Iconic
Some places you know before you arrive — you've seen them on a license plate, a screen saver, the back of a quarter. These are those: the images the West prints of itself, the ones that pull crowds for good reason. Familiarity hasn't ruined them; standing under the real thing still lands harder than the photo ever did. Go early or late to beat the buses, and let yourself be impressed by the obvious. Some things are famous because they are that good.
CA-1 via Muir Woods Road1
Sir Francis Drake Blvd, off CA-1 at Olema1
NM-41
CO-51
IR-71
UT-92
I-10 / I-171
I-10 / I-191
Scenic Byway 122
Scenic Byway 12 / UT-631
I-153
Lagoon Amusement Park
A beloved family amusement park operating since 1886
Las Vegas Strip
Four and a quarter miles of engineered spectacle — the most famous street in America (and it isn't in Las Vegas)
Temple Square
The spiritual and architectural heart of Salt Lake City
Interstate 15, Interstate 80, US-891
I-171
I-191
US-20/26/931
US-242
Garden of the Gods
Named in 1859 by a surveyor who wanted no beer garden there, and given to the city in 1909 on the condition it stay free, dry and unbuilt.
Pikes Peak Cog Railway
A mattress maker's answer to a two-day mule ride, running since 1891, shut in 2017 and rebuilt from the rails up with Swiss trains in 2021.
WY-241
I-251
US-262
Painted Hills
Hills banded red, gold and tan that are not painted rock at all but ancient soils, formed on volcanic ash over millions of years as the climate changed.
Timberline Lodge
A lodge raised by hand by relief workers in 1936-38, from boulders off the mountain and iron forged from old railroad rails, and dark for an unpaid power bill less than twenty years later.
NV-281
US-341
I-403
Acoma Sky City
Haak'u, the village on a sandstone mesa west of Albuquerque, seen only on the pueblo's own tours, with a mission whose roof beams were carried on foot from Mount Taylor.
Blue Swallow Motel
A twelve-room tourist court on Tucumcari's stretch of Route 66, built in 1939, run for four decades by one woman, and lit by one of the most photographed motel signs on the road.
Petrified Forest National Park
Two hundred million years turned to stone — and a Route 66 ghost
I-40 / Historic Route 663
Holbrook
A Santa Fe railroad town once too tough for women and churches, now the seat of Navajo County, gateway to the Petrified Forest, and home to the concrete teepees of the Wigwam Motel.
Williams
The last town on Route 66 to lose its traffic to the interstate — a rail gateway to the Grand Canyon since 1901, bypassed only in 1984 after a court fight, and revived twice over.
Winslow
The town an Eagles lyric made famous — and the home of La Posada, the last great railroad hotel and Mary Colter's finest work, at the southern doorway to Hopi and Navajo country.
I-40 / Historic Route 66 / US-931
I-40 / I-171
US-401
US-503
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
Two men on a rubber air mattress floated through in 1901 to prove a tunnel could be built, past a cliff that drops some 2,250 feet to the river.
Great Basin National Park
Nevada's only national park — caves below, the oldest trees on earth above, the darkest skies overhead
Royal Gorge Bridge
Built in six months in 1929 by a Texas promoter for people to pay to walk across, and still standing after a 2013 fire took 48 of the park's 52 buildings.
US-601
CA-62 / Park Boulevard1
OR-621
US-621
SR-641
US-642
Rio Grande Gorge Bridge
A steel truss strung across a slot in the basalt west of Taos, 565 feet above the river by the careful measure and 650 by the signs, built when the road beyond it did not yet exist.
Taos Pueblo
Two terraced adobe houses facing each other across Red Willow Creek, lived in for something like a thousand years, with no electricity or running water inside the old walls.
Historic Route 661
Historic Route 66 (Colorado Blvd.)1
Historic Route 66 (Foothill Blvd.)1
Historic Route 66 (National Trails Highway)1
Historic Route 66 / I-401
Historic Route 66 terminus area1
NM-681
I-702
Georgetown Loop Railroad
Scrapped in 1939 for $450, rebuilt a century after it first opened, and running again over the bridge that crosses its own track.
Glenwood Canyon
Interstate 70 threaded through on viaducts in 1992, buried by debris flows off a burn scar in 2021, with Hanging Lake on a permit above it.
US-701
NM-761
I-803
Bonneville Salt Flats
A blindingly white desert where land speed records are born
Great Salt Lake
The largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere
Reno
The river crossing the Comstock needed, made a city by the railroad—then reinvented as divorce capital, gambling town, and now tech hub: the Biggest Little City in the World
SR-801
CO-821
UT-831
I-841
US-841
US-871
SR-881
CA-891
SR-89 / SR-691
SR-89A1
SR-89A / SR-1791
US-896
Bear Lake
The Caribbean of the Rockies — a turquoise lake straddling the Utah-Idaho border
Bear Lake Raspberry Shakes
Legendary raspberry milkshakes from locally grown berries
Best Friends Animal Sanctuary
The largest no-kill animal sanctuary in the United States
Chico Hot Springs
A miners' wash pool turned hotel, turned hospital, turned the valley's favorite place to soak.
Kanab
Little Hollywood — where hundreds of Western movies were filmed
Manti Temple
A striking pioneer-era temple crowning a hilltop above the Sanpete Valley
I-902
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument
A battlefield you can read by its stones: white marble where soldiers fell since 1890, red granite where warriors fell since 1999.
Spokane Falls
Where the Spokane fished under a salmon chief who shared out the catch, until a dam forty miles downstream ended the runs in 1911.
US-932
I-941
US-953
US-981
Loop 1011
Second and M streets, Old Town Eureka, off US-1011
US-1011
Beal Road (off CA-111)1
UT-1111
UT-1131
UT-1282
CO-1501
UT-1501
SR-1551
NV-1591
US-1601
US-1633
NV-1691
Badwater Road (CA-178)1
US-1801
US-1891
CA-1902
US-1913
US-1951
US-2121
UT-2241
SR-2401
SR-2611
UT-2611
SR-2641
CA-270 (off US-395)1
US-2851
UT-3131
NV-3411
US-3801
Whitney Portal Road (off US-395)1
C-4701
US-5502
Chaco Culture National Historical Park
The great houses of Chaco Canyon at the end of thirteen miles of washboard dirt, an International Dark Sky Park in the middle of one of the country's busiest gas fields.
Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad
Steam to Silverton up the Animas since 1882, and the coal-fired locomotive cinder that federal investigators blamed for the 416 Fire of 2018.
Antelope Island Road1
Bryce Canyon Park Road1
Capitol Reef Scenic Drive1
Central Avenue1
Falls Avenue east of Twin Falls; Shoshone Falls Grade Road1
Going-to-the-Sun Road1
Grand Loop Road2
Grand Prismatic Spring
The rings of color are living microbial mats, and a microbe from a smaller spring nearby made DNA copying, and the COVID test, possible.
Old Faithful Inn
Robert Reamer's log lobby, built in one winter to feel like a lodgepole forest, which rode out an earthquake in 1959 and a fire in 1988.