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 Washington 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
Washington gems, most-loved first
- 1Marsh's Free MuseumA free, gleefully bizarre curio shop on the Long Beach boardwalk whose star is Jake the Alligator Man, a mummified half-man-half-gator drawing the curious since 1967, with shrunken heads and penny machines.
- 2Ginkgo Petrified Forest State ParkPerched on basalt cliffs above the Columbia River near Vantage, one of the few places on earth where you can walk a trail past 15-million-year-old logs turned to stone, right off I-90.
- 3Salt Creek Recreation AreaA clifftop county park west of Port Angeles where low tide unveils some of the richest tide pools in the Northwest, framed by sea stacks and the blue sweep of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
- 4Stonerose Interpretive CenterIn the old mining town of Republic in the far northeast, the only public fossil dig in Washington hands you tools to split 50-million-year-old shale and keep up to three of your finds.
- 5The Mazama StoreA beloved family-run mercantile and bakery tucked just off the North Cascades Highway at the head of the Methow Valley, where fresh pastries fuel travelers before or after the high mountain passes.
- 6Dahmen BarnA former dairy barn in tiny Uniontown wrapped in a fence of over 1,000 rusted wagon wheels, now a free working artist studio and gallery — the perfect Palouse pull-off in the southeast wheat country.
- 7Lake Lenore CavesA short desert trail climbs to a row of shallow basalt rock-shelter caves scoured out by the Ice Age Missoula floods, the channeled scablands sprawling below, off Highway 17 near Soap Lake.
- 8Northwest Carriage MuseumOver 60 gleaming 19th-century carriages, buggies, and a stagecoach fill this surprising little museum in coastal Raymond, at the junction of Highways 101 and 6 — a five-dollar rainy-day detour that overdelivers.
- 9Maryhill Stonehenge MemorialA full-size concrete replica of Stonehenge perched on a bluff above the Columbia River, built as a WWI memorial and free to walk up to, with sightlines over the canyon near Goldendale.
- 10Hat 'n' BootsA 44-foot cowboy hat and a pair of 22-foot boots, salvaged from a 1950s gas station and now standing in Georgetown's Oxbow Park — a delightfully oversized, free photo stop south of downtown Seattle.
Not your state’s turn yet?
Want Roamward to map Washington 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