Sculptured Rocks Natural Area
Potholes, flutes, and polished walls record persistent water and sediment working below a roadside bridge.
United States: places and wildlife — page 15
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
The Basin
A short accessible approach reveals a deep circular basin, cascades, and continuation trails along the river.
Arethusa Falls
A forest hike reaches one of New Hampshire’s tallest waterfalls, with optional brook cascades adding terrain and time.
Cathedral Ledge
A sheer granite cliff overlooks the Saco valley and Mount Washington range
Mount Washington via Tuckerman Ravine
A historic ravine route climbs into the Northeast’s most severe mountain weather
Franconia Ridge Loop
Falling Waters Trail, alpine ridge, Greenleaf Hut, and Old Bridle Path form one of New England’s most celebrated and demanding loops.
Mount Monadnock White Dot–White Cross Loop
Direct rocky trails climb from headquarters to Monadnock’s open summit
Mount Willard Trail
Forest tread and old carriage-road traces lead to open ledges above railroad, road, river, and opposing cliffs.
Mount Major Trail
Rocky ledges open over Lake Winnipesaukee from a heavily used small mountain
Welch–Dickey Loop Trail
Steep ledges, scrub oak, broad views, and sustained exposure make the loop feel larger than its mileage.
Mount Chocorua via Champney Falls Trail
A waterfall approach leads to one of New Hampshire’s sharpest summit profiles
Northern Rail Trail
Cinder and gravel follow 58 miles of lakes, farms, cuts, villages, and former stations between Lebanon and Boscawen.
Boulder Loop Trail
Stone steps, glacial blocks, forest, and overlooks above the Swift River make a satisfying half-day circuit.
Mount Kearsarge via Winslow Trail
The Winslow and Barlow trails form a compact loop through forest and ledges to a fire tower and broad regional views.
Bedrock Gardens
Woodland paths, spiral beds, specimen plants, hardscape, and found-object art reward curiosity rather than a single grand axis.
Fuller Gardens
Thousands of roses, clipped borders, dahlias, conservatory plants, and a Japanese garden create concentrated seasonal color near the coast.
Prescott Park Gardens
Formal plantings, fountains, docks, and summer performance spaces turn reclaimed industrial land into a civic garden.
Squam Lakes Natural Science Center
Black bear, mountain lion, river otter, raptors, bobcat, and woodland exhibits emphasize native habitats and conservation.
Living Shores Aquarium
Tide pools, stingrays, local fish, otters, and digital exhibits connect watershed choices to coastal life.
Portland Museum of Art
The collection gives Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley, and the Wyeth family room to converse with European, American, and contemporary work.
Farnsworth Art Museum
Wyeth holdings, modernists, folk art, and living Maine artists turn regional identity into a broad artistic argument rather than a souvenir view.
Maine Maritime Museum
A 20-acre Kennebec River campus combines shipbuilding tools, historic buildings, full-scale sculpture, lighthouse interpretation, and waterborne excursions.
Colby College Museum of Art
The museum is especially strong in American modernism, works on paper, and art connected to Maine, while campus installations and changing projects keep the visit from feeling sealed inside galleries.
Bowdoin College Museum of Art
Ancient Mediterranean objects, European painting, American art, and contemporary exhibitions support unusually close comparison in a compact museum.
Maine State Museum
The collections span archaeology, industry, natural history, domestic life, and the labor that shaped Maine.
Abbe Museum
The museum centers Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Penobscot, and Passamaquoddy voices through archaeology, art, language, and living cultural practice.
Children’s Museum & Theatre of Maine
A makerspace, water play, a camera obscura, small-animal interpretation, and an active children’s theater encourage sustained experimentation rather than passive display.
Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad Co. & Museum
Historic locomotives, coaches, artifacts, and a waterfront train ride explain why unusually narrow railways once connected rural Maine communities and industries.
Seashore Trolley Museum
Streetcars, interurbans, buses, restoration shops, and a demonstration railway show how public transit shaped cities before automobile dominance.
Owls Head Transportation Museum
Aircraft, automobiles, motorcycles, engines, and bicycles are interpreted as functioning systems rather than polished shells.
Maine Mineral & Gem Museum
Exceptional local minerals, gemstones, mining history, and extraterrestrial material move from the state’s pegmatites to planetary science.
Penobscot Marine Museum
Historic buildings, marine paintings, photography, tools, vessels, and domestic objects reveal how Penobscot Bay communities participated in worldwide commerce.
Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Changing exhibitions give artists room for installation, abstraction, social inquiry, and new media without pretending there is one Maine style.
Maine Discovery Museum
Nature, anatomy, engineering, art, play, and Maine environments are built for touching, climbing, making, and conversation.
Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum
Historic expedition records, Inuit art, clothing, tools, photography, and environmental research show both the ambitions and limits of southern exploration narratives.
Ogunquit Museum of American Art
A compact collection of modern and contemporary American art is joined to sculpture gardens and an ocean-facing site.
Hudson Museum
Wabanaki material culture, archaeological holdings, and global collections are presented as records of living communities and changing museum practice.
Victoria Mansion
Architecture, painted surfaces, furnishings, textiles, and early mechanical systems preserve an unusually complete nineteenth-century domestic environment.
Wadsworth-Longfellow House
The brick house, family objects, urban garden, and Maine Historical Society collections place Henry Wadsworth Longfellow inside generations of household, political, and city change.
Portland Observatory
The 1807 tower was a working commercial instrument: a high lookout linked incoming ships to merchants through flags and telescopes.
Fort Knox State Historic Site
Massive casemates, earthworks, batteries, and dark passageways show how nineteenth-century coastal defense was engineered.
Old Fort Western
New England’s oldest surviving wooden fort anchors the Kennebec frontier, grounded in 1754 storehouse and kennebec river
Colonial Pemaquid State Historic Site
Archaeological foundations, reconstructed Fort William Henry, a museum, and cemetery reveal centuries of occupation and conflict at a strategic coastal harbor.
Frances Perkins National Monument
The Brick House, barns, fields, stone walls, and family papers connect Frances Perkins’s New Deal work to a Maine landscape she returned to throughout her life.
Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village
Historic buildings, herb culture, craft, music, archives, and the lives of today’s residents complicate the idea of a vanished communal movement.
Joshua L. Chamberlain Museum
Rooms, family objects, battlefield artifacts, and repeated alterations follow Joshua Chamberlain from college life through the Civil War and four terms as governor.
Sarah Orne Jewett House Museum
Architecture, furniture, family rooms, and the neighboring landscape illuminate Sarah Orne Jewett’s fiction and a household shaped by medicine, reading, travel, and friendship.
Olson House
Weathered rooms, fields, views, and the Olson family’s history provide the lived setting for many Andrew Wyeth paintings.