New research suggests the creature is based on a particular monkey that the writer encountered in Kenya.

Oho! Lookie here! What do you suppose!
An article penned in pedestrian prose.
If you would prefer something different, dear reader,
Click here for a version in Seussian meter.

In 1970, Theodore Geisel was suffering from terrible writer's block. Geisel, better known to most of us as Dr. Seuss, had just organized with his neighbors in California to prevent the destruction of a grove of eucalyptus trees. Fired up by this experience, he was attempting to pen an environmentally minded children's book. But everything he tried to read for inspiration, he later said, was "dull," "full of statistics," and "preachy."

In autumn, to get his mind off things, his wife Audrey took him on a trip to the Mt. Kenya Safari Club, on the Laikipia Plateau. The change of scenery worked: One day, after he watched a herd of elephants cross the peak, "the logjam broke," Geisel later wrote. "I wrote 90% of [The Lorax] that afternoon," on the side of a laundry list.

We hold certain Seuss characters to be self-evident. Yertle is a turtle. The Cat in the Hat is a haberdashery-inclined feline. Mayzie is a lazy bird. Others, though, are more mysterious. A few pages into The Lorax, we are given a couple of framing questions. "Who was the Lorax?" the narrator asks. "And why was it there?"

Recently, a group of researchers revisited this query, and came up with a unique answer. The Lorax, they posit, is not entirely invented, like Sam I Am or Things 1 and 2. Instead, it's inspired by a particular real-life species, a fuzzy-faced primate called the patas monkey that Geisel got to know in Kenya. Their conclusion, a paper called "Dr. Seuss and the Real Lorax," was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution earlier this week.

Like many interdisciplinary efforts, this reexamination of the Lorax began at an academic dinner with assigned seating. Nate Dominy, a biological anthropologist, was put next to Donald Pease, a literary scholar. "He's one of the most famous and popular professors on campus, [and] sitting next to him was really intimidating," says Dominy. "I was desperate for something to talk about."

Pease is a world expert on Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss. So Dominy started telling him about the patas monkey. "It's a funny-looking monkey," he says."When I'm introducing it in class, I always say, 'If Dr. Seuss were to create a monkey, that would be the one.' It looks ripped off the pages."

Pease told Dominy about Geisel's trip to Kenya, at which point Dominy realized exactly which Seuss character the patas monkey looks like. "Once you have a mental image of the Lorax and the patas monkey side-by-side in your head—wow, there's something there," he says.

Let's go to the tape. The Lorax is, in the words of the Once-ler, "shortish, and oldish, and brownish, and mossy." He's got a small black nose, skinny arms and legs, and a giant bush of a mustache that covers his entire face. The patas monkey looks quite comparable, with orange fur, wiry limbs, and his own lush crop of facial hair.

There are also sonic similarities: the Lorax's voice is characterized as "sharpish and bossy," and at one point he lets out a "sawdusty sneeze." This could reasonably describe the wheezy alarm call of the patas monkey, the researchers say. (There are differences, too: the patas happens to be the world's sweatiest primate, while the Lorax is able to lift himself up by the seat of his pants and fly away.)

Not content to speculate, and determined to take advantage of the best technology on offer, Dominy and Pease then partnered with a couple of other researchers and ran the Lorax through a face-analyzing computer algorithm. "There are 13 images in the book where the Lorax is facing the reader," says Dominy. "We photographed all 13 of these faces and made a composite."

According to the paper, the computer found that "the Lorax is better characterized by primate face space than even the most similar-looking Seussian character"—in this case, the cheerful orange hero of 1967's The Foot Book. Specifically, "the face of the Lorax clusters closely with three species," one of which is the patas monkey. "The coincidence seems striking," the authors write.

It's certainly exciting to imagine the Lorax joining the pantheon of environmentally conscious famous monkeys rather than languishing in his current one, of environmentally conscious famous mythical creatures. But this species switch may have bigger implications, too. For Pease, the most important part of the comparison rests in the patas monkey's entanglement with a nearby plant, the whistling thorn acacia tree. The two species have a commensal relationship: about 50 percent of the patas monkey's diet comes from acacia gum, which the monkeys eat without harming the tree.

"This addressed a problem that I had with usual readings of The Lorax," says Pease, namely the Lorax's use of the possessive pronoun "my" (as in "my poor Swomee-Swans" or "what's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?").

Others have noticed this, too. "There are ecocritics who have produced commentary in which they question the language used by the Lorax in order to defend the Bar-ba-loots and the Swomee-Swans and the Humming Fish from the ax of exploitation and extraction," Pease explains. "If he's simply protecting the property, how can he be differentiated from the capitalist or the resource extractor that he's opposing?"

If, instead, the Lorax is part of the land, this "my" makes much more sense. "The patas monkey has an intimate relation with the acacia tree," says Pease. "Which means that it could say what the Lorax says: 'I speak for the trees.'"

It might also affect how environmentalists see the character, Dominy says. In 2011, journalist Emma Marris called the Lorax a "parody of a misanthropic ecologist," always yammering on. If, instead, he's a monkey, "that really does change things," says Dominy. "His anger is now understandable … we don't usually hear the voices of the creatures going extinct."

Starting in the mid-1980s, conservationists began leaning on particularly charismatic animals, called "flagship species," to represent their entire environments. If you read the Lorax as a patas monkey, Dominy says, you might consider him "the original flagship species." (In this case, the Truffula tree might be the original keystone species.)

Pease doesn't want to take this too far. "To say, everyone who reads the Lorax is supposed to have the patas monkey as the sole referant—no," he says. "That reading is too literalist." But keeping the monkey in mind can enrich our experience, both of the book and the world that inspired it. And, with this settled, we can finally begin searching Scandinavia for the original Grinch.

But wait. Something’s missing. The spirit of Seuss. Take two on this story—of much greater use:

We've all read The Lorax like 12 million times.
It's got a good message, and also, it rhymes.
But I'm in a spirit of sincere confiding,
and there is a secret the book has been hiding.

In the earliest pages of this sad affair,
We're asked "What was the Lorax? And why was it there?"
I'll float you a theory intriguing and funky.
The Lorax—researchers have found—was a MONKEY!

The monkey's full name? Erythrocebus patas.
It enjoys, at the moment, an unthreatened status.
It lives across Africa, in the savannas
And eats bugs and tubers (not so much bananas).

It's got a big mustache and bright orange fuzz,
The same exact look that that Lorax guy does.
Each of these creatures is crazy for trees.
When frightened, both let out a "sawdusty sneeze."

What's more, Dr. Seuss almost certainly spied him
While on a vacation in Kenya's vast highlands.
It's settled. So certain, in fact, that I'm bored.
The evidence here just cannot be ignored.

Oh, you don't believe me? You couldn't be ruder!
What are you, a Once-ler? Let's ask a computer.
This graphic of primate-based face recognition
Will surely dry up your last dregs of suspicion.

You're still not convinced? Why, you dumb Bar-ba-loot!
Let's talk of his language. Come on, be astute.
When speaking, he uses possessives with ease
Like "My Swomee-swans" and "My Truffula trees."

Is the Lorax, at heart, a resource-extractor?
Oh no! Surely not! That would be a disaster!
He's speaking, instead, with an inclusive bent.
He must be a part of the en-vi-ron-ment.

You question me still? May you choke on your thneed.
There's one last remonstrance it seems you might need.
Critics call the Lorax a whiner and nag.
But if he's a monkey—that isn't as bad.

So next time you open this book illustrated
Please think of the case I have here demonstrated.
Academics have proven the Lorax is simian.
(Next up: IS THE GRINCH A MEAN, HAIRY AMPHIBIAN?)

Runaway railway expansion helped inspire Britain's preservationist movement.

In the 19th century, Northampton Castle, even as a ruin, had the mystique that only a castle built a millennia ago, during the reign of William the Conqueror, can evoke. Its old stone walls had a fuzz of greenery growing from their uneven edges, and even half-collapsed, they towered over visitors. In one corner, the base of a round tower still stood, and the graceful arches of windows and doorways held strong. Built outside the walls of London, surrounded by earthen bulwarks, the castle was the backdrop to the trial of Thomas Becket in 1164 and survived intact until 1662, not long after the Restoration, when King Charles II ordered part of it destroyed.

The ruins endured for another 200 years, until the railway came through in the 1880s. The castle’s last owner searched its grounds for treasure, then sold the land to the London & North Western Railway Company, which knocked down the walls and built a train station on the site. The company named the stop “Northampton Castle.”

Northampton Castle was not the only aged landmark that the railway companies demolished as they sprawled across the British landscape. Over the preceding decades, centuries-old city walls, abbeys and priories, medieval castles, and stone circles like Stonehenge all came down as tracks were laid through.

Some people saw this as progress: In 1839 one railway chairman told Parliament that the companies had every right to level anything that stood in the way of their expansion. (He conceded that Westminster Abbey could probably stay standing.) But as that expansion and other development projects accelerated, some people began to worry about what was being lost. If they couldn’t preserve the slower pace of life they were accustomed to, they reasoned, at least they could save the monuments that evoked those earlier times.

“Paradoxically it was the advent of the railways that helped to promote the conservation movement,” writes historian Jeffrey Richards.

Wealth also helped drive this movement, since rich people didn’t like when the trains cut through their land. To modern-day developers, this is a predictable problem, but in the early 19th century this particular brand of backlash was still new. When, in the early 1830s, a railway company proposed building a new line from London to Birmingham, local landowners, including at least a couple of earls, gathered at public meetings to protest the proposal, and the danger it posed to the ruins of Berkhamsted Castle in Hertfordshire.

Like Northampton, Berkhamsted dated to the 1060s; its first owner was William the Conqueror’s half-brother. A motte-and-bailey castle, it had a keep built on a raised land, enclosed by a wall and surrounded by a moat. In the uproar over the train line, the castle became enough of a cause célèbre that it is mentioned by name in the 1833 act of Parliament that authorized the railway’s construction. (The original act, in 1832, was rejected.) When the line passed through the castle’s grounds, the act said, it could not deviate more than 100 yards from where it was authorized to be. Berkhamsted has the distinction of being the first landmark in Britain to earn protection from the government.

But that victory for the landowners did not set a clear precedent. In the 1840s, a growing movement of preservationists continued to fight the railways as they snaked across the land.

Some fights they lost. Richards, the historian, recounts examples—city walls in Chester and Newcastle, an Iron Age fort, a Roman camp, the stone circle at Shep—where development took precedence over preservation. In 1844, a railway went straight through the Priory of St. Pancras, the oldest house in England from the monastic Cluniac period.

In other cases, the activists won concessions. The railway cut through the city wall of York, but was given a nice-enough archway to pass through. In another case, when the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland opposed the destruction of Trinity Church in Edinburgh in 1848, the railway provided £22,000 (around £2.5 million or $3.2 million today), to reconstruct it elsewhere.

The movement scored some victories, too. A railway proposed to cut through Furness Abbey, a moody ruin, instead skirted its edge. Local protests convinced Parliament to pass a special act protecting Maumbury Rings, a circular Neolithic henge in Dorset. Gradually, members of Parliament were convinced that the country needed a more wide-ranging policy to deal with threats to these ancient landmarks.

It wasn’t only the railways that finally prompted Parliament to act. Sir John Lubbock, the leading politician of the preservation movement, personally bought some of the land that the Avebury stone circles stand on to protect it from housing construction as a nearby town expanded. It took years for him to convince his colleagues to approve an act that would protect ancient monuments. “Have you heard of the threatened invasion of Stonehenge by a Railway Engineer?” one local clergyman wrote to him. The proposed line was to run diagonally across the site’s Cursus, a mysterious earthwork close to two miles long and more than 5,200 years old. “What is to be done?” the reverend wrote. “If anybody can put a spoke in the wheel you can; but I fear the Ancient Monuments Bill will not include the Cursus!”

The efforts of the movement finally resulted in the Ancient Monuments Protection Act, which passed in 1882. The act listed around 50 sites in Britain that the government claimed some guardianship over, and created the position of an inspector tasked with keeping them safe. (The Cursus wasn't originally listed by name, but it was spared development.) It also empowered the government to buy the sites under threat. While preservationism was growing popular elsewhere in the world—Americans, for instance, were interested in safeguarding some sites related to the Revolution—Britain's was one of the first landmark preservation laws ever written.

A California fire has closed down Yosemite National Park.

It’s wildfire season, and up and down the West Coast of the U.S., fires are burning. About a week and half ago, in a rugged stretch of California, a fire started that’s since grown to more than 43,000 acres.

As it edges near to Yosemite National Park, all visitors were ordered away, as smoke filled the air and operations to limit the fire's spread started coming closer. From the sky, planes are pouring bright-red flumes of fire retardant onto the land, including the nearby Stanislaus National Forest, one of the oldest in the United States.

The flame retardant is colored crimson red to make it visible—it also comes in “fugitive color,” which disappears, and in uncolored variants. One of the most commonly used brands of retardant, Phos-Chek, uses red iron oxide to dye its product, a mix of ammonia and nitrates that can keep trees and other flammable materials from combusting. When the red slurry pours out of planes and onto the ground, pilots can see where it’s landed so that they don’t cover the same area again.

Aerial firefighting has become common over the past decades, and the Forest Service has been using such products for years. Though they can help contain fires and limit burn damage, retardants have their own impact. Washed into the water, these chemicals can pollute water and kill fish, and after a lawsuit and an environment impact analysis in 2007, the Forest Service created new rules that restricted retardant drops around streams and lakes.

If they need to, though, the planes will still dump the red stuff. It might leave trees colored red and threaten fish, but stopping the fire is their first concern.

A neglected monument in sleepy Burhanpur is connected to a much more famous place.

The glory and grandeur of the Taj Mahal stand beside those of any landmark in the world; the white marble mausoleum of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan and empress Mumtaz Mahal is instantly recognizable. But 500 miles southwest of the bustling streets of Agra, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, is the remote, relatively sleepy city of Burhanpur, which holds another chapter in the afterlife of Mumtaz. There, spared the flood of tourists, are the shambling ruins of the Ahukhana, Mumtaz’s original resting place.

“As citizens of an ancient glorious civilization, we are obligated to have a deep sense of appreciation for our cultural heritage,” says Mohammed Shehzada Asif Khan, 72, a photographer, who has been organizing the Mumtaz Mahal Festival in Burhanpur for the past 40 years. “But even as seven to eight million people flock to the Taj Mahal each year, no one knows or cares about the Ahukhana, the queen’s original tomb.”

The Ahukhana was built in 16th century as a deer park for Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. The garden sprawled over six miles, with two main structures, a small palace adorned with traceries and a pillared pavilion known as the baradari. It was at the baradari that the remains of Mumtaz laid in state for six months after her death. The tomb, however, is highly neglected today—grounds overgrown, walls marked with graffiti, columns marred with alarming cracks.

Shah Jahan ruled his empire from the capital Delhi in the north. In the late 1620s, his empire was beset by revolts among the Deccani kingdoms to the south. To quell the unrest, he set up a command center in Burhanpur, the gateway to southern India, famous then for its chintzes and opium, and directed military operations from the city for two years. He resided there at Shahi Qilla, a large palace across the Tapti River from the deer park. It was there, according to Diana and Michael Preston, authors of 2010’s A Teardrop on the Cheek of Time: The Story of the Taj Mahal, that Mumtaz died while giving birth to her 14th child, on June 17, 1631.

