and early rock ‘n’ roll. It came to be known as the Bakersfield Sound, reflecting the California agricultural region.

Simulating the moon's surface in the desert

And why is the next cohort headed there? The geological conditions in Flagstaff, Arizona, can easily echo those of the moon, making the area a prime spot to train astronauts. This article explains how scientists crafted these training grounds and why astronomers are drawn to the nearly century-old city.

Check out the 50 weirdest roadside attractions in the US, from Alabama's Unclaimed Baggae Center to Wyoming's Elkhorn Arch.

Burning Man began as a small gathering on a San Francisco beach

Burning man started in 1986 as a gathering for 20 people. In 2023, more than 74,000 attendees became a part of Black Rock City and got caught in the rain.

Photos from Burning Man 2023

The annual Burning Man festival occurs in August where over 70,000 people gather in the austere setting of the Black Rock Desert playa in Nevada. The city is set up for a week in concentric circles where attendees set up their habitats and art...

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

Building the solar system to scale in the Nevada desert

On a dry lakebed in Nevada, a group of friends build the first scale model of the solar system with complete planetary orbits: a true illustration of our planet's humble position in space.

Joan Didion's 1967 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' laid the hippie counterculture bare

Didion wrote a detailed account of living alongside hippies in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury area in the 1960s. Beyond their style and politics, Didion uncovered chaos, with one particularly shocking interview of a 5-year-old on LSD. Her stories challenged the movement's message of freedom and utopia in California.

Nikola Tesla's original laboratory was recognized as a historical site in 2018

Beginning in 1901, the Wardenclyffe Tower was built on Long Island, New York to transmit electrical power through Earth's atmosphere. The project was abandoned before becoming operational due to limited funding, and was demolished for scrap in 1917 to help pay off Tesla's debts.

Santa Barbara’s Botanic Garden was the first to showcase the state’s native plants

Founded in 1926, the garden’s founders sought to showcase the state’s local flora as a matter of conservation, rather than the water-hungry exotics regularly being imported. This story focuses on how the garden’s design took a more natural and less formal direction.

The Indigenous people of the central Californian coast made many advancements

The Indigenous people of the central Californian coast made advancements in basketry, small stone tools, the use of shell beads as currency, and plank canoes for seafaring. In the years before European contact, their numbers reach 25,000 across 150 settlements.

Burning Man is more than a decadent hippie festival

Burning Man is often associated with lawlessness, debauchery, and controversies, but the actual festival has many complex parts, including an ethos that promotes radical self-acceptance and caring for your community.

Park rangers discuss what it's like where two deserts meet

In this 29-minute podcast, two park rangers at Joshua Tree National Park sit down with Dr. Cameron Barrows from the University of California-Riverside to understand what exactly it means for two deserts to meet. Slightly bigger than the state of...

The Takaro Lodge, a therapeutic New Zealand community turned wellness cult

Founded by Slovenian "energy" healer Aiping Wang, the lodge members were promised spiritual growth, healing, and even radical gifts like flight and foresight. Things turned dark as the group embraced extreme beliefs and practices.

Read an account of what life was like in America's national leprosarium—its leper colony

José Ramirez Jr. shares an account of his eight years at the 300-acre national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, from 1968 through the mid-1970s. Mostly staffed by nuns with nursing degrees, this facility was home to hundreds of people at a time, and it's also the site where they were required to be buried.

America's best mountain towns

Thrillist compiled a list of the most well-rounded mountain towns in the US, from ski-friendly Park City, Utah, to austere desert hotspot Taos, New Mexico. Peruse this list for you next mountain adventure.

A quick overview of Santa Barbara

The central California city with the year-round Mediterranean climate weaves a fascinating history of indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and then US history. This three-minute overview touches on the city's layered story, distinct architecture, and many celebrities.

Burning Man initially started with around 30 people on a San Francisco beach in 1986.

Paul Simon recorded his landmark album 'Graceland' in South Africa, in defiance of a UN-approved cultural boycott.

The Devil's Hole pupfish can be found in only one place in the world

The critically endangered fish species can be found in only one cave in the middle of the Mojave Desert called Devil's Hole. In 2016, three men broke into the protected area to purposefully harm the fish.

A 1927 map shows where Paramount shot its many productions

The skeleton key of California identified in-state locations that would substitute for shooting films abroad. It includes some interesting choices, like establishing Wales along the Los Angeles coast.