At number ten the small town of Scary, West Virginia. Having the main street called Scary Road wasn’t frightening enough, so they named another street Big Scary Road!

At numbers nine and eight, we can just about make up the popular Halloween activity, by visiting Trickum Road and Treat Mountain Road, both in rural Georgia. Sadly they don’t intersect.

In the Netherlands we have a town named after a popular Halloween costume – Monster – which is number seven on our list. I’m not sure if it’s real graffiti, a real monster, or just an artifact of Google’s blurring efforts, but the town sign appears to have a ghoulish claw attached to the letter M!

Number six continues our monster theme. A touch of green face paint and a fake plastic bolt through the neck brings us to the tiny village of Frankenstein, Missouri.

Wikipedia claims that the town wasn’t actually named after Mary Shelley’s novel or its characters, but for a Gottfried Franken who donated land for the construction of a Church.

At number five we have one of the more popular decorations for Halloween parties – Spiderweb, South Carolina.

At numbers four and three we have a ghostly sound and a startled response – Boo, Sweden and Eek, Alaska.

Many children dress as pointy-hatted, wart-riddled old hags for Halloween, so (bending the rules slightly to include bodies of water as well as towns) at number two we have Witch Lake, Michigan.

We provide this handy graphic to help you understand how it got its name! Note the bonus Halloween content with Bat Lake just to the north-west!

No Halloween celebration would be complete without a gourd-like squash of the genus Cucurbita, carved into a gruesome face and lit from within by a candle. So tied for number one we have a pair of communities called Pumkpintown – one in South Carolina, the other in Tennessee.

Happy Halloween from all of us at Google Sightseeing! If you know of other Halloween-named towns, please post them in the comments.

Locations: Alaska, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Netherlands, South Carolina, Sweden, Tennessee, West Virginia / Categories: Street Views, Weirdness

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The bridge is a spectacular steel-arch construction which carries Highway 19 at a height of 267 metres over the New River. Completed in 1977, the New River Gorge Bridge was the highest road bridge in the world for the next 27 years, until it was finally surpassed in height by the Millau Viaduct in 2004.

The old bridge that it replaced is still visible way down at the bottom of the gorge. Locals apparently say that the new bridge cut the travel time from one side of the gorge to the other from 45 minutes, right down to 45 seconds.

The Street View car has paid the bridge a visit too, and the view on approach gives you an idea of just how massive a structure it is, spanning some 924 metres.

Halfway across there’s a rather nice view, but only from one side unfortunately. Although Wikipedia reckons an average of more than 16,000 cars cross the bridge each day, these images were obviously taken in the very early morning, as there’s hardly a soul to be seen.

What neither the satellite shots or the street view images show is how incredibly impressive this bridge looks from either side – so for that, we’ll have to refer you to Flickr instead.

There’s more on the New River Gorge Bridge at Wikipedia.

Thanks to SteveH and Loren.

Locations: West Virginia / Categories: Bridges

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What’s even more interesting though, is that this update includes a lot of the places in-between places – highways coast-to-coast are now on Street View, and the coverage in the US has actually been doubled.

This means that some of Google Sightseeing’s previously posted sights, like The Devil’s Tower are now visible in Street View for the first time.

While the update includes places in Maine, West Virginia, North Dakota and South Dakota, a full list of the updates hasn’t yet been compiled as far as I can tell.¹

With all this new coverage, perhaps you’ll be the person to stumble across the next street fight, house on fire, or epic bike-related fail – so get submitting your street view discoveries now!

Locations: Alabama, Maine, North Korea, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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