“Weak through the loss of blood, Mumtaz whispered to her distraught husband of their everlasting love and begged him not to marry again. Her final request was that he should build her a mausoleum resembling paradise on earth, just as she had seen in her dreams,” they write. “The authoritative court chroniclers record her death just a few minutes after giving birth to a daughter: When she brought out the last single pearl, she emptied her body like an oyster.”

Nandkishore Devda, a 90-year-old historian who has penned three books on Burhanpur, says that for a week after Mumtaz’s death, Shah Jahan did not appear before the court, and it seemed as if life had ceased to interest him. “The court went into mourning, and officers donned white garments. The intensity of the affliction was such that Shah Jahan’s hair turned gray overnight, and for the next two years, he abstained from all worldly pleasures. At festive occasions like Eid, he wept bitterly, lamenting the loss of the most loved of all his wives,” he says.

For six months after her death, her embalmed remains resided at the Ahukhana. Shah Jahan, according to Devda, spent days in his palace, gazing at his wife’s tomb. He recited the fateha for her soul every Friday at the baradari.

In its day, the Ahukhana was a royal Mughal retreat, with majestic fountains and canals flanking rose beds. The baradari complex was built with rose-tinted sandstone, richly decorated with murals and frescoes. That sense of opulence is long-gone today. A muddy track leads to the ruins, so it is inaccessible and waterlogged during the monsoon. Wild, overgrown grass covers the site where the formal garden once was. The roof of the baradari pavilion long ago collapsed into rubble. The Shahi Qilla, across the river, is a ruin as well, but is much more well-maintained and visited. Both sites are, like many heritage sites in India, nominally under the stewardship of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).

“Because it is poorly maintained, the Ahukhana, despite its historical significance, does not have many visitors—about 80 to 100 each month,” says Vasanta Bodhade, a 50-year-old caretaker, who has been posted at the site for the past decade. “The ASI does visit for surveys, but no repair work has been undertaken in years.”

According to conservation experts, the Ahukhana is a particularly challenging site to maintain. Kurush Dalal, an archaeologist at the University of Mumbai, says, “It’s a plastered building made of bricks. All that ASI can do is use more plaster, and keep restoring it back to its original form. I agree the garden needs to be maintained, and that they should at least build a decent public urinal at the site. But the property isn’t a priority for ASI, which is critically short-staffed.”

Zulfeqar Ali, superintending archaeologist with the ASI, Bhopal Circle, agrees. “We had proposed landscaping at the Ahukhana two years ago, but owing to water shortage in the area, we could not proceed. We also considered building a bore well, but that could not materialize either. We are in process of figuring other options,” he says, adding that his office has recently floated a proposal for repair work.

Shah Jahan wished to commemorate his queen, but Burhanpur proved to be “only a stop-gap arrangement,” Dalal says. Six months after her death, on December 14, 1631, a melancholy procession set out from Burhanpur to bring her remains to Agra. For 22 years, until Taj Mahal was complete, in 1653, she was kept in a garden on the banks of the Yamuna River.

However, for locals in Burhanpur, the first tomb is more than a morgue, but is a treasured part of Mughal history in its own right. The city is full of heritage enthusiasts, who are quick to point out that the ivory-white Taj Mahal was, at one time, intended to be erected in place of the Ahukhana.

Rafiq Shaikh, a 52-year-old resident of Burhanpur, echoes the popular local lore, which states that there were three reasons that Shah Jahan passed over Burhanpur as the site of his monument to love. “The soil—mostly sand infested by termites—was unfit to hold such a huge structure. The marble required for the mausoleum was to be brought from Rajasthan, which was closer to Agra. And lastly, the emperor wanted the edifice’s image to reflect into the river it was built by. Since Burhanpur’s Tapti River is much narrower than the Yamuna, where the Taj stands, Shah Jahan had to choose Agra.”

To the people of Burhanpur, the Ahukhana remains precious, and many harbor a strong desire to preserve it. Gopal Mahajan, a 46-year-old farmer and businessman, hopes to “adopt” the monument.

“The Indian Ministry of Tourism has recently launched a project called ‘Adopt a Heritage,’ whereby interested individuals can raise money, and ensure the site they’ve adopted is maintained, has basic and advanced amenities, and subject to timely repair work,” says Mahajan.“We’re in process of studying the logistics, and are gathering like-minded people, who are willing to invest time and money in protecting the Ahukhana.

“Our city is integral to the Mughal dynasty’s history, and we sincerely hope that one day, the world will acknowledge its cultural significance.”

A team of Italian divers is growing basil, tomatoes, and strawberries.

Five years ago, Sergio Gamberini, a professional scuba diver and amateur gardener from Liguria, a coastal region in north-west Italy, was hanging out with local farmers. “I started wondering if crops could grow in the ocean,” he says. “I had this vision about a vegetable garden inside a transparent balloon filled with air.”

His friends were skeptical. But Gamberini, a chemical engineer who runs a scuba diving equipment business, was determined to prove that his idea could work. Two days later, he put on his diving gear and, 22-feet below sea level, attached a plastic balloon filled with a little pot of soil and basil seeds to the seabed. After a few days, tiny basil leaves were sprouting.

The following year, Gamberini, a self-declared “explorer of all things ocean,” devoted part of the budget of his family-owned business, Ocean Reef, to fund the first fully functional underwater farm. It was a matter of personal curiosity: “I want to find out if underwater farming can become a suitable alternative during my lifetime,” he says. He also hopes that if underwater farming takes off, he’ll be the one holding the patented technology.

Today, his project, named “Nemo’s Garden,” counts six underwater greenhouses hosting an estimated 700 plants including basil, tomatoes, salad, strawberries, aloe vera, mint, marjoram, and liquorice.

The journey from what many saw as an “odd experiment” to full-scale underwater farm wasn’t easy. According to Italian environmental laws, it is illegal to make any permanent changes to the seafloor. So the first challenge was to create removable underwater greenhouses.

“At first we designed semi-spheres made of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC), a common thermoplastic material, that was very light and could be easily removed,” says Nemo’s Garden Project Manager Gianni Fontanesi. But after the first winter storm, when waves between nine and thirteen feet uprooted two of the underwater structures, the team opted for a different strategy. “We now use rigid plexiglass with an internal and external steel skelton,” Fontanesi explains, adding that finding the right design to prevent storm damage has been the greatest challenge to date. The semi-spheres are six feet wide and three feet high, and are attached to the seafloor with 28 (removable) screws. According to Fontanesi, this design ensures stability while allowing enough oscillation to prevent wreckage when waves hit.

Next, the team had to figure out the science of underwater farming. Most light is provided by natural sunlight. “We get 70% of sunlight compared with surface levels,” Fontanesi explains. During winter months or cloudy days, artificial light from LED lamps placed inside the spheres supplements the natural light. This electricity comes from solar panels and a small wind turbine onshore, which is fed to the greenhouses, along with water for irrigation, via a system of tubes shaped like a double helix.

For now, the project requires fresh water from land. But as Gamberini explains, the long-term goal of Nemo’s is to harness the natural desalination process that takes place in the greenhouses.

This would take advantage of the fact that the greenhouses are not entirely sealed. The bottom has a breach—used by divers to access the plants—that lets ocean water in. This does not mean that the entire biosphere is flooded. Much like in a bottle submerged underwater, water fills only part of the structures. Air pressure keeps it at bay, leaving the upper part dry.

When sea water comes in contact with the greenhouse’s warm air, it evaporates, losing its salty component. This “naturally desalinated” water eventually condenses on the greenhouse walls into droplets that can be collected and—after adding minerals—used for irrigation.

Gamberini and Fontanesi can monitor the temperature, air composition, and energy use from the project headquarters in Genoa, Liguria’s main city. But farming is done by visiting the greenhouses in person. To date, Fontanesi has logged nearly a thousand “farming dives.” He says it feels like being in an aquarium turned inside out. “You are the fish looking out into the outside world.”

Some environmental activists have raised concerns about Nemo’s Garden disrupting the surrounding ocean ecosystem. But Fontanesi says that, for now, there is no evidence of negative impact. “A few months ago, one of our divers found a large squid laying a nest beside one of the energy pipes,” he says. “So it seems that fish and other animals are finding a way to co-exist with our farm.”

In order to promote the project, the team allows any certified diver to come and check the site. “Many local people were initially skeptical about my bizarre idea,” Gamberini says. “But now people are realizing that it works, and it helps put Noli on the tourist map.”

September is probably the best time to visit. That’s when Nemo’s “harvest feast” takes place. “We get together with family and friends and celebrate the end of summer with food cooked with underwater plants,” Fontanesi explains. One of the gastronomic highlights is pesto, Liguria’s iconic pasta sauce, which is prepared with underwater basil. “Many people ask us if we can tell the difference from regular pesto,” Fontanesi says. “I am not a basil expert, but to me it tastes exactly the same.”

So far, the most surprising discovery regards underwater plant chemistry. Plants grown 22-feet below sea level face double the amount of atmospheric pressure compared with their counterparts on land. This, according to Fontanesi, has led to a different distribution of chemical elements.

Basil plants grown underwater, for example, have higher concentrations of eugenol (a substance contained in basil essential oils) and more chlorophyll (the substance that allows for photosynthesis to take place) compared with plants grown on land.

“For plants that have a medicinal or cosmetic use, this could translate into heightened therapeutic effects,” Fontanesi explains. He says that a French pharmaceutical company rented one of the greenhouses last year (he won’t disclose which one) and turned it into a lab to prototype products made with underwater herbs.

But the ultimate goal of the project remains to turn underwater farming into a viable option, especially in areas where water scarcity is an issue. “Eventually we want to create a system that is cost-efficient and energy-sufficient to offer a sustainable alternative to land farming,” Fontanesi explains. That will take years, at a minimum. But if he succeeds, a wetsuit and scuba tank could become as standard for farmers as overalls and tractors.

From Area 51 to Roswell, a believer's-eye view of the desert.

State Route 375 is a barren stretch of Nevada highway that runs near the top-secret U.S. Air Force installation commonly known as Area 51—a facility believed to be used for experimental aircraft testing, with a busy side hustle spawning theories about aliens, UFOs, and extraterrestrial technology. Rachel, a town on the highway with a population of just 54, manages to do brisk business, too. The Little A’Le’Inn there, according to one of its managers, feeds thousands of (human) visitors a year along what has become known as the Extraterrestrial Highway. The mythology surrounding secret government programs and alleged alien crash sites has created a landscape unlike any other, studded with landmarks and roadside attractions that have become part of the lore of the desert.

"[UFO sightings] have transformed cities and roads, turning the legend into part of everyday life," says Javier Arcenillas, a Spanish photographer who documented UFO culture and sighting locations in the American West for his new photo book, UFO Presences.

Places such as the Extraterrestrial Highway and Roswell, New Mexico, about 1,000 miles to the east, have become beacons to an entire community. Roswell, according to a representative for the city, averages 226,000 visitors each year—and embraces its place in the mythos, despite the fact that it is easy to see the whole thing as a joke.

"Ridicule is pockmarked throughout the entire phenomenon," says Greg Eghigian, a historian at Penn State University and author of multiple research papers on the history of UFO sightings and alien contact. But he sees a deeper meaning in the way people connect with these sites. "What I consistently see across the board generally are people who are trying to find meaning,” he adds. “I think human beings are essentially meaning-makers and one of the ways, in fact, maybe the key way we often do that, is through stories. Stories bring meaning to our lives.

“The desert is this place that, because it's so empty, because there are so few people around ... you can write something about your own life or about the meaning of bigger, more cosmic kinds of things," he adds. Against that backdrop, he explains, people have created landmarks and elevated the locations of sightings to provide them with spaces to focus their energies. Ultimately, they’re grappling with some big existential questions in the otherwise stark desert landscape.

For his part, Arcenillas is “not a believer, but certainly, yes very comfortable [with the possibility]. I can not be alone in the universe, right?”

Atlas Obscura has a selection of photos of out-of-this-world sites from Arcenillas’s upcoming book.

Never doubt the power of the monsoon.

If you visit the remote ruins of Koh Ker today, you might have the ancient Cambodian city to yourself, at least if you wake up before sunrise to beat day-trippers from Siem Reap. From atop the main attraction, a seven-tiered pyramid temple called Prasat Thom, you’ll be able to see dozens more monuments—stone buildings, with inscriptions and intricate carvings that are overgrown with vegetation and, in a few cases, hacked off by looters. Some are best observed from this distance, since the area hasn’t been entirely cleared of land mines from the Khmer Rouge period of the 1970s.

Back in 942 A.D., Prasat Thom was brand new, and probably the tallest building you’d see in your lifetime. It would have been directly in front of you as you approached the city on the main access road. To your right would be water; the wide road was built on top of a four-mile-long embankment, which wrangled the Rongea River into the largest artificial lake in the kingdom. You might have stopped to pay your respects at a roadside temple on the left, Prasat Boeng Voeng, one of the many shrines spread across 13 square miles. If you arrived during the rainy season, you might have paused on a bridge, wide and sturdy enough for the king’s elephants, to watch excess water from this reservoir flow over a curved spillway. And as you approached the main temple, you might have rubbed shoulders with artists, dancers, sculptors, scholars, and other newcomers who had doubled Koh Ker’s population in just a few years.

Angkor—the famed, sprawling city 60 miles away—was the seat of authority for the Khmer Empire for more than 600 years, from the ninth to 15th centuries, except for a 17-year interval (928–944), when political power and courtly life shifted to Koh Ker. New archaeological evidence might explain why Koh Ker’s glory days were so brief: The new capital’s massive water-management system failed spectacularly soon after it was built.

Thick vegetation and unexploded land mines have made archaeological exploration in parts of Cambodia difficult in recent decades. But over the past 10 years or so, the remote-sensing technique known as lidar has opened new possibilities. A lidar scanner strapped to a helicopter or low-flying plane sends thousands of laser pulses at the ground to measure distance. Because some of those pulses reach the ground through the forest cover, lidar has had spectacular successes revealing otherwise hidden traces of canals, walls, and other structures all over the world, from 19th-century stone walls crisscrossing New England to ancient Maya temples in the forests of Mesoamerica.

Damian Evans, an archaeologist at the French Institute of Asian Studies in Paris, has been using lidar extensively in Cambodia to map ancient Khmer cities in unprecedented detail. His team’s maps of Koh Ker have revealed the long embankment—and a large breach in it. In a recent paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Evans and his colleagues took a closer look at this embankment to reconstruct its function and ultimate demise.

Archaeologists don’t know exactly why the Khmer capital moved to Koh Ker, but during the 10th century, it was geographically in the middle of the Khmer world, along an important ancient road connecting Angkor and Wat Phu, another city, in what is now modern-day Laos. Inscriptions indicate that by 921, Jayavarman IV, not yet the king of the Khmer Empire, established himself in the city, while his cousins held the throne in Angkor. Perhaps after some power struggle, Jayavarman IV became king of the empire in 928. He stayed in Koh Ker and enacted an ambitious building program to anoint his new capital with dozens of monuments and temples, including Prasat Thom.

“It was a mega-project,” says Chen Chanratana, an archaeologist who conducts research Koh Ker and is head of the Khmer Heritage Foundation, but was not directly involved in the new lidar study.

“Based on the inscriptions, you would think that there was absolutely no one at Koh Ker before, and Jayavarman built this city out of nowhere,” says archaeologist Sarah Klassen, a coauthor of the study from Arizona State University, who just completed her doctorate on ancient water management systems.* The archaeological record, however, suggests that between 20,000 and 30,000 people lived in the city before its rise and after its decline—but when Jayavarman IV’s royal court came to town, the population swelled by about 10,000 to 20,000 people.

