Secret USA Map: 25 Maps of Silos, Ghost Towns and Obsessions

More than 400,000 maps on MapIndex lie in the United States. Under the road trips and national park checklists are people who count things nobody else counts. One mapped 57,593 warning sirens by make and model. Another tested payphones from Penn Station to Yosemite and wrote down which ones still work. A group of peace activists gave every nuclear missile silo on the Great Plains a name of its own.

Missile Silo Map: 550 Nuclear Sites Renamed by Activists

550 silos and launch control centers in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota and Montana, and not one keeps its Air Force number alone. The control center at A1 is “Doomsday”, G1 near Minot is “The Little Shop of Horrors”, and the missiles around them are “Life’s End”, “Outright Insanity”, “Vengeful Aim” and, at J9, “Leave this Land for the Prairie Dogs and Wildflowers”. The map accompanies Nukewatch’s book on the remaining land-based missiles.

Objects

550550 points

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Border Surveillance Map: 598 Towers, Blimps and Hidden Cameras

The southern border’s watchers, point by point: 598 surveillance towers sorted by Border Patrol sector and station, tethered radar balloons from Yuma to Marfa, face-recognition lanes at every port of entry, and a “Covert ALPR” layer of plate readers disguised as construction barrels along the highways east of San Diego. Each entry cites its source, a procurement document or an environmental assessment, and carries a Street View link to check it yourself.

Objects

874874 points

Countries

United StatesMexico

Made with

Google My Maps
Ghost Town Map USA: 1,900 Places That Died

Every ghost town here comes with the reason it died. Ludlow, California, lived off Route 66 until I-40 replaced it and now has 10 residents. Kaskaskia, the first capital of Illinois, ended up on the wrong side of the Mississippi. And Nothing, Arizona, is remembered by its own town sign: its citizens “had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing.”

Objects

1,9341,934 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaAustraliaand 65 more

Made with

Google My Maps
AT&T Long Lines Map: Cold War Microwave Towers

5,304 points along the microwave relay chain that carried America’s long-distance calls, each tower described as someone found it: “tower gone, bunker present” in Fort Stockton, “red-and-white, VERY abandoned” in Midlothian, “tower demolished 1998, looks abandoned 2008” in Freeport. The notes count the horn antennas still on each tower and mark the former AUTOVON switch at Mounds, Oklahoma.

Objects

5,3043,890 points, 1,362 lines, 52 areas

Countries

United StatesCanadaMexicoand 1 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Haunted Places Map USA: 1,100 Ghost Stories

Every pin tells its legend in a few lines. At Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, foreman James “Slag” Wormwood fell into molten ore in 1906, or was pushed by the men whose 47 colleagues died on his watch. In Bear Creek Swamp sheriffs removed 21 white-painted dolls on bamboo stakes in 2014. And in Whittier, Alaska, all 160 residents live in one building, Begich Towers, with a ghost that whistles.

Objects

1,1031,103 points

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Atomic America Map: Missile Sites That Became Something Else

1,634 launch sites from Atlas to Peacekeeper, sorted by the years each system stood on alert, with notes on what happened next. Kansas holds the best stories: Atlas E 548-9 was sold to a school district for one dollar and turned into a high school, and 548-7 housed an illegal LSD lab until authorities shut it down around November 2000.

Objects

1,6341,634 points

Countries

United StatesRussian FederationUkraineand 2 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Payphone Map USA: 500 Phones and Which Still Work

Each pin is a phone number. The maker sorted them into working, possibly working, dead and courtesy phones, with the date each one was confirmed: the bank of phones in Penn Station’s lower level “between Hilton Corridor and Long Island Railroad”, the ones in Yosemite Valley, a theater phone with TTY. A census of a vanishing network, dated phone by phone.

Objects

497497 points

Countries

United StatesCanada

Made with

Google My Maps
Abandoned Railroad Map: 16,000 Lost Lines

16,332 dead railroad lines drawn as lines, each with its length, the railroads that ran it and the year it closed: Denrock to Mendota, Illinois, 47.6 miles, abandoned 1985. Separate layers hold logging and military railroads, interurbans, lines that were reactivated and lines that were planned and never built. Sources are cited, down to the remark that one old book spells Zearing “Ziering”.

