Jamestown, North Dakota

On a bluff above Interstate 94 at Jamestown's Frontier Village stands Dakota Thunder, the World's Largest Buffalo — twenty-six feet tall and roughly sixty tons of stucco and cement built around a steel and wire-mesh frame. It was raised in 1959, designed by Jamestown College art professor Elmer Petersen and commissioned by local businessman Harold Newman. For fifty years it had no name; 'Dakota Thunder' was finally chosen in a 2010 contest that drew more than 3,500 entries. It overlooks the National Buffalo Museum and a small herd of live bison that graze below — including, over the years, rare white buffalo. Reach it from I-94 exit 258, north to 17th Street SW, also called Louis L'Amour Lane after the Jamestown-born Western novelist.