Jayavarman IV’s building plan included the four-mile embankment, which created a 30-foot-deep reservoir. Chanratana says Koh Ker is in a flood zone, so these structures probably protected the city from a natural cycle of inundation. But the embankment had a fatal engineering flaw: There were just two, relatively small outlets for excess water during the rainy season, a narrow chute and a main spillway. (Because these outlets were most likely uncontrolled, the embankment was technically a weir, as opposed to a dam, which has controlled outlets for excess water.)

“The capacity of the chute and the spillway combined was not enough to pass the water in the peak of the rainy season,” says Terry Lustig, the lead author of the new study and an engineer who has studied ancient water systems at the University of Sydney.

The embankment was probably overtopped a few times during rainy seasons, but not catastrophically, and there is some evidence that repairs were underway to make it taller. However, those improvements were too little, too late. Within a decade of its construction, a particularly strong monsoon spelled the reservoir’s demise.

In an event that lasted probably just two hours, the lake’s main spillway failed in “spectacular fashion,” says Klassen. You would not have wanted to be downstream. Torrents of water carved holes in the spillway and even carried a few heavy stone blocks more than 1,500 feet. The river sliced a new course through the embankment, which you can still see today where the ancient weir meets the banks of the Rongea, Lustig says. “It’s like a knife has gone through it,” he says.

The rerouted river, now flowing north instead of its old eastward heading, also cut off the main road that connected Koh Ker with Angkor and Wat Phu. Once an embankment breaches, “it’s really difficult to reconstruct it and fix it,” Klassen says. Today the breach, through with the river flows, stretches more than 300 feet across , and cuts about 25 feet deep into the embankment. Partially drained, the lake’s practical and aesthetic benefits were lost. Chanratana says that inscriptions through the 13th century indicate that later kings visited Koh Ker, and remarked that entrance road still needed to be repaired. “For 200, 300 years, they still could not solve the problem of restoration,” he says.

Because the royal court went back to Angkor soon after Jayavarman IV’s death, some scholars have speculated that the king was a usurper, and Koh Ker’s growth the hubristic experiment of an illegitimate ruler. But the new evidence suggests infrastructure rather than insurrection as the reason for the court’s return to its traditional seat. The repairs might have been proven too daunting for Jayavarman’s successors, perhaps adding to existing political pressure move back to Angkor. “We have to be tentative because we don’t know what was in their minds,” Lustig says. “But losing such a massive amount water would not really be good karma.”

*Correction: This story was updated to fix Sarah Klassen's academic affiliation.

Getting historical recognition for a dump can be a messy process.

Looking back on what happened, Martin Melosi says he was not prepared. “I thought one of the ways to understand our environment was to look at the most mundane things in life,” he says. “There’s nothing much more mundane than a pile of garbage.” The pile of garbage in question is the Fresno Sanitary Landfill, and in 2001, working in cooperation with the National Park Service, Melosi nominated it for National Historic Landmark status.

National Historic Landmarks, according to the program’s website, are “nationally significant historic places designated by the Secretary of the Interior because they possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating the heritage of the United States.” Included among the over 2,500 sites are Mount Rushmore, Grand Central Terminal, and the nation’s oldest wooden roller coaster, Leap-the-Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

It was easy to see why nominating a landfill might seem “unique,” as Melosi puts it; in the nomination application he described the site—a rectangular 140 acres about three miles southwest of Fresno, California—as covered in “dense, orange-brown silty sand” and patchy grass. But in addition to its unremarkable aesthetics, the Fresno Sanitary Landfill had already earned another significant designation from the government in 1989, when it was placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list of the country’s most polluted sites in need of cleanup. By 2001, $38 million had been spent to combat damage caused by the landfill.

Melosi didn’t shy away from these details; he included them all in the application, along with the meticulously documented fact that the Fresno Sanitary Landfill was the oldest modern landfill in the country. In August 2001 his application was approved; the landfill became a National Historic Landmark. And that’s when things went sideways: Almost immediately the landfill became a lightning rod for controversy and fodder for a national media frenzy with U.S. President George W. Bush and his environmental policies at the center. In a way, this maelstrom posed a question that Melosi intended to ask, but on a level he never anticipated: Just what is a landmark, anyway?

Melosi, a professor of history at the University of Houston and founding director of the university’s Center for Public History, has long been fascinated by trash and how people deal with it. He first started researching and writing about it in the 1970s, has published two books on the history of refuse and its disposal in America, and is working on a third. Concurrently he developed an interest in how to bring history to broader audiences. It was through his public history work that he started making connections within the National Park Service and the landmarks program, which the NPS oversees. Plenty of infrastructure projects had earned NHL status, such as the Hoover Dam and Brooklyn Bridge, but none at the time focused on sanitation. In 1999, Melosi agreed to help the NPS identify and nominate a worthy sanitation site for landmark status.

Anyone can nominate a landmark but obtaining National Historic Landmark status is no simple task. Sites must meet a set of criteria to even be considered, after which a rigorously researched application is submitted for a series of evaluations before an advisory board decides if it will be sent to the Secretary of the Interior, who gets the final say. The process can take two to five years. Once a site gets landmark status, it becomes eligible for grants, tax credits, and other perks to help maintain its historic character.

Melosi considered and rejected a few sites, finally landing on the Fresno Sanitary Landfill. Opened in 1937, the landfill marked a revolution in waste disposal. Prior to Fresno, people dealt with trash in lots of ways, most of them bad: Garbage was dumped on vacant land and in waterways or burned, sending plumes of noxious pollution into the air. Some versions of landfills had existed before Fresno, but Fresno’s “sanitary landfill” was the first of its kind. Designed by the engineer Jean Vincenz, the Fresno Sanitary Landfill made use of trenches into which trash was deposited, compacted, and covered over in dirt daily, instead of just dumped on open land and left to rot. It was lauded for its economy and for reducing nuisances like rats and odor. By the 1950s, Vincenz’s model was the most widely used waste disposal method in the United States.

For 50 years, an overall average of around 16,500 tons of Fresno’s rubbish arrived at the landfill every month. For a little under a decade in the middle of the 20th century, it received gallons of battery acid from a nearby smelter supply company. Waste from a local dialysis center was also deposited there, though the dates of the disposal are difficult to pinpoint.

But the facility was built without liners or a containment system, and over time, the rubbish began to take a toll. In 1981 and 1984, investigators found that methane had migrated offsite to neighboring communities; the landfill was closed in 1987. Subsequent investigations found at least 20 hazardous substances, including methane, in nearby groundwater. Since then, the city removed contaminated gas from the site, capped the landfill, and built a groundwater treatment facility. Part of the land adjoining the landfill has since been turned into a 110-acre baseball, softball, and soccer complex with a playground and picnic tables.

Despite its shortcomings, Melosi wrote in the 20-page application submitted to the NHL program, “the sanitary landfill was clearly a pioneering disposal option in the United States, possibly the most significant and universally adopted disposal technology yet developed.”

The advisory board and the Secretary of the Interior apparently agreed, as Melosi’s application was approved and the landfill’s new designation, alongside 14 other sites, announced in a NPS press release on Monday, August 27, 2001. “These special sites underscore our heritage and tell stories of periods and events in our history," then-Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton was quoted as saying. "By preserving these unique sites, we share our culture and rich diversity with our children for future generations to learn from and enjoy."

But including a dump—a Superfund site, no less—on a list of places like a school in Sitka, Alaska, and a church in Newburgh, New York, was too tantalizing for the news media to let go unmentioned. By the end of the day, after numerous media inquiries, officials started back-peddling—maybe the landfill shouldn’t be a landmark after all, they told reporters. The Associated Press and other outlets reported that Denis P. Galvin, then deputy director of the National Park Service, wrote a letter to Norton, recommending she rescind the honor. Officials told news outlets that they didn’t know the landfill was a Superfund site, although the word “Superfund” appears over 10 times in Melosi’s application.

NPR, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times all interviewed Melosi. Headline writers across the nation could not resist the opportunities the story offered: “Candidate For Historic Landmark Designation Is Used to Being Dumped On,” “What a Dump,” “Monticello, Mount Vernon...and That Dump in California,” and “Garbage In, Garbage Out for Fresno” were just a few that appeared in the days immediately after the story broke. And swirling at the center of the uproar were critics of President Bush and his environmental policies. Since taking office he had withdrawn the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to slow climate change, and frozen a series of Clinton-era regulations, including environmental ones dealing with air and water quality.

“This is what the Bush administration undoubtedly would like to do to the entire state of California,” Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, told the AP, “Trench it, compact it and shovel dirt over it.” An opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times seethed that “Bush’s Interior Department quickly pulled back on landmark designation once someone noted that the oozing, gaseous California dump was a Superfund site… No brass plaque necessary to remember this flight of lunacy.”

Such reactions puzzled Melosi, who was on the side of environmentalists and had started working on the proposal before Bush was even elected.

Some did speak up for the landfill. “These landmarks guide us in comprehending important trends and patterns in American history,” Fran Mainella, director of NPS, said in a statement quoted by the New York Times on August 29. “This landfill has all those qualities that help us as a nation understand trends in emerging and developing technology.” Fresno Mayor Alan Autry told the Fresno Bee, “Disposal of garbage may not be the most glamorous thing, but try living in a city that doesn’t do it. In 1935, we did something that no other city had done.”

Lost amidst the gleeful coverage was any nuance regarding what landmarks could and should be.

“When you talk about historical landmark and heritage you’re talking about those things that influence us, it’s not a celebration,” says Melosi. For example, Manzanar, the California internment camp where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II, was granted historic landmark status in 1985—far from a celebration, this designation preserves evidence of racist policymaking. “Understanding our history broadly, warts and all, is what historians do.”

The merits of the landfill were bandied about in the press until September 10, 2001. Following the terror attacks on September 11, everything else was swept from the headlines, and the Fresno Sanitary Landfill quickly vanished from the popular imagination. This may be why, after all the controversy, it was quietly allowed to remain a National Historic Landmark. Reversing the status of a controversial landmark could have hardly felt like a priority following the attack. It is also worth noting that just as the process of granting landmark status is rigorous, so is the process to strip it of such status.

Melosi is currently writing about 9/11 as part of a new book on the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, which was opened in 1948 and closed in March 2001, the same year the Fresno Sanitary Landfill became a landmark. Its closure was brief, however; it was reopened after the attacks to receive around 1.3 million tons of materials from the Twin Towers, which included human remains. A recovery team was able to save 54,000 personal items and more than 4,257 human remains from the rubble. Today the former landfill is being transformed into a public park three times larger than Central Park. The many lives of Fresh Kills Landfill illustrate the way waste and disposal is inextricably bound up in human life, even if most prefer not to think about it.

Reflecting on the Fresno Sanitary Landfill incident in a 2002 article for the journal The Public Historian, Melosi writes “an argument could and should be made for what the FSL ultimately represents—an icon of a rapacious consumer society—on the one hand, and a tool—albeit an imperfect tool—meant to confront environmental, economic, and social problems caused by discards, on the other.”

Climate change is coming for underwater archaeological sites.

On a choppy voyage to Antarctica in 1928, the crew of the ship that would eventually be rechristened as the Vamar bestowed upon their vessel an optimistic nickname: “Evermore Rolling.” It proved to be a bit of a misnomer. Far from slicing through cresting waves forever, the ship sank near Florida in 1942, 3.7 miles from the shore of Mexico Beach, possibly because it was loaded down with too much lumber.

It was wrecked, true, but its story didn’t end there. In 2004, the shipwreck was designated as one of Florida’s Underwater Archaeological Preserves; it was added to the National Register of Historic Places two years later. Now, the sepia, green, and gold waters around it are full of life. Fish dart through the ruins of the mangled iron broiler, and plants shoot up through the piecemeal hull and beams. Sea turtles scratch their shells against iron bars splayed out just above the sandy seabed, leaving burnt-orange rust behind them. Divers drop by to take it all in.

Shipwrecks aren't necessarily barren, static things, vanished and abandoned to the deep water and the recesses of someone's foggy memory. They may be moldering, but, like the Vamar, they're often active places—part cultural heritage site, part dynamic ecosystem. They're constantly in flux, and they'll be impacted as climate change affects the water that holds them.

For years, archaeologists have mainly been concerned with what climate change might do to places where the land meets the water. They’ve examined ways to stave off rising tides by buffering sites that will be swamped, hauling things to higher ground, or documenting whatever they can in the water’s path. For these sites that are not yet damp, water is a threat—sometimes a distant one, sometimes one that’s gaining ground—but for the wrecks, it’s a foregone conclusion. That ship has sailed—and sunk.

With climate change, “sea-level rise is the most obvious thing people are used to hearing about, and the most easily dismissed with submerged sites,” says Jeneva Wright, an underwater archaeologist and research fellow at East Carolina University. Sea-level rise is far from the only climate-related threat facing submerged sites, though: Wright outlined a handful of others in a 2016 paper in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, written when she was working as an archaeologist in the National Parks Services’ Submerged Resources Center.

Across the field, there’s admittedly little data about some of these risks, and Wright says that archaeologists would do well to collaborate with biologists, ecologists, oceanographers, and other scientists who have amassed much more information about what a changing climate will do to parts of these ecosystems. For now, Wright describes her reading of these risks as “theoretical, hypothetical, and logical,” meaning that though there’s fairly limited research within archaeology, these forecasts square with projections that researchers in other fields have arrived at, after starting to scrutinize the future effects of climate change on, for instance, ocean chemistry, reefs, and other marine life.

Storm surges and violent weather pose an immediate threat: Hurricanes tracking right over shipwrecks can splinter them into oblivion, or at least strip protective coverings and expose timbers, coral-covered cannonballs, and other features to battering currents and wind. This already happens. As a graduate student in 2014, Wright conducted research in Biscayne National Park, at the HMS Fowey. To cushion the wreck against a storm surge or hurricane event, the Parks Service had partially reburied it with sandbags and sediment. Then a storm swept through the following year. When it hit, “all of that sediment was dispersed and taken away," Wright says. “It was sort of a failure of the reburial effort, but was sort of a success, because if that sand hadn’t been there, it would have been just this 18th-century British warship that had dispersed all over the place.”

Other changes will be less physically brutal, and maybe less obvious to landlubbers, compared with pelting rain and wild winds. Wrecks are already deluged, of course, but rising sea levels could affect them, too, because depth changes—even relatively small ones—can trigger changes that cascade through the environment. Underwater, a change in depth can correlate to a change in temperature, and that in turn may change the species that can survive there. Take seagrass. In many wrecks around Florida, for instance, seagrass functions as an anchor, holding sediment in place and blanketing fragile timbers. Some of these species vanish below about 30 feet; anything deeper is too cold, too dark, and too devoid of oxygen. A sea-level rise of just a few meters could theoretically swamp these wrecks with enough water to threaten the survival of the species that lock them in place, Wright says. (In Florida, the National Parks Service manages parks around the estimate that waters will rise three feet by 2100.)

As the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide, it is also becoming hotter and more acidic. The Smithsonian has referred to ocean acidification as “climate change’s equally evil twin,” and it could pose big problems for wrecks. Associated chemical changes will likely erode the cement-like coating that covers many historic wrecks. This protective layer, called concretion, appears most often on iron wrecks; it’s a byproduct of rust interacting with seawater and attracting organisms. “You’ve got this crusty stuff that’s covering everything, and it can protect it for centuries,” Wright says. But “because it’s a calcium carbonate—just like Tums that you would eat if you had an upset stomach—it's really, really sensitive to acid." When the acid content increases,"all of that protective coating that’s over these cultural materials can vanish—like, literally vanish,” Wright says. Research in this vein tends to focus on the similar threats faced by calcifying marine life such as corals, clams, oysters, and sea urchins. When researchers extrapolate that to shipwrecks, Wright says, "You go, ‘Ooh, that’s bad.’”

