12 Strange Places in Alabama No One Wants to Show You

On the tenth of January, 2026, NASA blew up two National Historic Landmarks in Huntsville. The federal paperwork that made them landmarks said one of them would be retained for use in future NASA programs. Seventy-two years earlier, a nine-pound stone came through a roof in Sylacauga and hit Ann Hodges on her couch. By that evening an Air Force helicopter had flown it to Maxwell, and the Project Blue Book file on the case gives the reason in plain words: to avoid any publicity adverse to the Air Force concerning the method by which it was obtained. Twelve places in Alabama. Some are locked, some are gone, one lies under Mobile Bay, and a few stand in plain sight. In every one of them, the strangest part is written down in a record almost nobody reads. 12 · WETUMPKA CRATER — an 84-million-year-old impact under a town and its farmland 11 · KEY UNDERWOOD COON DOG CEMETERY — a graveyard with an entrance exam 10 · RUSSELL CAVE — a national monument the law will not let you walk past the mouth of 9 · BOLL WEEVIL MONUMENT — a statue built to thank a pest, stolen piece by piece 8 · CATHEDRAL CAVERNS — Goliath, and the Crystal Room that stays in the dark 7 · AVE MARIA GROTTO — a world in concrete, built from postcards by a man who left the abbey once 6 · VULCAN — the iron giant who spent thirty years holding an ice cream cone 5 · MOUNDVILLE — ten thousand people taken out of the ground, and how long it took to put them back 4 · BELLEFONTE NUCLEAR PLANT — permitted in 1974, never made a single watt 3 · USS TECUMSEH — ninety-three men under the bay, still United States property 2 · THE HODGES METEORITE — the rock the Air Force took 1 · MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT CENTER TEST STANDS — the towers that proved the Saturn V, brought down in 2026 CHAPTERS 0:00 Twelve strange places 1:01 12 · Wetumpka Crater 2:53 11 · Key Underwood Coon Dog Cemetery 4:32 10 · Russell Cave 6:26 9 · Boll Weevil Monument 8:25 8 · Cathedral Caverns 9:56 7 · Ave Maria Grotto 12:01 6 · Vulcan 13:53 5 · Moundville 15:47 4 · Bellefonte Nuclear Plant 17:34 3 · USS Tecumseh 19:30 2 · The Hodges Meteorite 21:58 1 · Marshall Space Flight Center Test Stands 24:16 The twelve, in one line each SOURCES NAMED IN THE FILM Federal Register notices 87 FR 52995 (Moundville, 2022) and 86 FR 7313 (Bellefonte, 2021) · 36 CFR 7.68 (Russell Cave) · USAF Project Blue Book, Sylacauga file, 30 Nov 1954 · National Historic Landmark nominations for the Propulsion and Structural Test Facility and the Saturn V Dynamic Test Stand · National Register nominations for the Boll Weevil Monument, Vulcan and Ave Maria Grotto · Naval History and Heritage Command on USS Tecumseh · Sunken Military Craft Act · Geological Society of America Bulletin (1976) and Meteoritics & Planetary Science 47(8) on the Wetumpka structure · Alabama State Parks on Cathedral Caverns · Alabama Historical Commission. FILM NASA Image and Video Library (Marshall test stand demolition, 10 January 2026; Marshall test stand b-roll; Kennedy Space Center Saturn V film, 1960s). National Archives Identifier 11642, State Parks in New York, Pennsylvania and Alabama (1936). All US government works, public domain. No NASA endorsement is implied. PHOTOGRAPH CREDITS Photographs are public domain or Creative Commons, from Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress (Carol M. Highsmith Archive), the Historic American Buildings Survey and Historic American Engineering Record, and NASA. Every Creative Commons author is named, with licence and source link, in ATTRIBUTION.txt, and the full list is pinned in the comments. Thumbnail photo: BellefonteDecay.JPG by Mandarax, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...