It appears that snow has fallen in hell! At least it has along “The Devil’s Highway“. Let’s take a drive down former US Route 666 to see what kind of trouble we can get into.

Beginning in the mile high state of Colorado and running south through the Sonoran desert, the demonically-named road ends in Douglas, Arizona along the Mexican border.

This highway was of course named for bearing the Number of the Beast, but a high number of vehicular fatalities attached a stigma to the road that persists, despite it having been renamed in 2003. This may have been due in part to a serious bout of “chronic sign theft“.

Theft along the Devil’s Highway you say? To be expected for sure!

There’s definitely some sort of dark magic happening on the highway, as you can see in this aerial shot south of Gallup, New Mexico, where the road has been sliced into two parts, which run alongside but never into each other¹!

While the route number and nickname draw many tourists on their own, many often stop by to see another spectacular sight, the Shiprock rock formation (Wikipedia). It’s close enough to the road that even the Street View car got a good look!

“The day it snows in hell” appears to have arrived in this shot as well, as there is clearly snow on the ground right in the middle of America’s hottest desert.

Like Route 666, the Sonoran desert stretches from the Mexican border to Colorado; covering an impressive 311,000 square km. It’s home to dozens of mammal, fish and amphibian species, hundreds of bird species, and thousands of native bee and plant species; as well as America’s only population of Jaguars!

It is also the only place in the world the famous saguaro cactus grows, despite being an international symbol for deserts.²

Route 666 and the Sonoran desert are in an area of extremes. In the day the sun scorches down on all weary travellers. At night the heat dissipates to the point that there is often snow on the ground by morning. You fall asleep sweating, you wake up freezing.

So consider yourself warned. The desert is is desolate, rugged, and rough. But come on! If you’re going to travel the Devil’s Highway, you going to face some evils, right?

Locations: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah / Categories: Deserts, Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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South End:

North End:

The track stretches for almost 16km across the desert – you have to zoom out a long way to see the whole thing!

It is used by the Holloman Air Force Base to test new vehicle, munitions and missile technologies by propelling rocket-powered sleds at ever-increasing velocities. The current speed record, set in 2008, is 10,604km/hour – that’s Mach 9 or about 3km per second!

From a standing start, the sled with multiple-stage rockets travelled 6km of the track in just six seconds! The track was enclosed in a helium-filled tent to reduce drag, but this YouTube video gives a pretty good idea of how awesome it must have been to witness!

There’s not much to see along the track on the Google Maps view, other than a slight image overlap problem, but Live Maps does show some kind of vehicle on one part of the track.

It’s worth reading the before and after of the record attempt, and some of these pictures of previous tests are fascinating.

Thanks to Ryan C.

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Other Vehicles

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The scale of the VLA operation is quite remarkable- each dish is 25m across and weighs 209 tonnes. They travel on train tracks which make up each of the three 21km arms of the array. A specially designed locomotive maneuvers the antennas into different configurations for specific observations.

The 27 antennas effectively provide the imaging capability of an antenna 36km wide, with the sensitivity of a dish 130m across. This allows the study of the sun, planets, black holes, pulsars, quasars and myriad other astronomical objects.

Construction was started in 1973 and completed – $78.5million later – in 1980. Currently, new hardware is being installed to improve the capabilites of the observatory – making it the Expanded Very Large Array, and funding is sought to add further dishes across the state to expand the system even further.

The VLA has featured in several movies including Contact, Independence Day and 2010: Odyssey Two.

It was apparently a location of interest for the driver of the Street View Car. Not content to pass by on Highway 60, which crosses the tracks, but without a good view of any dishes …

… a detour was taken down Old Highway 60, past a great view of many dishes, to the point where it reaches the tracks directly beneath one of the dishes.

Google Sightseeing has covered all sorts of telescopes in the past, some of which have received great image updates since they were first posted.

Thanks to the many readers who suggested this one: james v, Stilt, Tim, Matt, Jonathan Hoppe, Benjamin, Benjamin, Doug Hershberger, Jarrod Lombardo, Leandro Garcia, Glenn, Trevor, Derek and Yablo.

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Movie Locations, Street Views, Structures

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As we drive through the barren desert, with nothing for miles around, the monotony is broken by the sight of a hitchhiker, who optimistically sticks his thumb out for the passing camera car.