Chemical changes can also be quite dangerous in light of what might still be stashed inside a ship’s hull. Sunken World War II naval vessels might still hold a smattering of “big, bad things,” Wright adds, from armaments to biohazards such as vast quantities of oil. Most of these ships are made of rusting metals. “The more temperature you add, and the more acidic that environment is, the faster those shipwrecks can deteriorate,” Wright says. “And suddenly you’re looking at the loss of cultural heritage, but you’re also looking at the release of whatever those wrecks are holding.” In many cases, it’s not realistic to extract the potential pollutants from these sites, or to raise them from the sea. They may be war graves, holding soldiers’ remains, or else submerged in very deep water.

One way to get a handle on all of these dangers is to track them. That can be tricky, because archaeologists and rangers don’t always stop by to regularly check in on watery wrecks as easily as they do terrestrial sites, says Sara Ayers-Rigsby, director of the southwest and southeast branches of the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), a project based out of the division of archaeology and anthropology at the University of West Florida and Florida Atlantic University.

“These sights are very much out of sight, out of mind for everyone who doesn’t dive,” says Della Scott-Ireton, the associate director of the FPAN program. But in Florida, a lot of people do dive. Tourists often come to Florida to explore the 12 underwater archaeological preserves scattered all around the state’s perimeter, or the nine wrecks that dot the reefs and sandy floor of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, managed by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. NOAA has devised a “Shipwreck Trail,” which divers are welcome to visit, and the Department of State has documented the sunken bows, sterns, and other portions of the wrecks that comprise what it calls “Museums in the Sea.” Scott-Ireton describes places like these as “low-hanging fruit”: Since divers will already be there, FPAN stands to benefit from persuading them to jot down some observations while they swim around.

Tapping into the citizen science brain trust is logical, because tourist divers already have their goggled eyes on the seabed. FPAN runs trainings in archaeological stewardship for sport divers, and earlier this summer, began adapting its Heritage Monitoring Scouts program—a self-guided citizen science effort—to include observations of underwater sites. Participants will descend with a waterproof mylar form for recording their observations, and look around for evidence of climate impacts (say, sediment buildup or disappearance), as well as other changes, like traces of looting or vandalism. So far, FPAN has received ten forms, Ayers-Rigsby says, including some that document sites that the archaeologists didn't yet have on file. Eventually, Scott-Ireton hopes to be able to loan out salinity meters so that divers can take measurements and report back, but that will depend on future funding.

In the past, there have been occasional skirmishes between archaeologists, who want to preserve the past, and some divers, who want to plunder it. Wright says it certainly doesn’t have to be that way. “As a diver and someone who gets excited about shipwrecks, you can direct that enthusiasm in two ways,” she says. One option is pilfering a porthole for your mantlepiece, as a souvenir. The alternative, she says, is marveling at things where they landed, and thinking, “I experienced this amazing dive, and I want to protect it, and I want to be a part of telling its story.”

Old advertisements that have become icons.

Sometimes when you ask the universe (or in this case, the internet) for a sign, you get over 500. At least, that's what happened when we asked Atlas Obscura readers to tell us about their favorite landmark signs.

In honor of Landmarks Week, on Monday we put out a call for love letters to iconic local signs and advertisements, and the response was overwhelming. Several signs received multiple shout outs, with well-known landmarks such as the White Stag sign in Portland, Oregon, and the Grain Belt Beer sign in Minneapolis, Minnesota, getting a lot of love in particular. There were also memorable entries such as the Crystal Preserves sign in New Orleans, which once pumped fake steam out of its neon cauldron, and Sacramento, California's "Jugglin' Joe" sign, which lights up to animate an ice cream scoop getting thrown over the top of a soda jerk.

Our readers submitted hundreds of beloved signs, and unfortunately we could not feature them all, but a selection of our favorites follows.

The Tupelo Arrow

Tupelo, Mississippi

“The neon arrow sign stands at the busiest intersection in Tupelo, Mississippi (known as Crosstown) and points toward the downtown business district. It was erected sometime before 1954. It commemorates February 7, 1934, the day Tupelo became the first city to receive electrical service from one of the signature New Deal programs: the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). To celebrate this achievement, FDR and his wife Eleanor visited Tupelo on November 18, 1934, and addressed one of the single largest event crowds in Mississippi history. The sign has long stood as an insignia of Tupelo and its place as ‘First TVA City.’ — John Haynes, Alexandria, Virginia

First National Bank Sign

St. Paul, Minnesota

“In my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota, [there is] the First National Bank '1st' red blinking neon, and the red neon Schmidt Brewery sign, now atop a artists condo collective.” — Jacqui Shoholm, Alexandria, Virginia

Grain Belt Beer Sign

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“There's a Grain Belt beer neon sign in downtown Minneapolis. It was put up in 1941, went dark around the late 70s, and was re-lit in 1989, then was sporadically lit for a number of years while the fate of the Grain Belt Brewery was in doubt. It was re-lit again at the end of 2017.” — Kathy Brown, Minneapolis, Minnesota

“My company made a smaller version of the sign as part of a fundraiser to relight the original.” — Dave Benson, Aurora, Ohio

Mr. Boh Sign

Baltimore, Maryland

“The one-eyed man with a mustache is the representation for National Bohemian Beer, commonly referred to as 'Natty Boh.'” — Tina Simmons, Laurel, Maryland

Maxwell House Coffee Sign

Jacksonville, Florida

“I adore the Maxwell House Coffee Company sign in Jacksonville, Florida. It is from 1955 and is around 95 feet tall. The coffee cup has a dripping drop coming from it. When it is lit, it gives the city a nice glowing reflection in the downtown area. It is quite a stunning example of illuminated and automated signage. It is an essential visual landmark in Jacksonville.” — Sarah Nan, Jacksonville, Florida

Cream City Sign

Cookeville, Tennessee

“It's a wonderful neon sign that was restored within the past 10-15 years to its former glory. It sits on top of Cream City ice cream parlor in the historic downtown. I don't know much of its history, only that it's been around since the '50s at least and is a popular attraction.” — Malory Rose, Atlanta, Georgia

Alico Sign

Waco, Texas

“The Alico sign on top of Waco’s only skyscraper.” — Brandon Gilliam, Waco, Texas

Anheuser-Busch Sign

Newark, New Jersey

“The Anheuser-Busch sign at the Newark Airport. We used to live in New Jersey and flew in and out of the Newark Airport. This sign seemed to mark the spot when arriving or departing.” — Larayne J. Dallas, Austin, Texas

"At my earliest age, over 60 years ago, I’d see that sign as we drove to my grandparents home in Jersey City. I’d know I was near their home when I’d see it." — Jeff Guide, Hot Springs Arkansas

Coca-Cola Sign

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“The Coca-Cola sign had been atop a building in the heart of downtown Baton Rouge and remained unlit for many years. A massive restoration was completed only to be undone by the owner of the building who claimed the arts council that restored it had no rights to it. He covered it with a tarp for over a year while it was argued over. It finally was resolved after 15 months of being covered for a grand reveal. It now graces the evening crowds of downtown Baton Rouge along with multiple building renovations that have revived a long forgotten area.” — Leisa Humble, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Crystal Preserves Sign

New Orleans, Louisiana

"The Crystal Preserves sign on the old Baumer Foods factory in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been a local landmark since it was built in 1942. The left side of the sign features a green background with the words ‘Crystal Preserves’ in white cursive overlaid with green and red neon lights. The right side of the sign has a cutout of a man in an apron and chef's hat stirring a very large pot. The reason the sign was so popular is that the factory installed their exhaust vent right behind the sign to make it look like steam was rising from a gigantic pot full of hot food. Furthermore, the factory and sign were directly adjacent to the interstate so thousands of people drove past it every day on their commute to and from work. The factory and the sign were both functional until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, during which the factory and sign both suffered severe damage. The factory closed (they reopened at another location in the suburbs where they continue to make Crystal Hot Sauce), but the building was purchased and renovated into apartments. Fortunately the new owners understood how beloved the sign was so they replaced the damaged sign with a new, more hurricane-proof, version that looks almost identical to the original (although they didn't replace the old neon ‘Baumer Foods’ sign that used to be attached to the top of it). The new owners supposedly even left a hole behind the pot that can be filled with dry ice to make the pot steam again on special occasions." — Rebecca Williams, New Orleans, Louisiana

Western Auto Sign

Kansas City, Missouri

“The building itself, originally a Coca-Cola office structure built in 1915, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is uniquely shaped, designed around a curved railroad service track. It has been converted to upscale condominiums in recent years. As of summer 2018, the sign is being converted from incandescent and neon to LED lighting for reliability and ease of maintenance.” — Mark Llewellyn, Bay Area, California

“[The sign] sits on top of an iconic building, shaped like 'half a cake' as my mother always said. She worked there for over 30 years so it was always a landmark for us. The building has been converted to lofts and the residents have recently financed a renovation and relighting of the sign. I hope it's done so that the arrow moves as it used to.” — Jamie Hunnicutt, Columbia, Missouri

“When I moved to Kansas City from the New York City area in 2015, I expected some outdated cowtown. It's totally not, but this huge Western Auto sign definitely felt like something from days gone by. I love it.” — Chris Kenny, Leawood, Kansas

Jugglin’ Joe Sign

Sacramento, California

— Submitted by Vanessa Wiseman, Sacramento, California

Tower Records Sign

Sacramento, California

“This much-loved neon sign depicts teens dancing on top of a record, with the dancers' legs moving back and forth and music bars flashing. It was designed for Clayton and Russ Solomon, founder of legendary Tower Records (named after this original store site). When Russ was a teen, he worked at his parents’ drug store sweeping floors, stocking shelves, serving sodas, and selling used records on a table in the back. Neon signs fell out of favor by the 1970s and animated signs were even outlawed per Sacramento city ordinance. Luckily, the ‘Dancing Kids’ and a few others were excepted from this rule. There was even a time when this sign was out of commission and stored on the roof, but now it shines again, delighting all who pass.” — Gretchen Steinberg, Sacramento, California

Schrafft’s Sign

Charlestown, Massachusetts

“I've always had a soft spot for the Schrafft's Sign. A friend and I would drive past it frequently and always loved the bright pink sign glowing on the side of the building. We were even more pleased to learn that it was a sign for a candy company. It made us love it even more.” — Sarah, Boston, Massachusetts

Shell Oil Company "Spectacular" Sign

Cambridge, Massachusetts

“The Shell Oil Company ‘Spectacular’ sign was built in 1933 by Donnelly Electric Manufacturing Company. In 1944, it was moved to its present location from the Shell Company building on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It is at its best at night, when one can see the light progression.” — Catherine Hammond, Cambridge, Massachusetts

PSFS Sign

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“The first modern skyscraper built in the United States, and the first in the International Style. The sign is itself essential to the composition and balance of the building's design.” — Timothy Gierschick II, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“When I was little, I could see the sign from my bedroom in the Wynnefield neighborhood of the city. Originally the headquarters for the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, the art deco style building has been converted into a Loews Hotel.” — Michael Sklar, Jupiter, Florida

Divine Lorraine Hotel Sign

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"After 40 years of darkness, the Divine Lorraine Hotel marquee was restored to its iconic neon red brilliance in November 2016, marking a shining milestone in the building's restoration and redevelopment. Opened in 1893 as the Lorraine Apartments, the luxurious Victorian building was converted into the Lorraine Hotel in 1900. In 1948, it was purchased by Father Divine, leader of the International Peace Mission Movement, under whose leadership the hotel gained its current name and grew to prominence as the first fully integrated hotel in Philadelphia, if not the country. The hotel closed in 1999. Development efforts began in earnest in 2012 under Eric Blumenfeld. The sign certainly took on its current form under Father Divine's ownership, but it is possible that he added only 'Divine' to a preexisting sign." — Robert Huber, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Hotel Baxter Sign

Bozeman, Montana

“The Hotel Baxter sign is a local icon. It punctuates the modest yet hip downtown Main Street, and welcomes skiers, celebrities, and locals alike.” — Mia White, Bozeman, Montana

GE Sign

Schenectady, New York

“The script letters of downtown Schenectady’s GE sign can be seen from all over town, day or night, all year round. It tells a familiar Rust Belt story. It’s a reminder of when General Electric used to employ 30,000 people in town, when Schenectady was called ‘the city that lights and hauls the world.’ And of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s beautiful.” — Emily Wilkerson, Brooklyn, New York

“The enormous General Electric sign in my hometown of Schenectady, New York, has been an awesome local landmark since 1926. It's made up of 1,399 light bulbs, usually plain white, but they sometimes get switched out for red, white, and blue, or red, white, and green to coincide with the annual holiday parade. The building the sign tops is no longer the GE headquarters, but it's an impressive reminder of the original presence of GE in Schenectady. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling every time I visit my hometown and spot the sign.” — Anna Hendrick, Brooklyn, New York

Silvercup Studios Sign

Queens, New York

“As a kid growing up in Elmhurst and Flushing, Queens, I rode the No. 7 subway a lot. The trains make a slow, screeching turn on the elevated tracks around the building. I was fascinated by the sign’s bright, red glow emerging from the dark as a beacon showing my way home at night.” — Andrew Chao, Danville, California

Allerton Tip Top Tap Sign

Chicago, Illinois

“The Tip Top Tap sign on the Warwick Allerton Hotel in Chicago. A cocktail lounge, Tip Top Tap, opened on the top of the Allerton Hotel, a residential club hotel established in the 1920s. Located 23 floors above the Magnificent Mile, the sign embodies old-school Chicago swank and splendor in the midst of contemporary buildings.” — Lindsey Melnyk, Chicago, Illinois

Dispatch Sign

Columbus, Ohio

“The giant Columbus Dispatch sign on 3rd Street, in downtown Columbus, is one of my favorite sights in the city. For years it has loomed over the Ohio Statehouse, like a physical manifestation of journalism's duty to watch over the government. A few years ago the Dispatch downsized and moved its offices around the corner to a smaller building on Broad Street, but the famous sign remains.” — Jesse Bethea, Columbus, Ohio

Portland White Stag Sign

Portland, Oregon

"The [former] ‘Made in Oregon’ sign in Portland used to be the White Stag sign for the clothing company in the building. When Bill Naito bought the building it became Norcrest China, where I and many high schoolers got our first jobs. We moved in by transferring inventory by hand truck from one block away." — Mark Epp, Portland, Oregon

“The White Stag sign started out as an advertisement for White Satin Sugar, then was converted to advertising White Stag Sportswear in the 1950s. It now reads ‘Portland, Oregon.’ The deer's nose is lit red at Christmas.” — Joel Birkeland, Hillsboro, Oregon

The Travelers Sign

Des Moines, Iowa

“The Travelers Insurance sign in Des Moines lights up the downtown. It was built in 1963. Travelers has since moved out of the building, but the sign remains lit every night.” — Nate Byro, Des Moines, Iowa

Sauer's Vanilla Sign

Richmond, North Carolina

“An animated sign illuminated with incandescent bulbs.” — Sarah Montgomery, Richmond, Virginia

