Joyce Chen’s eyes water as she looks into the camera and reads aloud the letter of intent in her 1972 Chinese visa application. Twenty-three years earlier, she fled China’s Communist Revolution, only to watch a chasm grow between her birthplace and the United States, her adopted home. In the time since, she had used cooking as a tool to reach across...

The Stockton Diamond Railroad Crossing is a marvel of engineering and a humorous display of the state of rail in America. The Stockton Diamond is a crossroads of double-track freight and passenger rail owned and operated by Union Pacific and BNSF; the duopoly that controls all freight rail in the western United States. Union Pacific, owner of the north-south...

Wonder is everywhere. That’s why, every other week, Atlas Obscura drags you down some of the rabbit holes we encounter as we search for our unusual stories. We highlight surprising finds, great writing, and inspiring stories from some of our favorite publications. The New Zealand City with a Labyrinth of Underground Caves by Charlotte Lytton,...

Since Drexel University's Academy of Natural Sciences has been housed at its current location since 1876, it's not surprising that some of the public exhibits have changed over the years. Even more surprising, though, is how much has remained the same. Perhaps the best-known feature of the current museum is its 37 dioramas located in the North American,...

Gold was struck in this area around 1860, but little activity occurred then because nearby Aurora overshadowed the location. Most of the early prospectors were Freemasons, however, and they did leave their names on the district. Masonic didn't boom until the early 20th century. A 16-year-old, Joe Green, found gold at what would become the Jump-Up-Joe...

West Cheshire has been known for its underground salt deposits for centuries, and people have been mining the salt since prehistoric times. Various processes had been used to extract the salt, including physically removing the solid salt, pumping freshwater through the salt layers (including the salt mines) to dissolve it and transport it to the surface,...