ALLTOURS

What’s One Place You’d Recommend I Visit in the USA? Beyond the Postcard Views

1. The Lost Metropolis of the Mississippians

Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Illinois

Before Europeans arrived, a city larger than 13th-century London thrived in what is now Illinois, built by a sophisticated pre-Columbian civilization.

2. Where Ancient Stargazers Built Empires

Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico

Within a remote canyon in New Mexico lie monumental stone structures, precisely aligned with celestial events, built by Ancestral Puebloans over a thousand years ago.

3. A Remote Island Fortress with a Ghostly Past

Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida

Seventy miles west of Key West, a massive 19th-century fort stands on a tiny island, holding tales of Civil War prisoners, shipwrecks, and an impossible dream.

4. The Surreal Landscape of Calcium Carbonate Towers

Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve, California

On the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, a vast, ancient saline lake is famed for its "tufa towers," bizarre limestone spires that rise from its hypersaline waters.

5. Eastern Giants: The Last Primeval Forest

Congaree National Park, South Carolina

Deep in South Carolina lies the largest intact tract of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest in the southeastern United States, home to some of the tallest trees in eastern North America.

6. North America's Deepest River Gorge

Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Idaho/Oregon

Carved by the Snake River, Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in North America, plunging over 7,900 feet from rim to river at its deepest point, surpassing even the Grand Canyon.

7. The Swamp of Secrets and Sanctuary

Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia/North Carolina

This vast, foreboding swamp, once considered impenetrable, was a critical haven for thousands of runaway slaves and Native Americans seeking freedom before the Civil War.

8. The Legacy of Catastrophic Ice Age Floods

Palouse Falls State Park, Washington

Palouse Falls is the last active waterfall on the ancient Missoula Floods path, a geological wonder carved by colossal ice age deluges that reshaped the landscape of eastern Washington.

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