Author: Ms. R.

On the way down Highway 1 in Montana, there are some odd signs for a place that is “usually open.” They’re for the Ohrmann Museum, a yard filled with large metal sculptures.   The yard is filled with animals and insects, both contemporary and prehistoric, all crafted of metal. You’ll be amazed at the creative artwork on display—one walk around the building isn’t enough. Looking at the details of each work of art makes one happy this is shared with the……

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Over the course of millions of years, drops of water carved out the expanse of the Smoke Hole Caverns. And drop by drop, the stalactites and stalagmites that fill the caves were formed through the slow accumulation of minerals. Though West Virginia has more than 4,000 caves, Smoke Hole is one of the few commercial caves (that is, caves for visitors who don’t want to go full-on spelunking). The Smoke Hole Caverns first opened to the public in 1940,……

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A construction crew was installing wind turbines in Beech Ridge, a wind farm project in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, and Summersville Lake Retreat in neighboring Mount Nebo became the summer home for one of the crew members. The Lake Retreat staff would admire the massive steel towers, their blades stretching half a football field, as they drove by each day. What if, someone asked, what if one of those towers found its way to us? We’d plant it high……

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In 1933, Camp Seneca was established in West Virginia by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The program was established in the wake of the Great Depression as a jobs program for unemployed men. The work was often labor-intensive, as men were put to work building trucking roads, planting trees, and carving out hiking trails. They built state and national parks, and dotted them with structures—cabins, bridges, dams, and fire towers. Today, tucked away among the 12,884 acres of what is……

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New Italy was a community founded in 1882 by survivors of the disastrous de Rays Expedition, a deceptive venture perpetrated by French nobleman, Marquis de Rays, who conned hundreds of Venetians into believing they were leaving behind the poverty of their homeland for the paradise of a prosperous colony known as New France on the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea. Despite both the French and Italian governments banning the expedition from departing from their respective countries and warning……

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A&W had a humble start, for what was to become both a root-beer behemoth as well as the first-ever franchised restaurant chain. Roy Allen, a hotelier by trade, bought a root-beer recipe and ingredients from a pharmacist in Arizona in 1919. Being the entrepreneur that he was, he soon decided to sell his brew. Allen settled in Lodi, California, and on June 14, 1919, he began selling root beer to townsfolk during a parade. His original root-beer cart is……

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Fior D’ Italia closed its doors in May 2012 to sad howls from the San Francisco culinary community. The restaurant was already venerable by then: For 126 years, it had served plates of pasta and veal to presidents and Pavarotti. It wasn’t a bad run for a place that got its start at a brothel in 1886.  But San Francisco only went without Fior D’ Italia for about six months. The restaurant reopened in December 2012, in the same……

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This little gem in Idaho feels like it came out of a movie or was designed as a theme park attraction, but it is a beautiful natural wonder. A small creek tumbles down step-like cliffs overlooking the Snake River as it meanders through the beautiful Swan Valley. The cascading waterfall creates several mossy veiled grottos, where adventurers can wade into small chambers and watch the water droplets shimmer down. You can also relax in the shallow sitting pools in……

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This article is adapted from the August 28, 2021, edition of Gastro Obscura’s Favorite Things newsletter. You can sign up here. I eat a banana just about every day. But for almost my entire life, I only ever ate one kind: the Cavendish. Originally from China, it’s the banana variety that conquered the world: the same color, taste, and shape nearly everywhere you go. But in the banana’s ancestral homelands—Southeast Asia, India, various Pacific Islands—the fruit is found in……

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The Chichester family has been connected with Ireland for over 400 years, but there was one member of the fabled family that stands out in Carrickfergus history. Arthur Chichester came to Ireland in 1597 after his brother Sir John Chichester, Governor of Carrickfergus was beheaded by the Native Irish clan leader Hugh O’Neill after the Battle of Carrickfergus. Arthur a professional soldier who had served against the Spanish Armada, as well as in many other foreign wars, was a……

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