But our cruel driver cruises on past, while heartlessly documenting this man’s plight from all angles.

As we drive off into the distance, with no other cars to be seen for miles, the man doubtless vows that he’ll only ever use Live Search from now on…

Thanks to Rob.

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Street Views

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• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Anchorage, Alaska
• Austin, Texas
• Cleveland, Ohio
• Fairbanks, Alaska
• Little Rock, Arkansas
• Madison, Wisconsin
• Nashville, Tennessee
• Rockford, Illinois
• Richmond, Virginia
• Spokane, Washington
• St. Petersburg, Florida
• Tampa, Florida

Finally, Google have also added imagery for the few roads that run through Yosemite National Park, California, which enables us to see some pretty stunning scenery.

Here’s El Capitan, a 910 metre vertical rock formation that’s a popular challenge for rock climbers, and some spectacular Giant Redwoods living up to their name!

Read the full story at the Google Lat Long Blog, read more about El Capitan and Giant Redwoods at Wikipedia.

Locations: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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The very high-resolution image shows the “tech superstar” attendees lying around the grass with a simple “Welcome to Foo Camp” sign, but surely it was a missed opportunity for writing messages with human bodies? Of course, if the Google Sightseeing team are invited to next year’s Foo Camp, then we’ll definitely organise everyone to spell out a rude message.

Updated: It turns out that the Foo Campers did draw exciting things in the Orchard, it’s just that only a small part of the image was uploaded to the default Google Earth layer. I’ve created a Google Earth image overlay of the full-sized image (2.28MB).

The Wirefly X Prize Cup was a space exposition held during October 20-21, 2006, that featured all sorts of space related fun including “Live rocket launches, prize competitions, rocket plane flights, jet pack flights, astronaut talks, an entire space theme park on the ground, and much more.”

As part of the event the organisers released lots of Google Earth content, including 3D models and the Google Earth Space Atlas, all of which can be downloaded from the Google’s mini site.

More info: FooCamp wiki on the overflight and Google Earth Blog post on the Wirefly X Prize photograph.

Locations: California, New Mexico / Categories: Aircraft, Crowds, Large Type, Spacecraft

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You can picnic, sandboard, and take guided orientation and nature walks here, however I’m pretty sure the guides won’t let you wander too far, as the monument is within the White Sands Missile Range. They actually close the monument to the public roughly twice a week to conduct tests! The most famous weapon tested at this range was the first ever detonation of an atomic bomb on July 16, 1945 – the infamous Trinity Test.

The brand-newly launched Yahoo Maps Beta has some stunning high-res images of the test site (and some very nifty features too). Compare the Google image with the Yahoo one:

We look forward to receiving a deluge of Yahoo Maps submissions!

Thanks to Allen Ormond, Shital Shah, Richard, Tim Gregory, Int13, Tyler, Richard Rowley, Kyle, Jeff, Mike, Earl, Alan, Steve Ransom, Rob Marshall, Bruno, Matt Musselman, Mr. Putty, an MP, woowoowoo, Percel and Matt

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Monuments, Natural Landmarks

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Apparently the artist (yes, this is art) needs only 60 more fridges to complete his 8-year-old dream. There’s an article about Stonefridge at the Albuquerque Tribune which has details of how to donate your old fridges.

Thanks to Russ.

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Monuments, Structures

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Perhaps you’d prefer Denver to New Mexico? No problem, they’ve got a similar setup. Most of the houses in these areas have large hangars to house their planes, but the odd one is parked outside.

But what about those houses which aren’t directly on the runway (like this one in another community in Dallas)? That’s no problem as the connecting roads are extra-wide to accommodate you driving your plane down to the runway for your Sunday afternoon flights.

Thanks: Myke Westover, BlueTypewriter & Mousky

Locations: Colorado, New Mexico, Texas / Categories: Aircraft

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According to former members of the group, future Scientology fans will be able to travel through time and space, in a spacecraft which looks a lot like a Douglas DC-8 airliner, to reach this site.

More about the area in a recent Washington post article.

Thanks: hominid & phillias

Locations: New Mexico / Categories: Weirdness

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