Add Bardhal Oil Sign

Seattle, Washington

“Bardhal is old school Ballard. Started by a Norwegian immigrant in the traditional Scandinavian neighborhood in the 1930s. The sign has been there since my mother was a child in the 1950s. The city has changed so much. It has always been a new city and the lack of physical city history makes those landmarks that are still around so much more important. It feels almost like a mistake that the sign is still there, but gives Seattleites a connection to remnants of an often forgotten and overlooked history of industrial and working class Seattle.” — Alma Lemberg, Brooklyn, New York

Elephant Super Car Wash Sign

Seattle, Washington

“Longtime landmark in central Seattle, a few blocks from Seattle's iconic Space Needle.” — Elliott Bronstein, Seattle, Washington

Farine Five Roses Sign

Montreal, Canada

“I love this sign because it represents the essence of Montreal's bilingual history. The name of the company is English and because it is a legal name, it was not translated to French. ‘Farine’ is the French word for flour, and is translated to French from the English. This sign is a symbol of both the historical problems of the French majority being dominated by the English minority, but also of the symbiotic relationship between French and English in Montreal. This is what is called ‘Franglais’ by many.” — Michael Bailey, Los Angeles, California

Valdivieso Sign

Santiago, Chile

"One of the most emblematic signs in Santiago, it was put up by the wine brand and vineyard Valdivieso, between 1954-55. Officially, it has been considered a national monument since 2010. However, in 2017 there was a controversy related to a change in the phrase of the sign, which went from ‘Y hoy, por qué no?’ (‘And today, why not?’) to ‘Desde Siempre’ (‘Since always’). — José Miguel Álvarez, Santiago, Chile

Tío Pepe Sign

Madrid, Spain

“Tío Pepe is an Andalusian wine sign which, just like Osborne's bull, was pardoned because its original design when a Spanish law forbade signs over houses and beside roads.” — Luis Morato, Madrid, Spain

Freia Clock

Oslo, Norway

“The Freia clock on Oslo's main street, Karl Johans Gate, facing the royal palace, was a futuristic sensation when its 1,500 lamps first brightened the gaslit city in 1909, and it is the classic landmark of today's car-free downtown Oslo.” — Alex Snyder, Norway

Why Go Bald Sign

Dublin, Ireland

“The ‘Why Go Bald?’ neon sign was recently restored to working condition.” — Neil Dorgan, Dublin, Ireland

Nylex Plastics Clock

Melbourne, Australia

"It's ugly, was broken for a number of years and sits atop some drab concrete grain storage silos. Yet it has become iconic because it's close to the Melbourne Cricket Ground and tennis center where the country's biggest sporting events are held. It was built when the inner city area was an industrial zone but the area has been totally gentrified around it. All it does is show the time and temperature but it was there so long it became a landmark." — Robert Fenner, Hong Kong

Little Audrey the Skipping Girl Sign

Melbourne, Australia

“I adore the Skipping Girl in Melbourne. She is called Little Audrey. I don't know much else about her except that at night her neon lights make her appear to be skipping. Also, she isn't the original skipping girl. When removed in the '60s, people had an absolute cow. They had to make a new one. She is an icon.” — Elizabeth Cornell, Melbourne, Australia

“The Skipping Girl is a sign left over from a vinegar company and has become a Melbourne icon. She is made of metal and has a skipping rope which lights up at night, flicking around to give the appearance that she is actually skipping, as well as warm lights all over. While she was taken down at one point, mass outcry ensured that she was restored and returned to a new location, not far from the old. The Skipping Girl is so well renowned she has a Wikipedia page and a number of Melbourne songs mention her, making her a cultural icon.” — Bella, Melbourne, Australia

To see more amazing signs submitted by our readers, or add your own, check out the thread over on our Facebook page!

Responses in this piece have been edited for length and clarity.

Jim Westerfield created dozens of new culinary mints in his Illinois garden.

Those who knew Jim Westerfield described him as a renaissance man. A talented, self-taught musician and composer who knew everything about antiques from the American Revolutionary period. An entrepreneur who, together with his wife, created the Westerfield House, a popular inn and restaurant in rural Illinois. An obsessive culinary gardener and amateur botanist.

But Westerfield’s true passion was breeding new types of mint—he created dozens of new varieties over the course of his lifetime. The names of his mints hint at their flavors: “Sweet Pear,” “Candy Lime,” “Marshmallow,” and “Candied Fruit.” His crowning achievement was “Hillary’s Sweet Lemon Mint,” one of the relatively few mint varieties ever to be granted a United States patent. Today, Westerfield’s mint varieties are widely propagated by both commercial growers and home gardeners. Online, bloggers review his mints, highlighting their unique attributes, and gardeners swap tips on forums for finding harder-to-locate varieties. Westerfield expanded the boundaries of the culinary mint world, giving gardeners and connoisseurs a palette of mint flavors never before envisioned.

An Illinois native and the youngest of eight children, Jim Westerfield was born in 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression. His fascination with culinary gardening began early. At the age of 10, he found a tattered old magazine with an article entitled “Grow Your Own Seasonings,” and became enthralled with herbs. Growing up in an area that was hard-hit by the Depression, Westerfield spent hours in the library to keep himself out of trouble, devouring books on botany, herbs, and plants. “Jim came from a neighborhood where everyone had a vegetable garden. He started growing basil when he was about 11,” says his niece, Lori Crider. “He was just hooked from then on.”

After high school, Westerfield had hoped to attend college, but his father’s untimely death led him to enter the grocery business to support his mother. While working in the industry, Westerfield married, had a son, and travelled to Nashville on his days off to collaborate with musicians, composing and arranging music for pop-rock bands. His songs were featured in both America and Europe, and one of his compositions, “Another Time (Another Place),” was a “spotlight” single on the Billboard charts in 1965. In 1984, inspired by a bed and breakfast he and Marilyn had visited, Westerfield moved with his family to a rural property near Freeburg, Illinois. There, they built a log cabin to house a restaurant and inn, which they dubbed the Westerfield House.

As soon as construction was completed, Westerfield began breeding new types of mint in the Westerfield House gardens. Kneeling among garden beds surrounded by Illinois cornfields, he’d take pollen from male mint plants and carefully brush it into the flowers of female mint plants of another variety. His combination of remarkable patience and careful record keeping enabled him to create mints that evoked a broad range of flavors ranging from fruity notes, to undertones of hazelnut, to aromas of oregano and thyme.

His passion for unique flavors separated Westerfield from the more commercial plant breeders, who use the same hybridization process but focus on varieties that show potential for either higher essential oil yields or increased resistance to disease. For Westerfield, breeding mints with unheard of flavors that could be used in new ways was the primary goal.

As the popularity of The Westerfield House grew, Westerfield began selling his mints and other herbs to the public. “He had a little greenhouse and garden shop,” says his niece. “People would come from miles away just to buy a pot of his mint.” The Westerfield House also self-published several cookbooks that featured Westerfield’s mints. “The herbs were in everything we made at the restaurant,” says Crider, who helped them open the restaurant and worked there for years. “I don’t think there was a dessert that came out of the kitchen that didn’t have some of Jim’s mint in it.”

At its peak, the Westerfield House garden contained approximately 140 varieties of herbs, including over 40 different types of mint. The Canadian plant grower Richters Herbs began offering Westerfield’s mints for commercial sale, making his varieties available worldwide. Westerfield mints were featured in garden forums and herb publications, and highlighted in media articles and on television.

Of all the varieties that he bred over the years, Westerfield’s favorite was “Hillary’s Sweet Lemon Mint” (Mentha Dulcia Citreus), which he patented in 1993. It took him seven years of experimentation to create Hillary’s Sweet Lemon: a cross between apple mint and lime mint. The resulting herb has a mild flavor, with fuzzy silvery-grey leaves, and a whisper of lemon along with the classic mint aroma. It was often featured in cookies, cakes, and beverages at the Westerfield House. Westerfield named the mint in honor of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was First Lady at the time, and the story of Hillary’s Sweet Lemon Mint was picked up by newspapers. Illinois Representative Jerry Costello (a regular at the Westerfield House restaurant) became interested in the mint, and in 1993, Costello formally presented a plant of Hillary’s Sweet Lemon Mint to the First Lady in Washington, who wrote a letter of thanks to Westerfield for “the wonderful gift.”

The Westerfield House closed in 2002 when Westerfield and his wife retired, but he continued to develop new strains of mint up until he passed away in 2013. His legacy lives on through the unique mints he created that are planted in gardens around the world.

Museums want visitors, but many must also grapple with the vibrations they cause.

Dave Favaloro, the director of curatorial affairs at the Tenement Museum in New York City, had just arrived home from a long day at work one evening in late May when his phone buzzed with an email. A colleague was doing a final walkthrough of the museum’s renovated apartments at 97 Orchard Street, and sent Favaloro a question that hurled him into a slight panic. Had he noticed that a portion of the plaster ceiling had fallen to the floor?

He hadn’t, but it didn’t come as a total shock. The museum invites visitors to step inside the cramped quarters that immigrant families shared when they landed on Manhattan’s shores in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a fairly old building, and its condition was never great—small and sweltering rooms, with nary a window let alone a breeze, and nothing built to last. Keeping the apartments both historically accurate and safe amid a steady march of foot traffic is constant work.

The museum had known about vulnerable spots for a while. Like many historic properties, the institution has to strike a balance between attracting visitors and shoring up its defenses against them. It’s a problem so common that, on UNESCO’s list of potential threats to heritage sites, visitation sits alongside more obvious perils like pollution. Of course, a museum exists so that people can visit it—that’s the very essence of its museum-ness. But when guests step back in time, they’re treading on fragile ground.

To keep tabs on what’s going on, Favaloro and Danielle Swanson, the museum’s collections manager, do monthly conservation monitoring. Each room is scrutinized twice a year. In 2013, after noticing some ongoing damage to plaster on ceilings and walls, museum staff enlisted the services of structural engineers from Robert Silman Associates to install seismographs that capture vibration data. Over the course of four weeks, the instruments measured peak particle velocity (or PPV, a standard measure of vibration in inches per second), in 15-second intervals. This is a common approach: a number of art museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, have monitored vibrations during construction projects or when installing something heavy and huge.

The Tenement Museum’s seismograph data revealed that things were pretty sleepy, vibration-wise, after hours. The engineers attributed the occasional out-of-nowhere late-night peak to garbage trucks or ambulances. During the day, though, the instruments recorded predictable patterns that seemed to map on pretty neatly to the schedule of guided tours. Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., whenever visitors climbed the stairs and stood or sat inside the historic apartments, the seismograph recorded frequent spikes up to roughly 0.3 inches/second. It seemed, the engineers wrote, that “the tour groups are ‘exciting’ the floors.’”

It’s safe to assume that most visitors to the Tenement Museum aren’t walking around like giants lumbering through a forest. But even if they’re not stomping and clomping and thumping along, the vibrations from their footsteps can leave a mark. How vigorously do they have to walk in order to pose a threat? No mosh pits, sure, but what about speed walking? Tip-toeing only?

The best guidelines for managing vibrations in historic buildings are pretty vague. Standards vary greatly from place to place. One landmark literature review, a 2012 report from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, rounded up 20 sources that recommended limits spanning a wide range—from 0.08 inches/second up to 2.0 inches/second. At the time, the engineers noted, the New York City building code only prescribed an upper limit for plaster that was, presumably, in sound shape; there wasn't a more sensitive target for older or more visibly vulnerable examples. Outside the U.S. though, there are a handful of countries, including Switzerland and India, where lower ceilings have been set with historical properties in mind.

Overall, museums staffers ought to “be thoughtful about that specific building, rather than trying necessarily to apply a broad standard across all historic buildings,” says Katherine Malone-France, senior vice president for historic sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “Every building and its construction techniques and materials and environment and the way it has been treated over the long arc of time—every single one of those things is different.”

Armed with vibration data, historic sites make all sorts of game plans. One tactic is to nix the things that dial up those quivers. In England, historic homes and palaces often draw crowds for concerts, and one heritage organization eventually found such affairs to be far too funky. Even the decibel levels from relatively calm corporate gatherings could be enough to send a vase toppling to the floor, researchers told the Guardian. In 2017, researchers from China’s Tianjin University found that vibrations in portions of the Grand Stage at the 300-year-old Garden of Virtuous Harmony in the Summer Palace in Beijing leapt higher on holidays, when more visitors were passing through. They concluded that the spikes didn’t exceed acceptable levels, but noted that it was something to keep an eye on.

The Tenement Museum isn’t dialing down on foot traffic, but it os working to make its floors and ceilings strong enough to withstand the footfalls of 250,000 annual visitors. When plaster flaked to the ground back in May, Favaloro, Swanson, and company immediately closed the damaged apartments to visitors. The next order of business was stabilization.

I visited one morning partway through the reconstruction process. The room was relatively dark, as most of its period-appropriate lamps had been put into storage. And despite still being early in the day, the space was punishingly humid. Hunched over in the sticky heat, the crew, led by Stephanie Hoagland, a principal at Jablonski Building Conservation, Inc., was already fantasizing about where they’d eat lunch. They ranked nearby restaurants by how high they blasted the air conditioning.

Hoagland's crew had already supported the bowing ceiling with micro jacks. Then, they climbed the stairs to work on the floor of the apartment above. They removed all of the wooden floor planks, exposing the lath and keys, plaster-stuffed wooden strips that were a common precursor to drywall. After picking out "all the broken keys, all the years of rat poo and dirt,” Hoagland explained, the team vacuumed everything until they got it as clean as they could. This helps create a solid bond, so that they weren't rekeying to dirt. Then they recreated all the keys by shooting synthetic black goop from a caulking gun. Some of the old keys were still visible, in places where the plaster, when it was wet, had spilled through the wood lath like an eggshell-colored fungus. The crew wiggled them, to see which were weak.

Though only a portion of the ceiling had fallen, the team was working on the entire floor. They reckoned it made sense to do the whole thing in one go, as opposed to tackling individual problem areas piecemeal. Favaloro said the museum plans to do the same throughout its spaces in the next year and a half, in an admittedly "more-strategic way." The fix-ups square with ones that many historic properties explore, Malone-France said. “We want to preserve design intent and that aesthetic, but we can, in ways that are never going to be seen by anyone, improve on materiality and construction technique,” she said.

When the museum reopens these rooms to visitors next month, this work will be invisible: the fresh keys will be hidden by new plaster and paint, designed to look like the old stuff. The additions won’t detract from a visitor’s sense of stepping into the past—and, hopefully, they’ll keep the floor on solid ground.

But why?

Captain John Smith is perhaps best known for his (possibly fictional) encounter with Pocahontas. Whatever the true nature of that meeting was, the British explorer distilled his explorations and meetings with the indigenous people of what is now Virginia into a remarkable map that defined European impressions of the region for the majority of the 1600s.

Widely considered a masterpiece, Smith’s map is dominated by artistic renditions of the indigenous people of the region, especially Powhatan, the powerful leader of at least 30 Algonquin-speaking tribes in the Chesapeake Bay area, including the Potomac, the Chesapeake, the Mattaponi, and the Secacawoni. On Smith’s map, Powhatan is the name of a man, a region, and the river that European settlers would rename the James.

If Smith’s Virginia looks unfamiliar to the modern viewer, it’s not only due to the extensive territory held by indigenous people. Smith drew his map with west at the top and north pointing to the right, spreading the land out the way it might have appeared to a European ship captain landing on the mid-Atlantic coast.

Orienting maps toward the west this way has always been rare. Though mapmaking conventions, such as standard orientation and use of latitude and longitude, still hadn’t fully formed by the early 17th century when Smith’s map was published, maps showing north at the top were already common. According to Matthew Edney, a professor of geography and cartography at the University of Southern Maine, by 1600, most regional and commercially produced maps were oriented toward the north.