Objects

16,33216,332 lines

Countries

United StatesCanadaUnited Kingdomand 158 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Columbo Filming Locations: Seven Seasons of Murder

158 locations sorted by season, each with the episode and what stands there now. The murderer’s lover in the pilot lives in the Stahl House, which you can visit by reservation. Ken Franklin’s “San Diego” cabin is actually on Big Bear Lake, “nowhere near San Diego”. And Columbo discusses a life insurance policy at Tail o’ the Pup, the hot dog stand opened in 1946.

Objects

158158 points

Countries

United StatesUnited KingdomMexicoand 1 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Siren Map USA: 57,593 Warning Sirens by Model

Each siren is named by its make and model, Federal Signal STH-10, Sterling M-10, Sentry 3V8, and many carry a note from someone who listened: “Ungodly low”, “Every Saturday at noon”, “Motor burnt up around 2011”, “Wires cut by neighbors in 2008”. Around the Beaver Valley nuclear plant one entry after another reads “Disconnected as a part of BVNP shutting of 52 sirens”.

Objects

57,59357,593 points

Countries

United StatesAmerican SamoaCanada

Made with

Google My Maps
Nevada Test Site Map: A 2010 Bus Tour Through Ground Zero

A visitor’s day inside the Nevada Test Site in June 2010, leg by leg. Icecap was three days from being blown up when the 1992 moratorium stopped all testing, and its cables still lie on the ground. A bank vault tested with money inside “looks pretty beat up” but the money survived. The Device Assembly Facility “looks like a fort”, and the cafeteria stop was annoying because they were re-waxing the floors.

Objects

8258 points, 24 lines

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Muffler Men Map: 400 Fiberglass Giants

A hunter of roadside giants keeps two lists, visited and unvisited, plus a legend that sorts the giants by type (“Classic/Cowboys: clean-shaven giants with different clothing than lumberjacks”). The notes track each statue’s fate: Copeland’s Cowboy in Grove, Oklahoma, “SOLD - Moved to an as-yet named site in Dallas”, and the Muffler Man in Hatch, New Mexico, holds a small RV behind a chain link fence.

Objects

419419 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaMexico

Made with

Google My Maps
Shipwreck Map: 2,400 Wrecks of the Americas

2,448 wrecks with their histories, from HMS Investigator, abandoned in Arctic ice in 1853 while searching for Franklin and found in 2010, to the Edmund Fitzgerald. Some of the darkest lie off the East Coast: the SS Mormactern was scuttled in 1968 carrying sarin and VX. The layer names are Norwegian, “Nord-Amerika” and “Stillehavet”.

Objects

2,4482,447 points, 1 area

Countries

United StatesCanadaBahamasand 42 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Holiday Inn Map: What Became of 900 Great Sign Motels

911 Holiday Inns from the era of the “Great Sign”, each with its highway and its fate: “Opened July 1962; Demolished 2013” in Anniston, “lot still vacant 2015” in Auburn, “Now Hiway Host Motel. Back row of rooms demolished; pool removed” in Bessemer. In downtown Birmingham the old Holiday Inn is now the Royal Inn, “in dubious condition; pool is full of broken toilets”.

Objects

911911 points

Countries

United StatesCanada

Made with

Google My Maps
Weird America Map: Cults, Cryptids and Phantoms

794 strange stories across the Midwest and Appalachia, in layers called “Boucoups of Cults! (and the Occasional Witch!)” and “UFO-No!”. The Loveland Frog “carries a wand wherever it goes”, Mud Mermaids terrified 1800s Vevay from the banks of the Ohio, and at Stepp Cemetery in Indiana a sect that believed the earth was square left behind a “Warlock’s Chair”.

Objects

794794 points

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Bunker Map USA: Who Owns the Underground Now

335 bunkers and silos sorted by what they are today: museums, private bunkers in use, silos on farms “likely not in good shape”, an Atlas F turned into a tourist B&B in Kansas, and active government sites like Raven Rock and Mount Weather. A “Likely Spots” layer explains its suspicions, such as a building in Washington with “clear access under building seen, ventilation on east side”.

