Monument of States
A 50-foot obelisk of 1,500 stones donated from every US state and 21 countries, cemented together in 1943.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Kissimmee · Osceola
Free
Free
9WEIRD
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PLACES IN FLORIDA BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Florida has an unusual concentration of buildings that one person decided to make and then kept on making, generally without planning permission, engineering advice, or anybody asking them to.
The pattern repeats. Cheap land, a long life, and a material nobody else wanted. Edward Leedskalnin had oolitic limestone. Howard Solomon had a local newspaper's discarded aluminium printing plates. Charles Bressler-Pettis wrote to governors and strangers and asked each of them to post him a rock. What comes out of that is not folk art in the tidy sense; it is closer to a single argument made in stone over forty years, still standing after the person making it has stopped.
Twelve entries, from the internationally famous to the barely signposted. Several are now run by the family of the person who built them, which is a monument of a different kind.
12
ENTRIES
2
FREE TO VISIT
8/10
MEDIAN STRANGENESS
8
COUNTIES
Presidents Hall of Fame
Every US president in wax, plus a 60-foot hand-built model of the White House with working chandeliers.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Clermont · Lake
$20
$20
9WEIRD
Solomon's Castle
A three-storey castle clad in 90,000 discarded aluminium printing plates, with a Spanish galleon restaurant in the moat.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Ona · Hardee
$15 tour
$15 tour
9WEIRD
Wonder House
A concrete house begun in 1926 with secret passages, a moat, and a cooling system decades ahead of itself.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON · RUIN
Bartow · Polk
Tours by arrangement
Tours by arrangement
9WEIRD
Ancient Spanish Monastery
A 12th-century Spanish cloister, dismantled, shipped in 11,000 numbered crates, and reassembled in Florida.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
North Miami Beach · Miami-Dade
$10
$10
8WEIRD
Bok Tower Gardens
A 205-foot marble and coquina bell tower on Florida's highest ridge, containing 60 bells and the ashes of the man who built it.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Lake Wales · Polk
$18
$18
8WEIRD
Coral Castle
1,100 tons of coral rock, quarried and stacked by one very small man who would not say how.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Homestead · Miami-Dade
$25 adult
$25 adult
8WEIRD
Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park
A real 1565 archaeological site wrapped around a spring that a 19th-century promoter decided was Ponce de León's fountain.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
St. Augustine · St. Johns
$20
$20
8WEIRD
The Ringling Circus Museum
A Venetian Gothic palace on Sarasota Bay, an art museum, and a 3,800-square-foot miniature circus built over fifty years by one man.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
Sarasota · Sarasota
$25 estate ticket
$25 estate ticket
8WEIRD
Sunken Gardens
A century-old tropical garden growing fifteen feet below street level in a drained lake bed.
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St. Petersburg · Pinellas
$15
$15
7WEIRD
The Dalí Museum
The largest Dalí collection outside Spain, in a hurricane-proof concrete box with a 75-foot glass bubble growing out of it.
BUILT BY ONE PERSON
St. Petersburg · Pinellas
$29
$29
7WEIRD
Photo
Whimzeyland
A residential lot surfaced in several thousand painted bowling balls, and still growing.
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Safety Harbor · Pinellas
Free from the sidewalk
Free from the sidewalk
7WEIRD
BROWSE THE REST OF THE REGISTER
BY TYPE
Built by one person 12
Geological oddities 7
Cryptids 1
Haunted 6
Underwater 7
Roadside giants 9
Animals 12
Ruins and abandoned places 10
Strange towns 3
Machines and vessels 1
BY REGION
The Panhandle 5
North Florida 4
Central Florida 15
The Gulf Coast 11
The Atlantic Coast 4
South Florida 11
The Keys 10
BY COST
Free to visit 24