However, many Virginia maps of the 17th century mirror the orientation of Smith’s. These include Augustine Herrman’s Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670; John Lederer’s A map of the whole territory traversed by John Lederer in his three marches; and John Ferrar’s A map of Virginia discovered to ye falls. Some scholars see meaning in the decision to draw these maps with west at the top. The viewpoint of the map, after all, could reveal something about the viewpoint of the mind.

“Maybe it’s about an invitation more than a geography lesson,” says Buck Woodard, a lecturer in the department of anthropology at American University. He notes that many maps of the era were used in part to encourage Europeans to travel to North America as settlers.

Woodard points out that British explorers of the time also drew maps of Ireland with west at the top. In both cases, the British were in the process of conquering territory and establishing settlements. “When there’s a colonial interest, the map is oriented for your arrival,” he says.

But this isn’t the only theory about the unusual orientation of this set of maps. Edney wonders if the orientation toward the west is geared in part toward the European explorers’ desire to establish an easy sea route to China. The maps’ viewpoint could be a way of looking past this land and toward the sea they hoped to discover just beyond.

Or it’s possible that the maps are oriented to make the most of the cartographers’ knowledge, Edney says. European explorers did not know what lay beyond a certain westward point, or knew only what they had heard from indigenous people.

Edney notes that, when maps of Virginia place west at the top, they show a thin strip of land that stops at a barrier. That barrier could be geographic, such as the Blue Ridge mountains, or it could be the nations of indigenous people.

The presence of indigenous people did confine early European explorers within a certain region during their early experience of the territory. Audrey Horning, a professor of anthropology at William and Mary, says this could have influenced the way Europeans drew their maps. “What is especially striking about a map such as John Smith's map of Virginia is that actually it is a map of the extents of the Powhatan chiefdom,” she says.

On the other hand, there could be merely practical reasons for Smith’s orientation decision. Smith, for his part, may have wanted to arrange the map to work well with wider paper, or he may have wanted to make room for tall illustrations of Powhatan and other indigenous people. Mark Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University, notes that the group of west-oriented maps of Virginia that followed could simply have come about because people copied Smith, whose map was early and famous.

As the borders of European expansion moved west, the nature of the maps of Virginia also changed. Edney says that it wasn’t until about the 1680s that the colonies along the East Coast of the United States began to be seen as a concrete whole. Around the same time, maps of the area began to be oriented toward the north. He wonders if there’s a connection between the changes and says it’s possible that the north orientation reflected a shift of seeing the region less as a wild area to be traversed quickly and more as a group of settled political entities.

A map by Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson, called A Map of the Inhabited Part of Virginia containing the whole Province of Maryland, with Part of Pensilvania, New Jersey and North Carolina, was published in 1753, and took a role in the 18th century similar to that of John Smith’s in the 17th. It was copied and imitated and used as the foundation for many other maps of the region.

This map depicts north at the top, and its borders, while ambitious in the westward direction, don’t appear unrecognizable to the modern viewer. Rather than the dramatic illustrations of Powhatan and other indigenous people on Smith’s map, Fry and Jefferson’s depicts a dockside scene showing European commerce and enslaved Africans.

Woodard describes the Fry-Jefferson map as “a different animal” than the maps that came before. Where they are full of a sense of rawness and contact, he says, the Fry-Jefferson map shows a land that has been settled and transformed.

Smith’s map and the Fry-Jefferson map differ in yet another way as well. The Smith map shows two societies coming together in frontier space, Woodard says. For example, Smith marked crosses on the map to show where his direct knowledge stopped and he’d relied on reports from indigenous people to fill in the region’s features. Indigenous names appear all over the region, and it’s clear that indigenous people live there, too. Woodard thinks that the Fry-Jefferson map, on the other hand, very much suggests that Europeans have gained total control of the territory. It shows different people in one society, the names largely European, the orientation pointing north, as with maps of Europe.

Maps tell a story, Woodard says, and with the shift away from west orientation, he sees a shift away from an invitation to settle a frontier. In the place of those older maps, cartographers began making maps with declarations about dominion, sovereignty, and borders. “Englishmen imagine; the map makes it real,” Woodard says, with some irony. Even if a map asserts borders that don’t quite match the reality, he notes that it can be part of a transformative process that gradually makes reality match the map.

Maps of Virginia have always attempted not only to describe physical features of a place, but to tell a story about who lives there and who is supposed to live there. The way they are drawn says something about who the cartographer believes the land belongs to and what it will be used for.

However, Horning notes that there are limits to the power of these stories. Even after being drawn out of maps by Europeans, for example, she says indigenous communities are being recognized as the political, social, and cultural entities they always knew themselves to be. For example, recent federal recognition of Virginia tribes shows that erasure on a page doesn’t always stick, she says.

Knowing that sort of complexity makes it particularly revealing to study this collection of west-oriented maps, as well as the more settled maps that came next. On the one hand, they tell a story of changing physical borders and increasing European control. On the other hand, they speak to the indelible marks left by the region’s original inhabitants, and they give hints of what can be found in the Chesapeake Bay area by looking beyond its apparent borders.

A stone monument marks this symbolic last moment of post-WWII repatriation.

Ishigaki-jima, an island in Japan’s southern Okinawa prefecture, is best known for its immaculate beaches and waving fields of sugarcane. But it also plays host to one of the more curious remnants of Japan’s post-war occupation by U.S. forces. Nestled in the island’s bustling city center is the 730 Monument. It commemorates July 30, 1978, the day Okinawa’s motorists switched from driving on the right-hand side of the road to the left.

While post-war U.S. control of mainland Japan ceased in 1952, American administration of the Okinawan islands continued until 1972, owing to the provisions of the Treaty of San Francisco. This would have allowed for the potential permanent trusteeship of Okinawa, although this was ultimately not what happened. Among other Americanisms adopted by Okinawa during that time—such as an abiding love of A&W restaurants and SPAM—was the requirement to drive on the right, in contrast to the rest of Japan.

With the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic entering into force in 1977, and earlier 1949 Geneva Convention on Road Traffic, both requiring member states to have a uniform traffic direction throughout the country, post-occupation Japan was obliged to bring Okinawa in line with the rest of the country and international practice. Owing to assorted bureaucratic wrinkles, however, it was not until 1978 that Okinawa finally made the switch to left-hand drive.

To commemorate this change, the town office of Ishigaki created in September 1978 the 730 Monument, a simple three-foot high stone memorial named for the date when traffic switched over. The stone is flanked by two shisa lion-dog statues—symbols of good luck on the islands—and rests on a base of traditional white Okinawan mortar. Its distinctive red, white, and blue stylized logo of the switch from right-to-left-hand driving has come to feature prominently on the island’s road signs and souvenirs. Indeed, on an island with no shortage of historical landmarks, the 730 Monument enjoys continued popularity with both foreign and domestic visitors to the archipelago.

The switch to left-hand drive was not without hiccups. “Chaos and fender-benders,” is how Ishigaki native Yu Hirachi recounts her parents’ experience in the immediate aftermath of the traffic switch in 1978. Indeed, contemporary newspaper reports observed a number of accidents in Okinawa attributable to the switch, despite the best efforts of local officials.

But the 730 Monument reflects something deeper than just a change in traffic direction; it represents the last step of Okinawa’s repatriation to Japan.

That return to Japan was not a simple task. Prior to 1972, Ms. Hirachi notes the islands issued their own postage stamps, and passports were required for native Okinawans to travel to the main islands of Japan; issues that had to be addressed in rejoining the rest of the country. Strict quarantines were also observed for those in Japan traveling to and from the islands.

At a busy junction in Ishigaki’s town center, the monument is now maintained by student volunteers from nearby schools who gather each year ahead of July 30. Tourists still stop by in droves, often resting in the shade of palm trees while enjoying a cold glass of freshly pressed sugarcane juice from nearby vendors. While the 730 Monument pays tribute to a quirky moment in broader Japanese history, for island residents it serves as an important reminder of Okinawa’s symbolic return to Japan.

Each one is unique, though they share a common locale.

Not far beyond the flashy facades of the Las Vegas Strip, right above the line that separates Clark and Lincoln counties, are a host of hidden treasures. Five of the most beautiful but relatively under-the-radar state parks in America are located in this stretch of Nevada, each with its own pristine landscape and unique character.

Inside these extraordinary parklands, visitors can find fishing, canyoning, trail-running, hiking, exploring, boating, and some of the most picturesque camping spots in the continental U.S– not to mention superb mountain biking trails located just beyond the parks themselves. For the history buffs venturing to Lincoln County, there's also Elgin Schoolhouse Historic State Park: the site of a preserved one-room schoolhouse that operated from 1922 through 1967.

All together, these parks are a testament to the fact that the Silver State’s shiniest treasure has never been its manufactured glitz, but rather the natural beauty that runs, like a vein, right through it.

Lincoln County was formally established in 1866, two years after Nevada was admitted into the Union—and until 1909, when Clark County was formed—Lincoln County included Las Vegas. About two decades after the county lines were redrawn, two major events occurred that would transform this area. The first was in 1928, when plans for Hoover Dam (then called Boulder Dam) were authorized by Congress. The dam was set to be the largest single concrete construction project in American history, and thousands of laborers picked up and made their way to the worksite.

The second event came in 1933, not long after construction kicked off on the dam. FDR’s New Deal had yielded a job-creating initiative known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC was a 300,000-person workforce composed primarily of workers who hadn’t been trained in any kind of particular trade, but who were able-bodied and in need of jobs. The dam project had kicked off a huge amount of interest in southern Nevada, and the state’s senators seized the opportunity to develop that portion of the state. Recognizing the area’s unusual concentration of natural wonders, the state's government directed resources (also courtesy of the New Deal) toward establishing its first state parks.

Today, the parks continue to represent Nevada’s commitment to its incredible landscape. Lincoln County’s state parks aren’t the car-clogged, tourist-flocked places of postcards’ past. They are something else: undisturbed, under-the-radar, and utterly breathtaking slices of nature, and all a relatively short drive from Las Vegas.

Founded on lands donated in 1926 by a rancher named James Ryan (who purchased it from its 1873 settlers, Samuel and Hannah Kershaw), Kershaw-Ryan State Park is the closest of these great escapes to central Vegas. The first thing you’ll notice as you arrive is something you feel rather than see: a drop in temperature of about 10 to 15 degrees. After that, the lush greenery, meticulously manicured lawns, or any of the various species of birds found here might capture your attention. It’s a breathtaking spot in which you’ll find two seemingly contradictory ends of a spectrum—lush gardens and craggy desert terrain—in a single mid-desert locale. The natural spring wading pool is a true oasis, tucked into a garden-orchard filled with fruit trees.

About 25 minutes down the road from Kershaw-Ryan is Cathedral Gorge, once known as Cathedral Gulch (named for it's Cathedral-like spires), where the CCC built a stone water tower, restroom, and Miller's Point Overlook, which features a gazebo and a magnificent view of what's below. The remains of these CCC structures exist in each of Lincoln County's parks and elsewhere in Nevada, but Cathedral Gorge may be the best place to see their distinctive stone masonry.

The gorge itself is a geologic preserve of eroded bentonite clay, which has formed a cinematic playground in the form of narrow canyons and “caves” (or really, steep canyons that don’t get hit directly with sunlight). One short hiking trail winds toward a cemetery that’s been there since the 19th century. Another ends with a steel staircase leading to a panoramic view of the gorge. And then there’s the Moon Caves trail, which could serve as a location for a sci-fi film, and wouldn’t be out of place in a Salvador Dalí painting. Rocks appear to jut straight into the stratosphere, extending upward and outward in a range of seemingly never-ending waves.

Another 1.5 hours past Cathedral Gorge is the third of the three parks established by Nevada in 1935: Beaver Dam State Park. At 2,182 acres, it’s the largest of the five. Settled by migrants en-route to California, the remains of a family ranch can still be seen at the northern end of the park, including a one-room schoolhouse, a homestead, and a blacksmith shop. In some areas, the park reaches an elevation of over 5,000 feet. Visitors will encounter desert flora in the lower parts, and green ponderosa pines and juniper trees in higher spots.

Beaver Dam shares a few things in common with Spring Valley State Park, established in 1969 and located just an hour north of Kershaw-Ryan. Like Lincoln County’s other state parks, Spring Valley offers outdoor amenities and structures that offer a glimpse into American history. Ruins of stone cabins built by Mormon settlers can be found here, and one of the original 19th-century ranches, the Millet, is still used today as the park’s headquarters. Additionally, the extraordinary rock outcropping in the middle of Spring Valley (now known as George Washington Rock) was supposedly used as a lookout over the valley by the park’s original inhabitants, back in 5500 BC.

But Spring Valley’s main attraction is the Eagle Valley Reservoir, a pristine body of water stocked with rainbow, tiger, and brown trout and framed by massive rock formations. It offers some of the most scenic fishing in the western United States.

Finally, there’s Echo Canyon, the baby of the group. Established in 1970, it’s just half an hour from Spring Valley and encompasses about 1,800 acres of parkland. The canyon is surrounded on two sides by a formation that leads down into a reservoir built by Mormon settlers in 1864. But like plenty of other spaces “settled” by American pioneers, the park’s human history begins much earlier than the 19th century. Ancient artifacts indicate that the area was inhabited by the Fremont people over 1,000 years ago.

Lincoln County’s five state parks share a common history and an abundance of natural beauty, but each one has its own distinct features and character. All of them are just a short trip from Las Vegas. Funny, then, that so many people describe Vegas as a desert oasis. Little do they know, the real deal is just a detour away.

The worms, all female, thawed out and started eating.

Thirty thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries, a ground squirrel burrowed out a spot for itself, about 10 inches in diameter at its widest, where it brought back seeds and other grassy and fruited plants to nibble on. The place where the squirrel chose to make its burrow is now known as Siberia, and the burrow is close to 100 feet below the surface and in a layer of permafrost.

The squirrel, of course, is long gone. But tiny roundworms, a type of nematode, that also made their home there have lasted those tens of thousands of years, frozen and immobile. Now, though, scientists in Russia have revived them, making these worms—all of them female worms—the first multicellular organisms to have survived being frozen in Arctic permafrost.

The permafrost layer of the polar parts of the world contains all sorts of tiny creatures, including bacteria, algae, yeasts, and amoebas, as well as moss spores and seeds. After spending thousands of years in deep freeze, these bits of life are thawing out, as the poles heat up and the permafrost softens. Previously, scientists found that a giant virus that they named Pithovirus was still viable after 30,000 years.

In a new paper, published in Doklody Biological Sciences, the scientists describe how they analyzed 300 samples of permafrost. Of those, only two samples had viable nematodes in them. One came from the squirrel burrow; another came from a different permafrost deposit, part of a core drilling near the Alazeya River. That sample was about 42,000 years old.

The samples contained two different types of roundworms, Panagrolaimus detritophagus and Plectus parvus. The scientists let them thaw out, and once they had, the worms seemed ready to go on with their lives, eating and moving, which is about the extent of what ringworms do with themselves.

If defrosting tiny creatures that lived tens of thousands of years ago sounds to you like the start of a horror movie, it may be reassuring to know that these two can both be found in places other than Siberian permafrost and that they’re not the type of ringworms that make life miserable for humans. In the end, what they’ve inadvertently accomplished is remarkable. As a species, humans definitely do not have the ability or the inclination to spend 30,000 years in deep freeze. Just imagine what it would be like to succumb to the cold, then wake up 30,000 or 40,000 years later and go on with your life as if nothing had happened.

They're few and far between.

