The Gem Hunt
America decides what makes the map.
Every state has a spot the algorithms miss — the one locals send strangers to. Name it. Vote on the finalists. The winners get built into Roamward, the scenic road-trip app that proves you actually went. No download required to play.
Nominate
What does Missouri do better than anywhere?
One hidden gem — a place a chatbot would never know. The most-named spots become finalists, and the crowd votes the winner into Roamward.
Vote
Missouri gems, most-loved first
- 1Ha Ha Tonka State ParkThe burned-out shell of a 1920s stone castle crowns the bluffs above a turquoise spring and the Lake of the Ozarks near Camdenton, with fifteen miles of trails past sinkholes and caves.
- 2World's Largest PecanA 12,000-pound concrete pecan parked right on Highway 24 in Brunswick, north-central Missouri's self-styled Pecan Capital — free, always visible, exactly the right two-minute photo stop.
- 3Elephant Rocks State ParkA train of billion-and-a-half-year-old pink granite boulders stacked end-to-end like circus elephants in the St. Francois Mountains near Belleview, with a short accessible loop to scramble.
- 4Grand FallsMissouri's largest continuously flowing waterfall spreads 163 feet wide over a chert ledge on Shoal Creek just outside Joplin, in the far southwest near Route 66.
- 5Laumeier Sculpture ParkA free 105-acre open-air museum where 60-plus monumental sculptures sit scattered through woods and meadows in Sunset Hills, just southwest of St. Louis, open dawn to dusk year-round.
- 6Red Oak IIA painter hauled in a whole vanished town's worth of buildings and rebuilt his boyhood village from scratch on the prairie northeast of Carthage — free, just off Route 66, like a 1930s photograph come to life.
- 7Hughes Mountain Devil's HoneycombA short uphill walk in the St. Francois Mountains lands you on a field of hexagonal rock columns, 1.5-billion-year-old volcanic rhyolite cracked into a stone honeycomb — best at sunset.
- 8Grand Bluffs Conservation AreaA one-mile climb near Rhineland tops out at a wooden deck on 300-foot dolomite cliffs, with the Missouri River and bottomland farms below — one of the best river overlooks in the state, near Hermann's wine country.
- 9Glore Psychiatric MuseumBuilt on the grounds of a former asylum in St. Joseph, this unflinching museum traces four centuries of mental-health treatment through full-scale recreations and patient-made art — genuinely haunting.
- 10Tower Rock Natural AreaA 400-million-year-old limestone tower rises straight out of the Mississippi River near Wittenberg, ringed by whirlpools that once terrified flatboat crews — viewable from a shoreline overlook year-round.
Not your state’s turn yet?
Want Roamward to map Missouri next?
Add your vote — the loudest state gets mapped first.
How it works
Nominate
Drop the most underrated spot in your state — the gem an itinerary generator would never surface.
The crowd ranks it
Name a place someone already nominated and it rises. The most-loved gems become the state’s finalists.
Vote the winner in
Finalists go to a public vote. Winners get built into Roamward — credited to the people who found them.
Go verify it
Drive it, GPS-verify the stop, earn the badge, and share the map that proves you were first.
Don’t miss the winners
Be the first to find what the crowd picks.
Join early access and we’ll tell you when your state’s gem wins — and when Roamward opens for iOS testing.
Get early access