Wikipedia:Unusual articles/Places and infrastructure

Places and infrastructure

Ever want to start your own country?

Good golly, Miss Molly – jus' love your folly!

Folly	Buildings prized for their uselessness.
Gravity hill	A hill that gives the illusion of objects rolling up it.
List of Eiffel Tower replicas	Not as unique as you might have thought.
List of fictional island nations	These islands have not been mistaken for submarines.
List of tautological place names	Place names that contain truisms and say what they are.
Pizza farm	All the ingredients of pizza, grown in one convenient location!
Spite house	Various houses built solely out of spite for their neighbors.
Nail house	A tiny house completely surrounded by a hole in the ground from a massive construction project.

Americas

A welcome to Centralia, Pennsylvania (that's no longer offered).

"That says "MALL"... doesn't it...?"

When California hadn't quite joined the United States.

Mill Ends Park,
the smallest park in the world.

A postman's labor of love.

Agloe, New York	A fictional town in New York.
Avenue Road	Is this thoroughfare in Toronto an avenue or is it a road?
Badlands Guardian	A natural topographic feature in Canada, which, when viewed from above, looks remarkably like a human wearing a Native American headdress and earphones.
Beatosu and Goblu	Two non-existent Ohio towns that appeared on Michigan's official highway map as a reference to the University of Michigan and their rivals, Ohio State University.
Bubbly Creek	The branch of the Chicago River that is so contaminated with blood from the Stock Yards that it bubbles to this day.
Centralia, Pennsylvania	A town that's been on fire since 1962.
Dixie Square Mall	A shopping mall that stood abandoned for over twice as long as it was in business, until it was finally demolished in 2012. It was featured in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers and became a popular target for urban explorers.
Florence Y'all Water Tower	A Northern Kentucky town's unique "welcome" sign.
Former counties, cities, and towns of Virginia	All the places that are no longer found in Virginia, USA, such as Illinois County, and a few that never were (including Walton's Mountain).
Free Stamp	A really big stamp in Cleveland, Ohio.
Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport	Consists entirely of a deeply rutted unmanned strip of soil/gravel and a windsock.
Interstate 180 (Wyoming)	An Interstate Highway that isn't really a highway at all.
Republic of Indian Stream	An area of land in northern New Hampshire, USA, that was an independent country from 1832 to 1835.
Island of California	The third largest U.S. State was formerly an island – on paper.
Jerimoth Hill	The highest natural point in Rhode Island. For years, one of the toughest highpoints in the U.S. to scale, not because of its (812-foot) height, but because of an angry old man who lived nearby.
M-185 (Michigan highway)	The only state highway in the country that bans motor vehicles.
Mary Ellis grave	A grave that found itself in the middle of a movie theater parking lot.
Michigan left	Directions are more complicated in Michigan.
Mill Ends Park	The smallest park in the world – 452 in² (0.3 m²) – located in Portland, Oregon.
Mojave phone booth	A public phone booth that stood for several years in the middle of a desert, miles away from any roads or other structures.
Mollie's Nipple	There are at least seven of them.
Pyramid mausoleums in North America	Arizona Governor George Hunt will hereafter be addressed as "Pharaoh George I".
Republic of Molossia	A one-person micronation in Nevada, USA which takes the meaning of the phrase "a man's home is his castle" to new extremes.
Monowi	A village in Nebraska with a population of one. Hi, Elsie!
New York City Subway chaining	For obscure political reasons a third of the NYC Subway is measured from the point where a tangent line from 6th Ave at West 4th St. intersects the New Jersey border in Raritan Bay.
Nitt Witt Ridge	A house in California, built out of beer cans, abalone shells, car parts, and other garbage previously tossed out by local residents, is now a historic landmark.
Point Roberts, Washington	When defining international boundaries, sometimes a straight line isn't the best solution.
Raising of Chicago	During the 1850s, the city was raised on jacks, building by building.
Rio Rico, Texas	A city that was ceded by the United States to Mexico in 1977 due to an earlier diversion of the Rio Grande.
Rough and Ready, California	A currently populated, unincorporated mining town in the United States that seceded from the Union in 1850, forming the "Great Republic of Rough and Ready." Secession was rescinded less than three months later when its citizens noticed that they could not celebrate US independence.
Sam Kee Building	Known as the world's narrowest commercial building.
S.N.P.J., Pennsylvania	A municipality consisting solely of a Slovenian fraternity's recreation center, established (in part) to get around liquor laws.
Spiral Island	An artificial island, now destroyed, built from thousands of empty floating plastic bottles.
Tower of Wooden Pallets	Now replaced by an apartment building, its site remains City of Los Angeles Historic Cultural Monument #184.
Wedge	It's harder than you think to construct the state of Delaware with a ruler and compass.
World's littlest skyscraper	The result of a fraudulent investment scheme, it's a four-story brick building constructed in 1920 in downtown Wichita Falls, Texas, that has only one room on each of its four floors.
Winchester Mystery House	A house believed to be haunted by the ghosts of individuals killed by Winchester rifles.

Africa

Bir Tawil	One of the few places on Earth not claimed by any country. An American claimed it in 2014 as the Kingdom of North Sudan so he could make his daughter a princess.
Republic of Benin (1967)	The shortest-lived state in history; it was independent for only seven hours (07:00 to 14:00 on 19 September 1967).