Humans have a way of leaving fingerprints everywhere, even in places we never physically touch. This is perhaps especially true in the oceans. Currents carry scraps of our trash far, far from our shores. Plastics are regularly lodged in remote reefs, or even drift down to the deepest corners of the Mariana Trench, or wind up along the Antarctic Peninsula. Bags, bottles, lines, and other synthetic materials break down into impossibly small fragments that wander and roam.

But the Earth’s oceans are vast, and a team of researchers recently set out to map what's left of the unsullied seas.

In a recent paper in Current Biology, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, University of Queensland, and other institutions concluded that only 13.2 percent of the world’s waters count as marine wilderness (that is, places relatively unscathed by human influence).

To pinpoint these spots, researchers considered the impact of 15 different human-driven factors—from runoff to fishing—on marine environments, and then identified regions that fall into the bottom 10 percent of impact from these categories. (When they conducted another analysis that included four variables related to climate change, there was basically nothing left.) For the most part, the wildest spaces cluster where one might expect them—in the Arctic and Antarctic, or scattered around the South Pacific. But a few did crop up not too far from land. For instance, some refuges freckle the Gulf of Mexico.

These areas matter, the researchers write, because they’re preciously biodiverse. On average, the wilderness areas had 31 percent greater species richness than more-impacted areas. They also tend to be refuges for species found nowhere else. One example is the kelp-blanketed waters off the rocky Desventuradas Islands, more than 500 miles from the coast of Chile, the only known habitat of Juan Fernández fur seals (Arctocephalus philippii), once thought to be extinct.

But these refuges are hardly safe. Lead author Kendall R. Jones, a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland, told Earther that many conservation policies focus on places that are already imperiled, rather than buoying and preserving still-vibrant sites like these. “We are arguing that while that [protecting regions in danger] is very important, you need to also balance that by trying to save places that are still wilderness and still acting and functioning as they once were,” Jones said.

The authors found that less than 5 percent of the surviving marine wilderness areas currently fall inside protected areas. As Earther reported, that’s partly due to the fact that many of them are in the vast reaches of ocean outside the jurisdiction of any country—a scenario that the United Nations General Assembly examined last winter, when it kicked off a two-year process for negotiating a treaty that would allow for the creation of protected areas on the high seas.

Meanwhile, Jones and his collaborators call for more attention to marine wilderness, and highlight what would be lost if it vanishes. “The many environmental values of wilderness are very unlikely to be restored,” the researchers write. Once gone, they’re gone.

Answers included ghostly encounters, unforgettable hikes, and Bing Crosby.

Nevadans possess a unique sense of pride in the state they call home. Some have lived there for generations, while others are recent transplants (it's one of the fastest growing states in the U.S.). Speak to any one of them and it will soon become clear that despite its size, the Silver State's greatest champions are those who comprise its smaller, close-knit communities.

We wanted to hear about the Nevada history that you can't find online or in books, so we turned to some of the folks behind the state's most storied institutions, asking them to share with us local legends, personal anecdotes, and phenomenal experiences that left them thinking "only in Nevada..." Conversation is currency in these towns, and stories are more precious than souvenirs.

From Reno to Ely and from Tonapah to Elko, our sources shared stories that paint a colorful picture of a state known for its desert hues. Here are some of our favorites.

Tonopah

When we first got to Tonopah and I was in the lobby of the hotel, an old turquoise miner named Dean was talking to me and said, “I’ve never believed in ghosts until I sat in this lobby right at this bar. One of my best friends, an old miner, had gotten a room on the fifth floor and was coming down to me for drinks.” Dean’s friend came out of the elevator and looked stark white. He didn’t even speak to Dean at first; he went straight to the bar and ordered a whiskey.

Dean’s friend said, “I rode down the elevator with a woman. I was talking to her, and she was real as can be. But when I turned to hit an elevator button and turned back around, she was gone.”

I’ve been in that hotel alone, and when we first bought it, I would find pearls whenever I was cleaning up. And it was so weird, because I would always find them out of place. I’d find them in strange places, like beds, like someone had placed them there.

We had a wine tasting and we’d gotten an industrial vacuum and cleaned the whole place up. I was sure the whole place was clean. And when we opened the wine table, there was a pearl right there. —Nancy Cline, co-owner, Mizpah Hotel

Ely

Our nighttime skies are just absolutely amazing. I’m born and raised here. I see the Milky Way every night. I didn’t realize that that’s not the standard for everybody. They had an astronomy festival here one year. My youngest son had just finished a soccer game. I wanted to go the astronomy festival, and he was being grouchy because he was tired. I said, “We’ve been doing what you’ve wanted to do all day, so it’s my turn now.” He fell asleep in the car, and when we got there, the Milky Way was right over the top of our truck. He jumped out, and said, “Oh my God, mom, that is so cool.” And I said, “See, I told you!” Even for me, it was cool, and I see it all the time. —Meg Rhodes, Events Planning Specialist, White Pine County Tourism

Virginia City

Bonanza made Virginia City famous and people from all over Europe would come visit because of the show. I met all the Cartwrights from Bonanza. I sat on Lorne Greene’s lap when I was 11; I’m 58 now. Michael Landon parked in front of our house.—Connie Carlson, Owner, Silver Queen Hotel

Elko

We had a very well-known guy who used to come to Elko: it was Bing Crosby. And this was in his heyday of movie-making and singing. I don’t know how he became aware of northeastern Nevada or Elko county, but he had several working cattle ranches up here. This was mostly through the 1940s and early 1950s.

He would bring his family up here to spend the summer, and his three older boys were involved in 4H and that kind of stuff. When he was in Hollywood, Bing’s contract required him to wear a toupee, which makes me look differently at every picture I see of him now. He was very thin of hair, and when he was up here, he did not wear his toupee, and he was just regarded as anybody else. People didn’t fuss and fawn over him. They didn’t follow him around. There were no Bing groupies after him for autographs.

He was very Catholic, and there was a small Catholic church at that time, and he would just slip into the back row and would join in at church services and of course everyone recognized his voice.

Here's another story: I run the kids’ programs for [the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering] and have for 16 years. The kids come in the week before, and we tour the exhibit– it’s a new exhibit every year. Then they get to stamp leather, and make a bookmark, then we have a show-and-tell of saddles and bridles and hot irons and stuff.

It’s a mix of kids, and right now this is primarily a mining community. So we had this one little boy, and they were describing some hand-stamped boots. They were supposed to tell us or write down what they saw in these boots. The top was blue with stars. And this little kid who could barely speak English, says: “I see a beautiful midnight blue sky with stars coming down from the heavens.” And I thought, “Oh! You are a poet and you don’t even know it!” He was just enthralled with all of it.

As I’ve said, we’re primarily a mining region (this is the largest gold-mining region in the United States; third in the world) and most of these kids are town kids that are not exposed to the cowboy and ranching world. So it gives them the opportunity to be a tourist in their own backyards. —Jan Petersen , Cowboy Arts and Gear Museum director

Austin

This is one of the only places in Nevada you can see an F-16. A week after I bought the bar, I saw an F-16, and an F-18 chasing the F-16. I saw the top of the F-16 once it went down into the valley. They were playing war games.

They’re always in the Smoky Valley, to stay off radar. We see them over here a lot, but that’s the only time I’ve seen the top of one. It went over my head first, then down into the valley a bit. The pilot saw me, and he wagged his wings a bit. Those pilots are pretty sharp. —Joe Veach, Owner, Lucky Spur Saloon, Austin, Nevada

McGill

We apparently have a ghost that haunts us. I don’t know if we want it out there that we have a ghost that inhabits our museum or not. But we have a routine for checking off stuff, you turn the lights out everywhere before you leave. Every month, these lights are on when you come in the morning that were shut off.

And we were like, “Ok, maybe someone has a key we’re unaware of.” So we changed the locks, and we have an alarm code now.

Sometimes it’s the 13th, sometimes it’s the 14th, sometimes it’s the 15th. We have a research room; sometimes the lights are on in the research room, and sometimes the lights are on in the medical cabinet. He’s a pretty picky ghost, so I don’t know what he — or she — is looking for, but they’re always here in one of those two rooms. We consider it a ghost because we have video, alarms, and keys, and we would know if anyone was coming in here. But it might be a poltergeist, you know, one of those mischievous little devils.

I’ve been on the board here for two years now, and our ghost has been here longer than that because everyone knew about it when I came on. We try to keep everybody in the loop because, you know, you don’t want to be the only crazy person around who thinks things are being moved. —Barbara Jirak, McGill Drug Store Museum

Eureka

I have great memories at the Opera House. I think one of the best is that for the last 20-something years, I’ve stamped that Highway 50 Survival Guide. I deal with tourism on Highway 50, and it’s great to interact with people who come through and ask for a stamp. It brings in every kind of person. I’ve seen everything, from guys running through on horses, to guys in wagons, to guys pushing cars and riding motorcycles, to guys hiking. We get [tourists from around the world] walking in and they get excited taking a picture of you stamping their book. Just every kind of person walking through that door. —Patty Peek, Manager, Eureka Opera House

Hawthorne

The noon whistle. Every day at noon it goes off so everyone knows it’s 12 o’clock. They used to used to use it if there was a fire or emergency and they tested it every day at noon. It was attached to the fire station that was there at the time. We have a new station in a different location, but they left that bell there because everybody missed it. Depending on what part of the country they’re from, some people might think it’s a tornado warning the first time they hear it.

A joke at my church is that we would always tell visiting pastors that at 12 o’clock the whistle goes off, and there’s a door under the pulpit that opens up. In other words, you’re supposed to be done by noon. —Wanda Millsap, Hawthorne Ordnance Museum executive officer

Fallon

We have the last surviving house out of the Rawhide mine. The mining company donated it to Churchill County. We bought it in 1995 and brought it to our property.

It was owned by Anna Elleser. She had several husbands, and loved the mining industry. She raised her kids up in the hills at the Rawhide mine. She did everything up at the mine. The Rawhide mine closed in the 1930s or 1940s; even after the town was abandoned, she refused to move. When she was really old, her family moved her from Rawhide to an assisted-living home. They say she stayed one day, and then walked all the way back to the mine. She lived in that house until the day she died.

All our customers who’ve stayed in the house have said that they’ve seen her. She’s still there, you can feel her. She’s not offensive or anything, she just wants to stay there. —Fredda Stevenson, Co-owner, Middlegate Station

Reno

On a cold Nevada morning in late 1975, I scrambled with my climbing partner Paul Bancroft up the last thousand feet in a deep granite recess between two buttresses of Mt. Limbo, a peak in northern Nevada. I hesitated before the shadowed fissure that split the highest blocks, but with a makeshift belay from Paul that included his belt, I clambered up the final pinnacle. It was my first ascent of a desert peak, and although I had climbed higher mountains to the south in the Sierra, this architectonic summit was infinitely more seductive. It was as if I had climbed up the spire of a cathedral to look outward upon the naked design of the planet. The hyper aridity of the atmosphere allowed my gaze to encompass both the rim of the Great Basin, formed by the Sierra Nevada above Lake Tahoe, and the Black Rock playa eighty miles to its north, an enormous dry lake bed the alkali center of which has been called the only absolute desert in North America. Turning three hundred and sixty degrees, I took in a thousand square miles of deeply corrugated landscape within the Basin, the last physiographic province in the United States to be discovered and its most desolate.

I found myself watching my mind map the terrain in both space and time—and that was the wonder, how the terrain became mental territory. I could see the process of my converting space into place as I was doing it, and knew I wasn’t just imposing a cultural grid upon a bird’s-eye viewscape, but performing a deeper cognitive act, one rooted in the evolution of our species and possessed of a fundamental emotional resonance. I was in a state of contemplation allied to worship. Ever since then, whether in my home range of the Sierra Nevada or as far away as the Himalaya and the Antarctic, my hope when ascending a peak has been to experience again that concatenation of landscape and mind. —Bill Fox, Director, Center for Art + Development, Nevada Museum of Art

Midas

One of the most interesting conversations I’ve had was with a guy this week. I never got where his home base is, but this was his fifth trip across the U.S. on a bicycle. And he figures he’s traveled over 20,000 miles on this one bicycle in the last ten years. He actually got a ride from this guy in town we call “Miner Mike” who was in Colorado a couple weeks ago. Miner Mike was there and met this guy at an Ace Hardware store, and this guy on the bike said “I’m heading to Washington now,” and Mike wanted someone to ride with him so he gave him a ride here. He’s been doing some work for Mike this past week-and-a half. They took off yesterday to Reno and that’s where Mike’s dropping him off so he can continue his pedal to Washington. He was very interesting.

He kind of reminded me of an old hippie. Wore a bandana. Got divorced from his wife and sold everything he had, put his kids through college, and basically went off the grid. He stops and does odd jobs here and there. Fishes creeks and streams for food. Cleared some brush for Miner Mike. Miner Mike has a way of picking people up and helping them out.

The bicycler has no particular agenda. He doesn’t know when he’s going, where he’s going, or why he’s going. He just goes.—Page Adkins, Owner, Midas Saloon and Dinner House

Every piece of flotsam has a story to tell.

Ah, the beach. Kids frolicking, gulls wheeling overhead, sand between your toes. The heat of the sun...the rumble of crashing waves...thousands of colorful plastic eggs strewn along the shore. A human foot with the shoe still on. An unidentifiable "globster," stinking up a beach in the Philippines. The sea is full of mysteries, and sometimes it tosses them at us. Now we want to hear about all the puzzling treasures you've found there.

When I beachcomb, I mostly find cool rocks and shells. But the ocean is a churn of human and natural history, and over years of writing for Atlas Obscura, I've realized that the tideline is a prime place for strange meetings. Last year, Holger Spreer and Nele Wree of Suderoog, Germany came across a waterproof digital camera washed up on the shore, and managed to use the footage they found on it to reunite the camera with its owner, a young boy from England. (Spreer and Wree have a whole museum of things they've found in this way, including balloons, fishing gear, and a high-heeled shoe.)

Many of the most intriguing finds span not only space, but time. Five million pieces of Lego fell off a cargo ship over 20 years ago, and eagle-eyed beachgoers are still picking them up. People find messages in bottles, and decades later, track down the people who wrote them. The sculptor Jo Atherton scavenges all her materials from the beaches of riverbanks of England—she's found everything from a 2,000-year-old intaglio to a 1970s cereal-box prize—and weaves them into time capsules of multi-century trash.

Such finds are bittersweet: they remind us that we've used the ocean as a dumping ground, but they can also feel intimate, providing brief glimpses of a life that took place long ago or far away.

Have you found a mysterious artifact from the past? A message in a bottle? An unidentifiable creature, or something that was beautifully changed by its time in the sea? If you've run into something unusual on the beach—old or new, funny or gruesome, natural or cultural—we want to hear about it. Share your treasures with us via the Google Form below, and send any images, if you have them, to cara@atlasobscura.com with the words “Beach Find” in the subject line. We'll post our favorites later on in the summer. Happy hunting!

Old advertisements that have become icons.

Sometimes when you ask the universe (or in this case, the internet) for a sign, you get over 500. At least, that's what happened when we asked Atlas Obscura readers to tell us about their favorite landmark signs.

In honor of Landmarks Week, on Monday we put out a call for love letters to iconic local signs and advertisements, and the response was overwhelming. Several signs received multiple shout outs, with well-known landmarks such as the White Stag sign in Portland, Oregon, and the Grain Belt Beer sign in Minneapolis, Minnesota, getting a lot of love in particular. There were also memorable entries such as the Crystal Preserves sign in New Orleans, which once pumped fake steam out of its neon cauldron, and Sacramento, California's "Jugglin' Joe" sign, which lights up to animate an ice cream scoop getting thrown over the top of a soda jerk.

