Portland, Oregon: National Hat Museum

Now boasting over 900 hats and still growing, the Hat Museum also continues to add other quirky and interesting items to various smaller collections. Personal tours are available 10am-6pm, 7 days a week (reservations still required - call first), which take about 75 minutes. [Note: 2013, this museum is no longer open for public tours].

Exhibits hats worn in the movies "Chicago" and "Gangs of New York," a clothes pin collection (the largest is a 10 foot clothes pin), John Steinbeck's doorstop...and now over 700 hats. You can take a tour any day of the week, but you do need a reservation.

America's only Hat Museum with 600 hats, located in the Ladd-Reingold House in Ladd's Addition, 6 minutes from downtown Portland. Four collections: Vintage, Men's, Novelty and Today's Hats. Also weird minor collections of things like John Steinbeck's door stop, British phone booth, couch made out of a 1966 Cadillac, the wedding cake from "The Woman Who Married Her House," the topless 1927 roadster that crossed the US twice, collections of eyeglasses, hamburgers, crowns and shoes with unusual heels. "The quirkiest attraction in Portland," and all this stuff is carefully arranged in the old Ladd-Reingold House -- on the National Historic Registry and featured on HGTV's "If Walls Could Talk" show.