Fort Adams State Park
Ramparts, casemates, listening tunnels, harbor views, and military history make America’s largest coastal fortification a spatial puzzle rather than a single wall.
United States: places and wildlife — page 10
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Coggeshall Farm Museum
Heritage livestock, hearth cooking, tools, crops, and seasonal work interpret the lives of ordinary tenant farmers on a compact Bristol landscape.
Say’s Firefly
A dark firefly with pale margins and an angular shield pattern, Say’s firefly turns summer dusk into species-specific communication.
Casey Farm
A working organic farm, eighteenth-century homestead, cemetery, fields, and bay views connect Indigenous land, colonial ownership, labor, and present agriculture.
Zebra Longwing
Long narrow black wings crossed by pale yellow bands identify Florida’s state butterfly, a pollen-feeder with unusually long adult life.
California Poppy
Silky orange cups, four petals, and finely divided blue-green leaves make California’s state flower recognizable well beyond mass-bloom photographs.
Redwood Library and Athenaeum
Peter Harrison’s temple-fronted 1750 building holds books, portraits, sculpture, exhibitions, and an active research community on Bellevue Avenue.
Big Sagebrush
Three-toothed wedge leaves, silvery foliage, and a resinous scent identify a shrub that shelters far more life than its muted color suggests.
Great Friends Meeting House
A vast 1699 meetinghouse uses benches, galleries, structure, and silence to reveal the religious community that once shaped Newport civic life.
Beavertail State Park
Wave-cut rock, tidal pools, lighthouse views, fishing ledges, and hard weather make Rhode Island’s southern Jamestown point a place to study the coast in motion.
Large-flowered Trillium
Three broad leaves, three white petals, and a flower held above a single whorl mark Ohio’s woodland wildflower.
Colt State Park
Four hundred acres of waterfront drives, meadows, groves, paths, and stonework make a former private estate one of Rhode Island’s most expansive public landscapes.
Common Milkweed
Opposite broad leaves, milky sap, round pink flower clusters, and warty pods identify a plant central to monarch development.
Brenton Point State Park
Kites, stone walls, open grass, fishing water, and the ruins of a grand estate create Newport’s broadest public pause on Ocean Drive.
Mountain Laurel
Glossy evergreen leaves and clustered pink-white cups patterned with ten pockets identify Connecticut’s state flower.
American Holly
Spiny evergreen leaves, pale bark, and red winter fruit identify a native holly once central to Delaware wreath making.
Lincoln Woods State Park
Swimming, bouldering, fishing, riding, picnicking, and wooded trails circle Olney Pond in an urban-edge park with surprisingly rugged pockets.
Goddard Memorial State Park
Specimen trees, open lawns, bridle paths, a small beach, golf, and saltwater views preserve layers of a former Warwick estate.
Northern Red Oak
Bristle-tipped leaf lobes, shallow-striped bark, and broad acorns distinguish New Jersey’s state tree from rounded-lobed white oaks.
Fort Wetherill State Park
Granite cliffs, military ruins, diving water, and harbor panoramas make this former coastal defense site beautiful, complicated, and physically hazardous.
Tulip Tree
Four-lobed leaves with a notched flat tip and green-orange tulip-like flowers identify one of eastern North America’s tallest hardwoods.
Burlingame State Park
A large campground, guarded beach, woodland trails, paddling, and nature programs form Rhode Island’s principal south-country outdoor base.
Eastern Hemlock
Flat short needles with pale undersides, tiny hanging cones, and drooping twig tips identify Pennsylvania’s state tree.
Douglas-fir
Three-pointed bracts protruding from each cone scale make Douglas-fir recognizable even when its immense crown is far overhead.
Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge
Salt spray, shrubland, rocky shore, winter sea ducks, deer, and looping trails turn a former military site into one of Rhode Island’s most accessible coastal refuges.
Sitka Spruce
Sharp four-sided needles, thin scaly bark, and enormous coastal stature identify the spruce that thrives where ocean moisture meets mountains.
Trustom Pond National Wildlife Refuge
Woodland paths, farm fields, freshwater pond, barrier beach, and observation platforms protect a rare coastal system with no houses on its shore.
Mohegan Bluffs
A long stair descends from windswept bluff-top views to a narrow stone beach where erosion, tide, and exertion control the experience.
Red Maple
Red buds, flowers, leaf stalks, and paired winged seeds recur across the year on Rhode Island’s adaptable state tree.
Arcadia Management Area
Ponds, hemlock ravines, gravel roads, rocky trails, hunting land, and long forest routes offer a scale of solitude unusual for the state.
Eastern White Pine
Long flexible needles grouped in fives, slender cones, and layered horizontal branches identify the eastern white pine.
Longleaf Pine
Needles up to well over a foot long, huge cones, and a tufted grass-stage seedling identify the pine behind one of America’s richest savannas.
Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge
Open fields, shrubland, pond overlooks, and traces of a naval airfield support birds and quiet walking beside Rhode Island’s largest coastal salt pond.
Pulaski State Park and Recreational Area
Swimming, picnicking, wooded trails, fishing, and winter recreation make this compact Glocester park a useful gateway to Rhode Island’s upland landscape.
Newport Cliff Walk
A 3.5-mile National Recreation Trail pairs Gilded Age property edges with exposed shoreline, changing from paved promenade to rough rock.
East Bay Bike Path
Fourteen paved miles pass harbor industry, coves, marshes, towns, parks, and former rail alignments along Narragansett Bay’s eastern shore.
Blackstone River Bikeway
Paved segments trace towpath, mill villages, dams, and recovering habitat through the Rhode Island birthplace of American industrialization.
South County Bike Path
A paved former railroad route links villages, URI, woods, wetlands, and the edge of Narragansett through a practical South County spine.
Block Island Greenway Trails
A conservancy network crosses private easements and protected land to reveal Block Island beyond its paved roads and famous overlooks.
Neutaconkanut Hill Conservancy Trails
Short steep paths, glacial rock, springs, meadow, and skyline views preserve the city’s highest natural point within a residential neighborhood.
Green Animals Topiary Garden
More than eighty clipped animals and geometric forms share a seven-acre estate garden with flowers, fruit trees, vegetables, and a bay-facing house.
Blithewold Mansion, Gardens & Arboretum
Mansion rooms, specimen trees, perennial borders, bamboo grove, water garden, and Great Lawn unfold across thirty-three designed waterfront acres.
Roger Williams Park Botanical Center
Two connected conservatories and outdoor gardens move through palms, succulents, orchids, food plants, water, and seasonal displays in Rhode Island’s largest public indoor garden.
Kinney Azalea Gardens
Hundreds of azaleas and rhododendrons form tunnels, rooms, and saturated spring color around a private family garden opened seasonally to the public.
Wilcox Park
Specimen trees, perennial beds, monuments, lawns, and quiet paths make a fourteen-acre downtown park function as garden, campus, and community room.
Roger Williams Park Zoo
Elephants, giraffes, red pandas, rainforest animals, farm species, and conservation programs fill a walkable zoo organized around distinct habitat regions.
Save The Bay’s Hamilton Family Aquarium
Touch tanks, local fish, invertebrates, turtles, and bay research turn Newport’s waterfront into a focused introduction to Rhode Island marine ecology.
Biomes Marine Biology Center
Local sharks, skates, lobsters, tide-pool animals, and guided demonstrations make regional biology immediate in an independent educational aquarium.