Our readers submitted hundreds of beloved signs, and unfortunately we could not feature them all, but a selection of our favorites follows.

The Tupelo Arrow

Tupelo, Mississippi

“The neon arrow sign stands at the busiest intersection in Tupelo, Mississippi (known as Crosstown) and points toward the downtown business district. It was erected sometime before 1954. It commemorates February 7, 1934, the day Tupelo became the first city to receive electrical service from one of the signature New Deal programs: the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). To celebrate this achievement, FDR and his wife Eleanor visited Tupelo on November 18, 1934, and addressed one of the single largest event crowds in Mississippi history. The sign has long stood as an insignia of Tupelo and its place as ‘First TVA City.’ — John Haynes, Alexandria, Virginia

First National Bank Sign

St. Paul, Minnesota

“In my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota, [there is] the First National Bank '1st' red blinking neon, and the red neon Schmidt Brewery sign, now atop a artists condo collective.” — Jacqui Shoholm, Alexandria, Virginia

Grain Belt Beer Sign

Minneapolis, Minnesota

“There's a Grain Belt beer neon sign in downtown Minneapolis. It was put up in 1941, went dark around the late 70s, and was re-lit in 1989, then was sporadically lit for a number of years while the fate of the Grain Belt Brewery was in doubt. It was re-lit again at the end of 2017.” — Kathy Brown, Minneapolis, Minnesota

“My company made a smaller version of the sign as part of a fundraiser to relight the original.” — Dave Benson, Aurora, Ohio

Mr. Boh Sign

Baltimore, Maryland

“The one-eyed man with a mustache is the representation for National Bohemian Beer, commonly referred to as 'Natty Boh.'” — Tina Simmons, Laurel, Maryland

Maxwell House Coffee Sign

Jacksonville, Florida

“I adore the Maxwell House Coffee Company sign in Jacksonville, Florida. It is from 1955 and is around 95 feet tall. The coffee cup has a dripping drop coming from it. When it is lit, it gives the city a nice glowing reflection in the downtown area. It is quite a stunning example of illuminated and automated signage. It is an essential visual landmark in Jacksonville.” — Sarah Nan, Jacksonville, Florida

Cream City Sign

Cookeville, Tennessee

“It's a wonderful neon sign that was restored within the past 10-15 years to its former glory. It sits on top of Cream City ice cream parlor in the historic downtown. I don't know much of its history, only that it's been around since the '50s at least and is a popular attraction.” — Mallory Rose, Atlanta, Georgia

Alico Sign

Waco, Texas

“The Alico sign on top of Waco’s only skyscraper.” — Brandon Gilliam, Waco, Texas

Anheuser-Busch Sign

Newark, New Jersey

“The Anheuser-Busch sign at the Newark Airport. We used to live in New Jersey and flew in and out of the Newark Airport. This sign seemed to mark the spot when arriving or departing.” — Larayne J. Dallas, Austin, Texas

"At my earliest age, over 60 years ago, I’d see that sign as we drove to my grandparents home in Jersey City. I’d know I was near their home when I’d see it." — Jeff Guide, Hot Springs Arkansas

Coca-Cola Sign

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

“The Coca-Cola sign had been atop a building in the heart of downtown Baton Rouge and remained unlit for many years. A massive restoration was completed only to be undone by the owner of the building who claimed the arts council that restored it had no rights to it. He covered it with a tarp for over a year while it was argued over. It finally was resolved after 15 months of being covered for a grand reveal. It now graces the evening crowds of downtown Baton Rouge along with multiple building renovations that have revived a long forgotten area.” — Leisa Humble, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Crystal Preserves Sign

New Orleans, Louisiana

"The Crystal Preserves sign on the old Baumer Foods factory in New Orleans, Louisiana, has been a local landmark since it was built in 1942. The left side of the sign features a green background with the words ‘Crystal Preserves’ in white cursive overlaid with green and red neon lights. The right side of the sign has a cutout of a man in an apron and chef's hat stirring a very large pot. The reason the sign was so popular is that the factory installed their exhaust vent right behind the sign to make it look like steam was rising from a gigantic pot full of hot food. Furthermore, the factory and sign were directly adjacent to the interstate so thousands of people drove past it every day on their commute to and from work. The factory and the sign were both functional until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, during which the factory and sign both suffered severe damage. The factory closed (they reopened at another location in the suburbs where they continue to make Crystal Hot Sauce), but the building was purchased and renovated into apartments. Fortunately the new owners understood how beloved the sign was so they replaced the damaged sign with a new, more hurricane-proof, version that looks almost identical to the original (although they didn't replace the old neon ‘Baumer Foods’ sign that used to be attached to the top of it). The new owners supposedly even left a hole behind the pot that can be filled with dry ice to make the pot steam again on special occasions." — Rebecca Williams, New Orleans, Louisiana

Western Auto Sign

Kansas City, Missouri

“The building itself, originally a Coca-Cola office structure built in 1915, is on the National Register of Historic Places and is uniquely shaped, designed around a curved railroad service track. It has been converted to upscale condominiums in recent years. As of summer 2018, the sign is being converted from incandescent and neon to LED lighting for reliability and ease of maintenance.” — Mark Llewellyn, Bay Area, California

“[The sign] sits on top of an iconic building, shaped like 'half a cake' as my mother always said. She worked there for over 30 years so it was always a landmark for us. The building has been converted to lofts and the residents have recently financed a renovation and relighting of the sign. I hope it's done so that the arrow moves as it used to.” — Jamie Hunnicutt, Columbia, Missouri

“When I moved to Kansas City from the New York City area in 2015, I expected some outdated cowtown. It's totally not, but this huge Western Auto sign definitely felt like something from days gone by. I love it.” — Chris Kenny, Leawood, Kansas

Jugglin’ Joe Sign

Sacramento, California

— Submitted by Vanessa Wiseman, Sacramento, California

Tower Records Sign

Sacramento, California

“This much-loved neon sign depicts teens dancing on top of a record, with the dancers' legs moving back and forth and music bars flashing. It was designed for Clayton and Russ Solomon, founder of legendary Tower Records (named after this original store site). When Russ was a teen, he worked at his parents’ drug store sweeping floors, stocking shelves, serving sodas, and selling used records on a table in the back. Neon signs fell out of favor by the 1970s and animated signs were even outlawed per Sacramento city ordinance. Luckily, the ‘Dancing Kids’ and a few others were excepted from this rule. There was even a time when this sign was out of commission and stored on the roof, but now it shines again, delighting all who pass.” — Gretchen Steinberg, Sacramento, California

Schrafft’s Sign

Charlestown, Massachusetts

“I've always had a soft spot for the Schrafft's Sign. A friend and I would drive past it frequently and always loved the bright pink sign glowing on the side of the building. We were even more pleased to learn that it was a sign for a candy company. It made us love it even more.” — Sarah, Boston, Massachusetts

Shell Oil Company "Spectacular" Sign

Cambridge, Massachusetts

“The Shell Oil Company ‘Spectacular’ sign was built in 1933 by Donnelly Electric Manufacturing Company. In 1944, it was moved to its present location from the Shell Company building on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It is at its best at night, when one can see the light progression.” — Catherine Hammond, Cambridge, Massachusetts

PSFS Sign

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“The first modern skyscraper built in the United States, and the first in the International Style. The sign is itself essential to the composition and balance of the building's design.” — Timothy Gierschick II, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“When I was little, I could see the sign from my bedroom in the Wynnefield neighborhood of the city. Originally the headquarters for the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, the art deco style building has been converted into a Loews Hotel.” — Michael Sklar, Jupiter, Florida

Divine Lorraine Hotel Sign

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

"After 40 years of darkness, the Divine Lorraine Hotel marquee was restored to its iconic neon red brilliance in November 2016, marking a shining milestone in the building's restoration and redevelopment. Opened in 1893 as the Lorraine Apartments, the luxurious Victorian building was converted into the Lorraine Hotel in 1900. In 1948, it was purchased by Father Divine, leader of the International Peace Mission Movement, under whose leadership the hotel gained its current name and grew to prominence as the first fully integrated hotel in Philadelphia, if not the country. The hotel closed in 1999. Development efforts began in earnest in 2012 under Eric Blumenfeld. The sign certainly took on its current form under Father Divine's ownership, but it is possible that he added only 'Divine' to a preexisting sign." — Robert Huber, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Hotel Baxter Sign

Bozeman, Montana

“The Hotel Baxter sign is a local icon. It punctuates the modest yet hip downtown Main Street, and welcomes skiers, celebrities, and locals alike.” — Mia White, Bozeman, Montana

GE Sign

Schenectady, New York

“The script letters of downtown Schenectady’s GE sign can be seen from all over town, day or night, all year round. It tells a familiar Rust Belt story. It’s a reminder of when General Electric used to employ 30,000 people in town, when Schenectady was called ‘the city that lights and hauls the world.’ And of course, it doesn’t hurt that it’s beautiful.” — Emily Wilkerson, Brooklyn, New York

“The enormous General Electric sign in my hometown of Schenectady, New York, has been an awesome local landmark since 1926. It's made up of 1,399 light bulbs, usually plain white, but they sometimes get switched out for red, white, and blue, or red, white, and green to coincide with the annual holiday parade. The building the sign tops is no longer the GE headquarters, but it's an impressive reminder of the original presence of GE in Schenectady. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling every time I visit my hometown and spot the sign.” — Anna Hendrick, Brooklyn, New York

Silvercup Studios Sign

Queens, New York

“As a kid growing up in Elmhurst and Flushing, Queens, I rode the No. 7 subway a lot. The trains make a slow, screeching turn on the elevated tracks around the building. I was fascinated by the sign’s bright, red glow emerging from the dark as a beacon showing my way home at night.” — Andrew Chao, Danville, California

Allerton Tip Top Tap Sign

Chicago, Illinois

“The Tip Top Tap sign on the Warwick Allerton Hotel in Chicago. A cocktail lounge, Tip Top Tap, opened on the top of the Allerton Hotel, a residential club hotel established in the 1920s. Located 23 floors above the Magnificent Mile, the sign embodies old-school Chicago swank and splendor in the midst of contemporary buildings.” — Lindsey Melnyk, Chicago, Illinois

Dispatch Sign

Columbus, Ohio

“The giant Columbus Dispatch sign on 3rd Street, in downtown Columbus, is one of my favorite sights in the city. For years it has loomed over the Ohio Statehouse, like a physical manifestation of journalism's duty to watch over the government. A few years ago the Dispatch downsized and moved its offices around the corner to a smaller building on Broad Street, but the famous sign remains.” — Jesse Bethea, Columbus, Ohio

Portland White Stag Sign

Portland, Oregon

"The [former] ‘Made in Oregon’ sign in Portland used to be the White Stag sign for the clothing company in the building. When Bill Naito bought the building it became Norcrest China, where I and many high schoolers got our first jobs. We moved in by transferring inventory by hand truck from one block away." — Mark Epp, Portland, Oregon

“The White Stag sign started out as an advertisement for White Satin Sugar, then was converted to advertising White Stag Sportswear in the 1950s. It now reads ‘Portland, Oregon.’ The deer's nose is lit red at Christmas.” — Joel Birkeland, Hillsboro, Oregon

The Travelers Sign

Des Moines, Iowa

“The Travelers Insurance sign in Des Moines lights up the downtown. It was built in 1963. Travelers has since moved out of the building, but the sign remains lit every night.” — Nate Byro, Des Moines, Iowa

Sauer's Vanilla Sign

Richmond, Virginia*

“An animated sign illuminated with incandescent bulbs.” — Sarah Montgomery, Richmond, Virginia

Add Bardhal Oil Sign

Seattle, Washington

“Bardhal is old school Ballard. Started by a Norwegian immigrant in the traditional Scandinavian neighborhood in the 1930s. The sign has been there since my mother was a child in the 1950s. The city has changed so much. It has always been a new city and the lack of physical city history makes those landmarks that are still around so much more important. It feels almost like a mistake that the sign is still there, but gives Seattleites a connection to remnants of an often forgotten and overlooked history of industrial and working class Seattle.” — Alma Lemberg, Brooklyn, New York

Elephant Super Car Wash Sign

Seattle, Washington

“Longtime landmark in central Seattle, a few blocks from Seattle's iconic Space Needle.” — Elliott Bronstein, Seattle, Washington

Farine Five Roses Sign

Montreal, Canada

“I love this sign because it represents the essence of Montreal's bilingual history. The name of the company is English and because it is a legal name, it was not translated to French. ‘Farine’ is the French word for flour, and is translated to French from the English. This sign is a symbol of both the historical problems of the French majority being dominated by the English minority, but also of the symbiotic relationship between French and English in Montreal. This is what is called ‘Franglais’ by many.” — Michael Bailey, Los Angeles, California

Valdivieso Sign

Santiago, Chile

"One of the most emblematic signs in Santiago, it was put up by the wine brand and vineyard Valdivieso, between 1954-55. Officially, it has been considered a national monument since 2010. However, in 2017 there was a controversy related to a change in the phrase of the sign, which went from ‘Y hoy, por qué no?’ (‘And today, why not?’) to ‘Desde Siempre’ (‘Since always’). — José Miguel Álvarez, Santiago, Chile

Tío Pepe Sign

Madrid, Spain

“Tío Pepe is an Andalusian wine sign which, just like Osborne's bull, was pardoned because its original design when a Spanish law forbade signs over houses and beside roads.” — Luis Morato, Madrid, Spain

Freia Clock

Oslo, Norway

“The Freia clock on Oslo's main street, Karl Johans Gate, facing the royal palace, was a futuristic sensation when its 1,500 lamps first brightened the gaslit city in 1909, and it is the classic landmark of today's car-free downtown Oslo.” — Alex Snyder, Norway

Why Go Bald Sign

Dublin, Ireland

“The ‘Why Go Bald?’ neon sign was recently restored to working condition.” — Neil Dorgan, Dublin, Ireland

Nylex Plastics Clock

Melbourne, Australia

"It's ugly, was broken for a number of years and sits atop some drab concrete grain storage silos. Yet it has become iconic because it's close to the Melbourne Cricket Ground and tennis center where the country's biggest sporting events are held. It was built when the inner city area was an industrial zone but the area has been totally gentrified around it. All it does is show the time and temperature but it was there so long it became a landmark." — Robert Fenner, Hong Kong

Little Audrey the Skipping Girl Sign

Melbourne, Australia

“I adore the Skipping Girl in Melbourne. She is called Little Audrey. I don't know much else about her except that at night her neon lights make her appear to be skipping. Also, she isn't the original skipping girl. When removed in the '60s, people had an absolute cow. They had to make a new one. She is an icon.” — Elizabeth Cornell, Melbourne, Australia

“The Skipping Girl is a sign left over from a vinegar company and has become a Melbourne icon. She is made of metal and has a skipping rope which lights up at night, flicking around to give the appearance that she is actually skipping, as well as warm lights all over. While she was taken down at one point, mass outcry ensured that she was restored and returned to a new location, not far from the old. The Skipping Girl is so well renowned she has a Wikipedia page and a number of Melbourne songs mention her, making her a cultural icon.” — Bella, Melbourne, Australia

To see more amazing signs submitted by our readers, or add your own, check out the thread over on our Facebook page!

Responses in this piece have been edited for length and clarity.

*Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Sauer’s Vanilla sign. It is located in Richmond, Virginia, not Richmond, North Carolina.