North Carolina’s 9 weirdest roadside attractions

Break the monotony of your North Carolina road trip with these odd roadside attractions spread throughout the state. 

Ever been on one of those road trips that feels like it’s never going to end? True highway legends know the perfect way to break up a long trip through a strip of what may appear to be boring small towns: roadside attractions. 

North Carolina has no shortage of roadside attractions that may have the kids rolling their eyes in the back seat of the van but are great excuses to stretch your legs and give them something besides billboards to look at. 

The Roadsides Attractions Map features hundreds of attractions throughout the state, so you’re never far away from something interesting to take in. We’ve compiled nine of the strangest ones we could find to make that roadside stop extra memorable. 

1. Grahamland

24605 Andrew Jackson Highway E, Bolton

Hubert Graham has been building fiberglass statues for two decades, and over that time he’s compiled an impressive collection on his 10 acres of land in Bolton, just off Highway 74 East on a route that’s popular for beachgoers on their way to Wilmington. 

What started with lighthouse sculptures to help prevent break-ins has grown into a menagerie of zebras, giant flamingos, polar bears, dinosaurs, and just about whatever else you can imagine. Spring for the $10 admission and you can explore the property on your own. 

 

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2. World’s Largest Chest of Drawers

508 S. Hamilton St., High Point

The world’s largest dresser (once bureau) has been High Point’s crown jewel for nearly a century, which makes sense as the town is known as the Furniture Capital of the World. It includes two large socks hanging from a drawer to honor the area’s hosiery industry. 

Originally known as “The Big Bureau” or “The Bureau of Information,” the huge sculpture was built to be 36 feet tall in 1926, but over 70 years became worn down by the elements. In 1996, High Point designer and craftsman Sid Lenger oversaw a complete redesign of the structure, bringing it to 38 feet tall. Despite a controversial color change in the aughts, it has since been returned to Lenger’s vision. 

Fun fact: According to Roadside America, the current Chest of Drawers is built on top of and around the old Bureau, meaning that if future furniture archeologists ever bore a hole into the World’s Largest Chest of Drawers, they’ll find the World’s Largest Bureau cocooned within it.

Photo courtesy of Allen Forrest/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

3. World’s Largest Ten Commandments 

10000 NC Highway 294, Murphy

Fields of the Wood is a 200-acre Bible park originally built by Holiness Pentecostal evangelist A.J. Tomlinson as a spiritual retreat of sorts in the mountain town of Murphy, but has over time become home to a number of embarrassingly big Biblical exhibits. 

“Fields of the Wood is part holy ground and part ‘Holy cow!’ Or, more to the point, ‘Holy Moses!’” wrote Our State magazine. 

The main attraction is the World’s Largest Ten Commandments, displayed on a field in concrete letters that are 5 feet tall and 4 feet wide, framed by a concrete border that spans 300 feet across. The park includes a bevy of other oversized exhibits, including Ten Commandment Mountain, a concrete Bible that’s 30 feet tall and 50 feet wide that has been billed as the world’s largest New Testament. 

Photo courtesy of Brent Moore/CC BY-NC 2.0.

4. Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park & Museum

301 S. Goldsboro St., Wilson

While the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Historic Downtown Wilson was built around the playful, recycled sculptures made by namesake Vollis Simpson, it was a community effort. The farm machinery repairman began making gigantic kinetic sculptures at his family farm in Wilson County as he neared retirement age, and kept building the “whirligigs” every single day until about six months before he died at the age of 94 in May 2013.

While his farm was located 11 miles outside of Wilson, in 2010, a plan was announced to create the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Historic Downtown Wilson. Simpson was delighted that his work would survive and continue to delight people for generations to come. 

The park and museum opened in 2017, and the best part? No entrance fee. 

 

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5. Shangri-La Stone Village

11535 NC-86, Prospect Hill

Located off the side of Highway 86 northwest of Durham, this tiny village is a storybook town comprising buildings around 5 feet tall, all of which were made of stone from a local quarry. 

