Root Cellar Capital of the World

Elliston, Newfoundland

Elliston declared itself the "Root Cellar Capital of the World" in July 2000. At the time there were 133 of them, tunneled into the rocky hillsides around town, keeping the town's meager crop of vegetables -- laboriously fertilized with seaweed and fish guts -- warm in winter and cool in summer. The arrival of electricity in the 1950s made the cellars mostly obsolete, but enough have survived to make Elliston a "Discovery Geopark" in Canada.

The town's website asserts that, "the root cellar was the initial item that put Elliston on the map," and adds that local parents told their children that babies came from root cellars.