High Trestle Trail
A rail trail crosses the Des Moines River on a half-mile bridge wrapped in sculptural steel frames.
United States: places and wildlife — page 23
Browse the published Explore collection for United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge
Large-scale tallgrass restoration, bison, elk, and research reveal what rebuilding prairie actually requires.
Des Moines Art Center
Three major architects and a focused modern collection reward slow comparison in a free museum.
Figge Art Museum
A riverfront museum joins regional, American, Haitian, and international collections with changing contemporary exhibitions.
Stanley Museum of Art
A compact university museum brings a consequential modern collection back to campus after the 2008 flood.
National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium
Aquariums, boats, wetlands, and industrial history explain the Mississippi as a living system and working corridor.
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
Migration, political freedom, family memory, and cultural continuity unfold in a museum rebuilt above the floodplain.
Herbert Hoover National Historic Site
A small-town landscape connects Hoover’s Quaker childhood to public service, global relief, presidency, and later memory.
Amana Colonies
Seven villages preserve the built environment of a German-speaking communal society that reorganized—but did not disappear—in 1932.
American Gothic House Center
The modest Carpenter Gothic house that prompted Grant Wood’s famous painting becomes a lesson in image-making and American interpretation.
Toolesboro Mounds National Historic Landmark
Well-preserved Hopewell burial mounds and a small museum protect evidence of ceremony and exchange along the Mississippi corridor.
State Historical Museum of Iowa
Archaeology, Indigenous history, migration, politics, agriculture, industry, and everyday objects build a statewide story inside Iowa's historical building.
Iowa State Capitol
Iowa’s five-domed Capitol works at two scales: a gilded city landmark outside and a functioning public building of lawmaking, art, craft, and contested civic memory inside.
Reiman Gardens
University horticulture, rotating displays, a tropical conservatory, and butterfly work meet beside Iowa State’s campus.
Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden
A geodesic conservatory and outdoor gardens make plant adaptation visible across tropical and Midwestern conditions.
Blank Park Zoo
Iowa’s largest zoo offers a manageable route for watching behavior, enrichment, and conservation work.
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge
Ancient granite mountains rise from mixed-grass prairie inhabited by bison, elk, prairie dogs, and longhorn cattle.
Chickasaw National Recreation Area
Cold mineral springs, shaded streams, trails, and Lake of the Arbuckles form an unusually water-rich refuge in south-central Oklahoma.
Beavers Bend State Park
Forest trails, cold river water, and Broken Bow Lake make southeastern Oklahoma feel ecologically distinct from the plains.
Robbers Cave State Park
Sandstone cliffs and wooded trails offer climbing, hiking, lakes, and a folklore-heavy hideout landscape.
Black Mesa Preserve & State Park
Oklahoma’s highest point sits in remote shortgrass country where darkness, distance, and weather are central to the trip.
Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge
A remnant salt basin supports migratory birds and the only public digging area for hourglass-selenite crystals.
Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
A large protected remnant in the Osage Hills demonstrates tallgrass ecology, prescribed fire, and bison grazing at landscape scale.
Turner Falls Park
A 77-foot waterfall, swimming areas, caves, and steep Arbuckle terrain create a popular but highly managed recreation site.
Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center
A major Mississippian-period political and ceremonial center links Oklahoma to a continent-wide network of exchange and ideas.
First Americans Museum
Oklahoma’s 39 tribal nations are presented through distinct histories, survivance, sovereignty, art, language, and contemporary life.
National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum
Art, material culture, performance, ranch work, and popular myth reveal how “the West” was lived and manufactured.
Philbrook Museum of Art
An oil-era Italianate villa, terraced gardens, and international collections create a museum where architecture is never neutral.
Gilcrease Museum
A nationally important collection of art and archives of the Americas is preparing to welcome visitors inside a completely new Tulsa museum.
Oklahoma History Center
A statewide museum connects Indigenous nations, settlement, Black history, oil, aviation, labor, politics, and popular culture.
Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
Oklahoma fossils, biodiversity, archaeology, and Native cultures occupy a university museum built for both research and public learning.
Museum of Osteology
Hundreds of real skeletons make anatomy, locomotion, adaptation, and preparation unusually easy to compare.
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum
A memorial landscape and evidence-based museum document the 1995 bombing, its victims, rescue, investigation, and civic aftermath.
Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center
Immersive interpretation connects Black Wall Street, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, resistance, rebuilding, and the district’s present.
Washita Battlefield National Historic Site
A winter village attack is interpreted through Cheyenne lives, military policy, contested memory, and the physical Washita River landscape.
Fort Gibson Historic Site
One of Oklahoma’s oldest military posts connects forced removal, Indian Territory, Civil War, and federal expansion.
Oklahoma Route 66 Museum
Decade-by-decade galleries trace how a federal highway carried migration, commerce, family travel, music, and myth.
Chisholm Trail Heritage Center
Immersive galleries explain cattle-drive logistics, labor, ecology, risk, and the trail’s passage through Indian Territory.
E. W. Marland Mansion
A 55-room estate exposes oil wealth, political ambition, craftsmanship, family complexity, and changing fortune.
Myriad Botanical Gardens
Downtown Oklahoma City shifts climate in one block: free lawns, water, shade, and seasonal beds wrap a cylindrical conservatory divided between humid and dry tropical worlds.
Tulsa Botanic Garden
Designed gardens on rolling Osage Hills terrain emphasize seasonal color, family exploration, and horticulture adapted to Oklahoma extremes.
Oklahoma City Zoo
A large zoological park rewards route planning, repeat observation, and attention to how habitats support animal choice.
Oklahoma Aquarium
Freshwater and marine galleries culminate in an immersive bull-shark habitat while connecting back to Oklahoma waters.
Tulsa Zoo
A major zoo in Mohawk Park combines broad animal collections with an increasingly modern habitat plan.
Dignity: of Earth & Sky
A monumental Native woman with a wind-moving star quilt overlooks the Missouri River as a contemporary statement of honor and resilience.
The World’s Only Corn Palace
Mitchell rebuilds a civic arena’s murals with naturally colored corn, grain, and grasses, making annual design, agricultural material, and installation labor part of the architecture.
Palisades State Park
Split Rock Creek cuts through pink Sioux Quartzite cliffs in one of eastern South Dakota’s most concentrated geological parks.
Bramble Park Zoo
A compact Watertown zoo makes northern-season animal behavior and close-scale education easy to observe.