The village is the sole creation of Henry Warren, who began building Shangri-La in 1968 at the age of 72. In all, there are 27 buildings in the village, including a school, a church, a theater, a hospital, and a mill. Warren, a retired tobacco farmer, hand-picked the rocks and single-handedly built every aspect of the attraction. In 1972, Warren placed a plaque in the village that reads, “Let me live in the house by the side of the road and be a friend to man.” 

Shangri-La welcomes visitors at any time for no charge.

Photo courtesy of Joel Haas/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

6. Belhaven Memorial Museum

210 E. Main St., Belhaven

We promised you weird, and it does not get much weirder than Belhaven Memorial Museum. If you visit the Beaufort County site, you’ll find a benign enough explanation of how this attraction came to be: “The Belhaven Memorial Museum is a non-profit organization whose mission is to collect, display and preserve historical and cultural artifacts and objects and to stimulate and encourage interest and support of the history, art, science and culture of the Belhaven area, of Beaufort County, and of eastern North Carolina. The museum builds upon the original collection of Mrs. Eva Blount Way (1869-1962).” 

And yet, if you’re to visit Roadside America’s entry on Belhaven, you’ll learn that Mrs. Way was no normal collector. “Way died in 1962 at age 92, and all the stuff originally in her home was moved to the museum three years later. Her sprawling house, abandoned ever since, crumbles on the outskirts of town. Prospective buyers are probably terrified at the thought of what lies beneath its floorboards.” 

Their fear is warranted based on what’s already been taken from the home and is now on display in the museum. Just a sampling: three “freak” prenatal babies in jars that were given to Way by the town doctor; large, pickled tumors retrieved from the local hospital; a one-eyed fetal pig; a two-headed kitten; a harelipped dog; mummified squirrels; several snakes killed by Way — one stuffed, swallowing a wooden egg, another made into a necktie; ingrown toenails and cataracts. 

Yes, there are some actually interesting artifacts on display in Belhaven, but you’ll have to sift through a lot of weird stuff to get to it. 

 

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7. Last Shell Oil Clamshell Station

Corner of Sprague & Peachtree streets

Located in the Waughtown-Belview Historic District of Winston-Salem, the Last Shell Oil Clamshell Station would fit better in Bikini Bottom serving Spongebob & Company. According to Glove Trotters, R.H. Burton and his son, Ralph, local distributors for the Shell Company, built eight of these shell-shaped gas stations throughout North Carolina from 1930-33. As the name suggests, this one is the last remaining station. 

Built for just $5,000, the building was constructed of concrete stucco over a framework of wire and bent wood. The site remained a functioning gas station until the mid-1950s and eventually served as a lawn mower repair center in the ’70s and ’80s. Despite its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, by the 90’s, it had fallen into significant disrepair. Preservation North Carolina conducted a one-year renovation to restore the historic structure. The Shell Company even donated the replica lamp posts and restored gas pumps.

Photo courtesy of Chuck Coker/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

8. Satellite Park

414 Gattis St., Durham

More cool than weird, Durham’s Satellite Park consists of eight murals painted by local artists on decommissioned satellites on the grounds of the Duke Arts Annex. Tel Com originally installed the satellites in 1991 to deliver educational programming for Duke Cable TV, but they were junked in the late ’90s during the rise of the internet. 

After two decades of loneliness on the side of the Burch Ave hill, the artists graced them with beautiful works live during a community festival in 2018. There’s no admission to view the exquisite exhibit, but organizers ask that you leave the space exactly as you found it. 

 

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9. ‘Reminiscing’ aka The Giant Legs of Henderson

590 Welcome Ave., Henderson

Perhaps the most perplexing attraction on this list is the humongous display of a woman’s splayed legs, garter included, seemingly sticking out of the forest to welcome visitors to Henderson near the Virginia border. 

According to Roadside America, talented backhoe operator Ricky Pearce carved the legs as a memorial to Marilyn Monroe, inspired by the famous photo of her in a billowing dress promoting the movie Seven Year Itch. It may, however, not do justice to say he simply carved it. He actually carved two 17-foot-high, 40-foot-long legs with his backhoe, cast them in the ground with reinforced concrete, then lifted the 80-ton sculpture so that it wouldn’t collapse. 

While some neighbors have decried the sculpture, it has survived the controversy over time and this year celebrates two decades of odd tribute.

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.