Objects

335335 points

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Truck Stop Map: Internet Speeds and Truckers' Notes

A driver’s own reviews of 100 truck stops, rest areas and yards in the West, dated and blunt. At the Fernley Pilot “officially 160 parking spots, but it’s more like 300+”, with decent Indian food and a classy mini casino. At the Bouse Wash rest area in Arizona the speed test never finished: “I’ve seen rocks move faster across Arizona’s desert floor.”

Objects

100100 points

Countries

United States

Made with

Google My Maps
Old West Map: Outlaws, Robberies and Gunfights

917 places of the frontier in ten layers, from the Overland Trails and Lewis and Clark to the Robberies and Gunfighters and Lawmen. The notes tell each story at length: the James-Younger gang’s raid on the First National Bank of Northfield on 7 September 1876, Sam Bass spotted while buying tobacco before a robbery in 1878, and the Bellevue War in Iowa, “the first recorded shootout of the Antebellum West”.

Objects

917207 points, 15 lines, 695 areas

Countries

United StatesMexicoCanada

Made with

Google My Maps
Ghost Signs Map: 9,000 Faded Wall Ads of the West

9,384 painted advertisements fading on brick walls from Washington to Montana, each with a few words from the person who found it. “Fair was a store that closed in 1916” in Colfax. The Dougan Building in Tacoma “was painted many times and the result is a busy blur”. A Coca-Cola sign in Port Townsend gets one word: “Sad”.

Objects

9,3849,384 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaMexico

Made with

Google My Maps
Railroad Crossing Bell Map: The Last Teardrops

791 teardrop crossing bells made by Union Switch & Signal, sorted by generation and by fate: active, out of service, on display, privately owned or removed. The surviving first-generation bell at Monticello, Illinois, comes with its milepost, track speed and trains per day, and a date verified of June 2026.

Objects

791791 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaBraziland 3 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Alien Abduction Map: 4,000 Reports Since 1593

4,086 abduction reports filed by decade, each with what the witness said and an “Explanation” where one exists. The oldest American case is Indio, California, in December 1896, marked “Hoax”. A 1957 highway abduction in California describes “thin, bony humanoids 7-8’ tall, wearing transparent clothes” and carries its “Vallee reliability rating”.

Objects

4,0864,086 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaUnited Kingdomand 70 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Thelma and Louise Route Map: Where They Really Drove

A fan works out the film’s road trip from the few clues it gives. The journey starts “somewhere in the vicinity of Little Rock”, so the map starts at the State Capitol. Thelma proposes the direct route to Mexico on US 81, Louise refuses to cross Texas, and the map draws each route they might have taken, down to the “Final Chance”.

Objects

3121 points, 10 lines

Countries

United StatesMexico

Made with

Google My Maps
Dead Mall Map USA: 600 Malls and When They Closed

626 dead and dying malls, state by state, each with its type, the year it opened, the year it closed and links to the enthusiasts who documented it. Birmingham’s Eastwood Mall opened in 1960, “one of the first malls of the South”, and closed in 2006; Dunnavants Mall in Huntsville is now a hospital’s medical mall.

Objects

626626 points

Countries

United StatesCanadaPhilippinesand 3 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Lost Speedway Map: 4,000 Race Tracks, Many Gone

4,177 oval tracks and drag strips with their years of racing, and a “USA Lost Ovals” layer for those gone. Ice Palace Raceway in Alaska ran 1973 to 1974 and became an airstrip. Of Birmingham’s Iron Bowl, from 1939, the “outline is barely visible”. Sand Lake Speedway, Anchorage’s first dirt track, “was VERY sandy and dusty”.

Objects

4,1774,130 points, 9 lines, 38 areas

Countries

United StatesCanadaAustraliaand 10 more

Made with

Google My Maps
Great Loop Map: 475 Stops by Boat Around the East

475 stops on the Great Loop, the water route around the eastern United States, with the warnings boaters need: the Champlain Canal’s clearance of 15 feet 5 inches, the Asian carp barrier near Chicago that you may pass only with the Coast Guard’s permission, and at Demopolis, Alabama, “Your next fuel stop is 98 miles away at Bobby’s Fish Camp”.

Objects

475355 points, 120 lines

Countries

United StatesCanadaBahamas

Made with

Google My Maps

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