Caged Monument of Important Rocks

Maggie Valley, North Carolina

The Masons, a fraternal organization, held their North Carolina summer get-together at this spot for years. Always partial to rocks, the Masons decided to mark the location with a permanent rock monument. According to a large sign next to the monument -- now protected inside a metal fence -- the Masons gathered 687 rocks "from the various states, 41 nations, and every continent, including Antarctica." It was cemented together in 1938.

The monument suffers from a lack of a visual visitor guide to distinguish one rock from another -- but according to the Masons it includes a rock from an Egyptian pyramid, one from the Alamo, a couple of dinosaur gizzard stones, and chunks of the homes of three U.S. Presidents: Andrew Johnson, Warren Harding, and Franklin Roosevelt. There's also a Nicaraguan bird idol, a seven-foot-long stone window sill from a North Carolina jail, a brick from The White House, and a chunk of marble from the first statue of George Washington, which was destroyed in 1831.