Curiosities of all kinds abound in this wacky, wonderful nation of ours. Mysterious and beguiling sites dot the landscape coast to coast. Many of these destinations reflect the innovation and entrepreneurship of the scientific and technological communities — elements of our society that always have been at the forefront of new ideas.
For those of you with a penchant for science and technology, come with us on a road trip across America to visit 10 fascinating destinations that are bound to satisfy your inner science geek.
Very Large Array (VLA), New Mexico
New Mexico is home to a couple of amazing and futuristic attractions that draw a steady stream of space buffs. That's no surprise, seeing as how White Sands Missile Range has always been a hotbed of rocket development and testing — and served as the site for the world’s first atomic bomb test in 1945.
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array is a 20-mile-wide assemblage of 27 massive radio telescopes near Socorro, trained permanently on the heavens above. Astronomers have used the glinting white receiving dishes to make discoveries such as ice on the planet Mercury and microquasars.
Interpretive signage along walkways through the site illustrate how the awesome 230-ton dishes work — and how they move over 40 miles of rails into four observing configurations. The VLA site is open to visitors year-round during daylight hours, and guided tours are offered on the first Saturday of the month.
Spaceport America, New Mexico
Dreamers who imagine someday rocketing into space will definitely want to visit the place from which they could soon experience such a thrill — the world’s first commercial spaceport. Virgin Galactic will be ready sometime in early 2017 to offer (for the tidy sum of $250,000) 20-minute suborbital flights onboard its SpaceShipTwo, launched from the futuristic spaceport situated in an isolated desert basin 35 miles southwest of Truth or Consequences (T or C).
Even those unable to pay such a steep price for a space flight will find it interesting and affordable to visit the Spaceport. Tours of the facility begin at Spaceport America’s Visitor Center in T or C and run Thursday through Monday, priced at $49.99 for adults and $29.99 for visitors 18 or younger.
The tour takes in a dual-purpose terminal and hangar complex — a striking design by architect Norman Foster — where visitors can ride a G-Shock trainer to experience the kind of gravitational forces faced by astronauts. They are also able to venture into the Space Operations Center to interact with Spaceport America crewmembers.
Chile Pepper Institute, New Mexico
Some would argue that the Chile Pepper Institute, housed on the campus of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, is the state’s real hotbed. If you think that’s a pun, consider this: the Institute, founded in 1888 by horticulturist Fabian Garcia, grows and tests 150 pepper varieties.
Studies here have determined that the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, packing 2 million Scoville heat units (SHU) — the measure scientists use to determine a pepper’s heat on the tongue — is the world’s hottest chile pepper. Compare that to a jalapeno pepper at about 8,000 SHU or Tabasco sauce at 3,000 SHU. The Institute offers free tours of its garden and visitors can shop for books, art and hard-to-find chile pepper seed varieties.
McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope, Arizona
Visitors approaching Kitt Peak, 56 miles southwest of Tucson, might mistake the world’s largest solar telescope for a ski jump. The colossal size and unique triangular shape of the gleaming white scope dominates a mountaintop collection of more than two dozen astronomical instruments that comprise Kitt Peak National Observatory.
The body of the McMath-Pierce scope rises 100-feet skyward, pointing due north at an angle of 32 degrees. Designed to study the nature and activity of sunspots, the scope extends 300 feet into the mountain forming a tunnel through which the sun is viewed at the instrument’s prime focus. Guided tours of the giant telescope are offered daily at 10:00 a.m. Tours of other telescopes are available as well.
Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, California
Luther Burbank stands out as America’s most famous and prolific botanical inventor and plant breeder. From 1875 to 1926, Burbank introduced more than 800 new plant varieties to American growers. His Santa Rosa plum and Shasta daisy are still grown today, and his Burbank potato led to the Burbank russet — the type McDonald’s makes into French fries.
Early on, Burbank utilized four acres of gardens and greenhouses surrounding his homestead in Santa Rosa for his research and later established the Gold Ridge Experiment Farm in nearby Sebastopol to further develop new crossbreeds and hybrids. Both complexes have been preserved and are open to the public.
Free Enterprise Radon Health Mine, Montana
Most abandoned uranium mines end up as hazardous waste sites, but this one has thrived based on its extraordinary health benefits.
Located in Boulder, midway between Butte and Helena, the Free Enterprise mine switched from extracting uranium to administering radon therapy in 1952 when some miners discovered that pain they normally suffered from arthritis, bursitis and other conditions dissipated while breathing low levels of radon gas seeping into mine tunnels. The mine has operated since as a therapy center. Guests pay to sit in lounge chairs 85 feet below ground to breath the radon gas.
Strataca, Kansas
Hidden more than 650 feet beneath the Kansas prairie just outside Hutchinson, Strataca — formerly known as the Kansas Underground Salt Museum — offers tours of the cavernous tunnels created by miners extracting solid rock salt since 1923.
The site is the only active salt mine in North America that is open to the public. The mine also is used as an underground storage vault for original Hollywood movies and millions of documents. Visitors see exhibits describing the mechanics of salt mining and can either join a Salt Safari Adventure Hike or the Salt Mine Express, a train ride through the glittering halls of what 275 million years ago was the bed of a vast Permian Age sea.
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Illinois
The remains of the largest and most sophisticated pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, Cahokia Mounds, located near Collinsville (not far from the Mississippi River), is a broad meadow studded by nearly 90 man-made hills and earthen platforms.
In 1250, this was one of the world’s great cities — larger than London at the time. The site has been studied by archaeologists and anthropologists for decades and is currently administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency as a state historic park.
An interpretive center features a museum, an orientation theater, a public programming auditorium and a museum shop/snack bar. Cahokia Mounds is open Wednesday through Sunday for self-guided and guided tours. Entrance is free, although donations are suggested.
Perky’s Bat Tower, Florida
In 1929, Richter Clyde Perky had a serious mosquito problem at his fish camp on Lower Sugarloaf Key. Hoping to harbor mosquito-eating bats, Perky build a 30-foot-tall wooden tower, complete with a louvered bat entrance, cypress roosting shelves and a central guano-dispersal chute.
But, alas, local bats wouldn’t go near the $10,000 tower. Almost 90 years later, Perky’s Tower still stands — a sturdy but ignominious monument to biological pest control. The tower is located on an unsigned dirt road just north of Hwy. 1 at mile marker 17.
Mercer Museum, Pennsylvania
There’s nothing ordinary about this museum complex in the Bucks County community of Doylestown — nor was its founder, Henry Chapman Mercer a man typical of his time (1856-1930). Something of a renaissance man, Mercer was a gentleman archaeologist, anthropologist, scholar, architect and antiquarian.
Above all else, Mercer was an inveterate collector. He also was a student of early American life prior to the mid-19th century Industrial Revolution. He gathered everything he could find — more than 40,000 objects — to document the lives and tasks of early Americans through the tools and utensils of everyday life. Then, Mercer designed and built a seven-story, 44-room reinforced concrete castle that served both as his home and as a showcase for his eclectic collections.
A museum building adjacent Fonthill Castle contains most of Mercer’s crazy-quilt collection of hand tools, farm equipment, kitchen utensils and household accessories from pre-industrial times. Fonthill, a National Historic Landmark, is a mix of medieval, Gothic and Byzantine architectural styles and has been maintained just as Mercer left it — a "Castle for the New World" — as he described it. The Museum is open daily for one-hour guided tours.
