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 North Carolina 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
North Carolina gems, most-loved first
- 1Mystery HillA delightfully old-school house of optical illusions near Blowing Rock east of Boone, where water runs uphill and balls roll the wrong way — an easy goofy detour off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
- 2World's Largest Chest of DrawersA whole building shaped like a giant Victorian dresser, complete with two enormous socks dangling from a drawer, in downtown High Point — the self-styled furniture capital of the world.
- 3Emerald Village Gem MinesOld mica mines turned into a hands-on gem-panning and underground-tour complex near Little Switzerland, tucked in the Blue Ridge high country off the Parkway.
- 4World's Largest Frying PanA 15-foot cast-iron skillet parked in tiny Rose Hill, built to fry thousands of chickens at once — a quick, very Southern photo stop in the coastal-plain farm country.
- 5Mickey Coffee PotA giant tin coffee pot from 1858 that once marked a Moravian tinsmith's shop, still standing in Old Salem in Winston-Salem — a charming relic in the heart of the historic district.
- 6American Museum of the House CatTucked into a former general store on Highway 441 south of Sylva, one man's lifelong, gloriously overstuffed collection of cat memorabilia funds a local spay-neuter charity — a grin-inducing mountain detour.
- 7Vollis Simpson Whirligig ParkIn downtown Wilson, a two-acre field of towering kinetic sculptures — spinning, clattering folk-art windmills built from scrap by a self-taught outsider artist — free and best on a breezy day.
- 8Shangri-La Stone VillageOff Highway 86 in tiny Prospect Hill, a whole miniature town built knee-high from local quarry stone by a retired tobacco farmer in the 1960s — free, always open, quietly magical north of Durham.
- 9Judaculla RockDown a marked back road near Cullowhee, a massive soapstone boulder carved with more than 1,500 ancient Cherokee petroglyphs, the largest such site east of the Mississippi and still sacred today.
- 10Portsmouth VillageAt the northern tip of Cape Lookout National Seashore, reachable only by small boat from Ocracoke, a preserved ghost town whose last residents left in 1971 — the Outer Banks at their wildest.
Not your state’s turn yet?
Want Roamward to map North Carolina 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