The Most Mysterious Place in Every State: the Western US

The geology in this part of the country is also extremely active, with volcanoes, fault lines, deserts, dramatic cliffs, and mountains. Some of the darkest night skies in the country are in the West, and the boom-and-bust history of mines, railroads, and military test ranges provide plenty of fodder for mysterious stories. Even without tales of the supernatural and unexplained, the abandoned structures, unexpected landscapes, and sheer drama of the Western states are enough to leave most visitors speechless.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the most mysterious places in the American West is that so many legends are based in fact. It’s well known that there’s a lost town near the Taft Tunnel in Idaho, and rumors about lost treasure in Oregon can be tied back to actual shipwrecks known to have sunk in the area. If you’re fascinated by UFO rumors, Indigenous stories, 19th-century frontier towns, and exploring quirky places where you’re unlikely to see too many other travelers, a trip through the most mysterious places in the West may be calling your name.

Photo: Zack Frank/Shutterstock

• Location: Garryowen, MT 59031
• How to visit: The Little Bighorn Battlefield National Historic Site is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with a $15 entry fee

The Little Bighorn Battlefield in Montana was the site of Custer’s Last Stand (also called the Battle of the Greasy Grass). The 1876 battle — fought between the US 7th Cavalry and a coalition of Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors — was one of the most significant and decisive Native American victories against US forces. It occurred at the height of US efforts to force Plains tribes onto reservations and followed growing resistance to the federal government taking traditional homelands. The victory became a powerful symbol of resistance, even as it led to harsher US military campaigns in the months that followed.

Haunting stories about the site trace back to that battle, with notable reports from a park ranger seeing a shadowy figure in 1986, and staff members waking up to unexplained banging in a historic on-site home. Reports of sightings are detailed and oft-repeated, though the origins can be hard to find. Regardless of whether you experience anything unexplained, it’s hard to visit the site and not feel the weight of the violence and death that took place on the site.

• Location: NF-300, Saltese, ID 59867
• How to visit: The tunnel is part of the 15-mile Route of the Hiawatha rail trail, open to bikers and hikers from May to September, with daily shuttles available to the start

The Taft Tunnel, also known as the St. Paul Pass Tunnel, is a 1.7-mile-long railroad passage beneath the Bitterroot Mountains. It was built by the Milwaukee Road railway line between 1907 and 1909 and was one of the costliest railroad projects of the era. The nearby town of Taft sprang up to support construction and quickly filled with railroad workers, saloons, brothels, and rampant lawlessness. Dozens died during the town’s short existence, which ended when it was burned in the 1910 fires known as the “Big Burn.”

Only recently have researchers and locals identified a likely location for the local cemetery, though the number and identities of those buried remain unknown. TripAdvisor reviews call the tunnel “creepy,” “eerie,” and not for kids, while visitors have described the darkness as “Imagine the darkest night ever. Then turn off the stars.”

Photo: Anthony Heflin/Shutterstock

• Location: WY-110, Devils Tower, Wyoming, 82714
• How to visit: Devils Tower is a national monument, with many hiking trails around the rock formation. Climbing the tower is possible for experienced rock climbers only.

Devils Tower is a massive monolith and a sacred site for many Indigenous tribes, central to numerous traditional stories. It rises 867 feet above the plains, formed from magma that cooled underground millions of years ago. The Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Crow, Arapaho, and other tribes know the site by many names, including Bear Lodge, Bear’s Tipi, and Tree Rock. In one Lakota legend, the tower’s vertical columns were formed by the scratches of a giant bear. The name “Devils Tower” comes from a misinterpretation of Indigenous words, but Native people didn’t associate it with anything evil.