Antarctica

Emilio Palma	An Argentine national who is the first person known to be born on the continent of Antarctica.
Religion in Antarctica	There's more of it than you might suspect, including five churches.
Scouting in the Antarctic	Always prepared for glaciers and penguins.

Asia and Oceania

Baldwin Street, Dunedin.

Watch your step around Coober Pedy.

A skyscraper with en-suite highway.

Baldwin Street, Dunedin	A short suburban road in Dunedin, New Zealand, reputedly the world's steepest street.
Camp Bonifas	The bunkers on this golf course feature machine-guns and landmines.
Cardrona Bra Fence	An eccentric tourist attraction in New Zealand.
Coober Pedy, South Australia	A mining town where most of the residents live underground.
Gate Tower Building	A skyscraper in Japan that has a highway passing through its fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
Jewish Autonomous Oblast	Far away in the depth of Eastern Siberia there's a place with street names in Yiddish, even though 95% of its population is not Jewish.
Kowloon Walled City	A former Chinese enclave in Hong Kong, known for its extremely high population density, food courts which served dog meat, and claustrophobic dwellings.
Love Land	An erotic-themed sculpture park on Jeju island in South Korea.
Ryugyong Hotel	Once, it would have been the world's tallest hotel – except it lacked windows, fittings, or fixtures for over twenty years.
Sansha, China	The city that contains almost an entire sea.
Shingō, Aomori	Did you know that Jesus escaped his crucifixion and raised a family in Japan?
Urlayeva Eshankulova	A statue of a large pineapple in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, dedicated to the successful cultivation of Pineapple plants, a venture that failed 4 months later.
Wonderland Amusement Park (Beijing)	The largest abandoned amusement park in Asia.
X-Seed 4000	The tallest building ever designed, standing 4 kilometers (2.485 miles) tall and housing 500 thousand to one million people on 800 floors. It is, however, "never meant to be built".

Europe

Make sure you're covered.

Careful where you put that lighthouse, Eugene...

Welcome to the Principality of Sealand.

A chandelier, decorating the Sedlec Ossuary, made from human bones.

Argleton	A non-existent town in Lancashire, England, that appeared on Google Maps.
Baarle-Hertog	A municipality of Belgium, consisting in part of twenty-three exclaves within the Netherlands, some of which in turn contain Netherlands exclaves. (Some houses and shops are in both Belgium and the Netherlands.)
Baarle-Nassau	A municipality of the Netherlands, containing small exclaves of Belgium, which in turn contain even smaller exclaves of the Netherlands. (The borders mean that there are houses and companies which are in both Belgium and the Netherlands.)
Barcelona Supercomputing Center	A supercomputer in a medieval chapel.
Bielefeld Conspiracy	The Bielefeld-Verschwörung tries to hide the horrible truth about a city in Westphalia, Germany that doesn't exist... well, maybe.
Brennender Berg	A German coal mine on fire since 1688.
Büsingen am Hochrhein	A German town that is fully contained within Switzerland.
Carpatho-Ukraine	The second shortest-lived state in history (see Benin Republic in Nigeria); it was independent for only 24 hours.
Colletto Fava	A 5,000-foot hill with a 200-foot stuffed pink bunny on top.
Ebenezer Place, Wick	The world's shortest street.
Fallen Monument Park	A Russian park best known for its toppled statues.
Ferdinand Cheval	A postman, who, for thirty-three years, collected stones while making his rounds and used them to build a surreal Palais Idéal ("Ideal Palace") of astonishing proportions and intricate detail.
Forest swastika	A gigantic swastika made of larch trees that went unnoticed for nearly sixty years.
Graham Island (Sicily)	An island that was mistaken for a submarine and attacked with depth charges.
Gropecunt Lane	A street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages.
Icelandic Phallological Museum	A museum in Iceland solely devoted to the collection of penis specimens and penis-related art.
JASON reactor	The only nuclear reactor in a 17th-century building.
Magic Roundabout	Only in the United Kingdom would you find a large roundabout with five mini-roundabouts. (Not to be confused with the "Magic Roundabout"s in Colchester, Hemel Hempstead or High Wycombe – or, for that matter, this "Magic Roundabout".)
Märket	A lighthouse built on this island led to a redefinition of the border between Sweden and Finland.
Monte Kaolino	A ski resort without snow.
Neutral Moresnet	A tiny European region (approx. 3.5 km²) that existed for a century as neutral territory between Germany and Belgium.
Other World Kingdom	A micronation and BDSM resort whose ultimate goal is "absolute matriarchy" – for all men to be enslaved by women.
Pole and Hungarian cousins be	A two-nation proverb often cited, usually while drinking, in both Poland and Hungary.
Principality of Sealand	A micronation located six miles (10 km) off the coast of Suffolk, England, whose population rarely exceeds ten.
Reality Checkpoint	A lamp-post with its own name.
Sedlec Ossuary	A Christian chapel decorated by the bones of approximately 40,000 people.
Shit Brook	A culverted stream in Much Wenlock, England.
Shitterton	A hamlet in England with a formerly collectible sign.
Smallest House in Great Britain	Only 5.49 square metres (59.1 ft2) in size.
Spreuerhofstraße	The world's narrowest street.
UFO-Memorial Ängelholm	A memorial to a reputed UFO landing in Sweden.
Weißwurstäquator	The "White Sausage Equator" in Germany.

See also

• Wikipedia:Unusual place names