Visitors often describe an otherworldly atmosphere and eerie feelings around Devils Tower — though that could be because it gained international attention as the site of a mysterious UFO encounter in the 1977 sci-fi film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

• Location: 333 E Wonderview Ave, Estes Park, CO 80517
• How to visit: Ghost tours can be booked online

If you’ve seen or read The Shining, you know the vibes of the property that inspired Stephen King: The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. The hotel itself is an anomaly in an otherwise picture-perfect mountain town adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park. It towers above downtown on a hill — cue the lightning and thunder when you look at it at night — and offers ghost tours and a historic pub where you can grab a drink. It’s a functioning hotel, so you can stay there, though you’ll have to book years in advance if you want to stay over Halloween. The hotel hosts an annual All Hallows Eve party that’s the talk of Colorado’s Front Range. (And yes, there’s a hedge maze.)

New unexplained experiences and photos are constantly reported, and TV shows ranging from the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures to NBC’s Dateline have investigated the hotel’s many legends.

Photo: Danita Delimont/Shutterstock

• Location: Scattered throughout Utah near Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, near Lake Powell, and near Capitol Reef National Park.
• How to visit: Base yourself in the southern Utah town of Kanab, pop into a visitor center in town or at one of the parks, and ask for specifics

Scattered across Utah’s sandstone mesas, the Moqui Marbles are iron-oxide-coated spheres ranging from marble-sized pellets to cannonball-like orbs. Scientists generally agree they were formed by groundwater carrying dissolved iron that cemented around tiny pieces of sandstone. But that still leaves quite a mystery, as the Moqui Marbles are in the desert, and scientists don’t know when groundwater levels would have been high enough to form them. They closely resemble structures on Mars called “blueberries,” found by the NASA Opportunity Rover in 2004, and it raises some questions: is there some unknown microbial processes shared between planets that could have formed both the Utah and Martian marbles?

The Marbles have long fueled stories of spiritual significance. According to Native American lore, the marbles are bead gifts from ancestral spirits left behind to comfort the living, guide them through hardship, and remind them they are not alone. Wandering among them, it’s easy to feel as if you’ve stumbled into a place where science and legend blur into something otherworldly.

• Location: Oswald West State Park, Arch Cape, OR 97102
• How to visit: Most of the mountain is in Oswald West State Park and has a $10 day use fee

Neahkahnie Mountain’s misty cliffs are more than a postcard-perfect Pacific Northwest scene — they’re the site of one of Oregon’s oldest unsolved mysteries. The mountain is tied to a legend of buried Spanish treasure, with cryptic stone markings that continue to lure treasure hunters. The crew that buried the treasure are sometimes said to come from the Manila galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos, which wrecked in Nehalem Bay in the late 1600s. Native Americans passed those stories to newer Spanish explorers in the 1800s.

No gold has ever been unearthed despite more than a century of searching. Yet the mystery continues, thanks to a cache of stones found near the mountain marked with odd lines, letters, and supposed symbols, that some believe are coded maps left by the crew. While there’s no evidence that the stones have anything to do with the legend, scholars still don’t know who engraved the stones or what the messages mean.

Photo: Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock

• Location: Mount Shasta, California
• How to visit: The town of Mount Shasta is about five hours north of San Francisco

The mystery of Mount Shasta in Northern California is tied to both natural phenomena and cultural history. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples including the Shasta, Modoc, and Wintu have regarded the mountain as sacred, associating it with powerful spirits. Today, some believe Mount Shasta sits above an ancient underground city called Telos, said to be inhabited by the Lemurians — ancient people who communicate through light — though they’re also sometimes described as lizard people. Though there’s no scientific data to support the theory, visitors report strange sightings and lights, weird cloud formations, and episodes of disorientation with unexplained losses of time. It’s also considered a vortex and a “doorway between dimensions.”

• Location: Kennicott, Chitina, AK, 99566
• How to visit: From the town of McCarthy (inside the national park), it’s a 15-minute drive to the Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. Anyone can visit the mine town, but to go in the mill, you’ll need to be on a tour with St. Elias Guides.

Alaska has plenty of creepy places to choose from, like the town of Port Chatham (supposedly abandoned due to Bigfoot attacks) and Gold Rush-era hotels in Skagway. But one of the most striking is the Kennecott Mine in the town of Kennicott (with an “I”), deep in the heart of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. It produced more than a billion pounds of copper between 1911 and 1938, but was abandoned basically overnight when the copper ran out and the miners left almost everything behind. Even without the town’s ghost stories, wandering the rickety 14-story mill building is inherently eerie. The town’s Erie Mine Building, on a desolate peak above the nearby mountains, is about as creepy as it gets.

Photo: Dan Schreiber/Shutterstock

• Location: 12315 Waddell Creek Rd SW, Olympia, WA 98512
• How to visit: The preserve is open 9 AM–5 PM daily, with several interpretive loops to view the mounds

The Mima Mounds are a mystery of the geological sort, inside the eponymous Mima Mounds Natural Area Preserve near Olympia. The preserve has hundreds of uniform, rounded mounds, each 3 to 7 feet tall and up to 40 feet wide. They look like tiny hills in an otherwise flat area. Estimates suggest there were about 900,000 mounds before much of the land was cleared for farming.

Despite extensive research, how they formed is unknown, with theories ranging from underground seismic activity to windblown sediments or unsusual freeze-thaw cycles. Scientists do know they were formed around 5,000 years ago, and were protected by Indigenous peoples through controlled burning. In 1841, an explorer theorized that they may be burial mounds, but no human remains have been found. The latest theory is that the mounds were formed by centuries of gophers and other burrowing mammals displacing dirt and pushing soil upward. But thanks to environmental and geological changes over time, it’s unlikely humans will ever know for sure what caused the formations.

• Location: 86-260 Farrington Hwy, Waianae, HI 96792
• How to visit: The trail to the cave begins near the Ka’ena Point State Park sign and is open to the public

Mākua Cave, also called Kāneana Cave, is in the cliffs on Oahu’s Wai‘anae coast and is the site of one of Hawaii’s most chilling and mysterious legends: the tale of the Sharkman, Nanaue. According to Hawaiian myth, Nanaue (the son of the shark god Kamohoali‘i), could shift between man and shark, with a hidden shark mouth on his back. He was said to live in the cave and lure unsuspecting travelers there, only to attack and eat them before retreating to the depths.

Local accounts describe the cave as having “psychic energy” and say the spirits of those lost are active within its walls. Reports range from unnerving chills and unexplained noises to sightings of non-human creatures roaming the cave. Though geologists agree the cave has a unique formation, there’s no evidence to support the legend. However, it continues to be considered one of the state’s most mysterious places.

Photo: Travel Nevada

• Location: 521 N Main St, Tonopah, Nevada 89049
• How to visit: Rooms start at around $85 and can be booked directly through the Clown Motel’s website, and the museum and cemetery are open to visitors

Dubbed “America’s Scariest Motel,” the Clown Motel in Tonopah is a 31-room fever dream packed with vintage clown dolls, garish murals, and alleged paranormal activity. It sits right next to the historic Old Tonopah Cemetery, where the town’s earliest residents are buried — several of whom met bizarre ends, like “dynamite mishap” or “ate library paste.”

The motel houses nearly 6,000 clown figurines and paintings, many sent by fans and paranormal enthusiasts from around the world (sometimes with handwritten letters claiming the dolls are haunted or cursed). Guests report flickering lights, cold spots, disembodied voices, and the feeling of being watched. Some say the clowns move on their own. There’s even a two-story clown cutout looming over the building, just in case you weren’t already unsettled.

Owner Vijay Mehar has taken the motel’s creepy reputation and turned it into a full-on attraction. He’s added rooms themed after horror movies like It and The Exorcist, as well as a “Clownvis Presley” room, which delivers exactly what it sounds like: a clown Elvis. For a good overview of the place, watch the Living for the Dead episode “Rainbows and Clowns,” where Roz Hernandez and the crew investigate what turned out to be one of the scariest nights of the entire season.