Earlier this week archaeologists began excavating Stonehenge in an attempt to decide once and for all exactly when this enigmatic monument was constructed.

Stonehenge has most certainly been around many thousands of years, meaning there has been plenty of time for people to build loads of rip-offs and copies, most of them in the US.

Stonehenge II in Texas is a replica made from wire-mesh “stones” a bit like giant Papier-mâché. Strangely, the stones are about 90% the width of the originals, but only 60% the height - and if you make your way out to see the monument you’ll find it’s flanked by beer-bellied Easter island Moai. Obviously.

There’s ground level pictures on Flickr and more information at Roadside America.

Our second Stonehenge replica is found at Missouri’s University of Science and Technology is at least made of stone, this time made from 160 tons of granite carved with high pressure water jets. Sadly it’s only ½ the size of the original.

There’s also a ground level picture on Flickr.

East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania have a small replica which they apparently dubbed “Stroudhenge”.

Montana’s Stonehenge is located on a private golf course in Montana, and is claimed to be the most accurate replica ever built. But no-one’s been able to confirm that as the golf club is so exclusive.

Lastly, it’s difficult to see from the satellite photos, but Truckhenge whilst not a faithful reproduction certainly scores points through being constructed entirely in the medium of trucks. More info and pictures on Kansas Travel.

Thanks to Henderson Smith, James, FBK and others.

Previously on Google Sightseeing we’ve featured Stonefridge, Maryhill’s Stonehenge, the Segway Inventor’s Stonehenge and a little-known version in England simply called “Stonehenge“.

In 1962, a landfill site in Centralia, Pennsylvania was set on fire. The rubbish was located in the pit of an abandoned strip mine, and although it was believed to have been extinguished at the time, the fire actually remained burning in the lower depths and eventually spread to an eight-mile seam of coal, where it has now been burning for 46 years.

Initial attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continued to burn throughout the 1960s and 1970s. It soon became apparent that carbon monoxide produced by the blaze was having adverse effects upon the health of the locals, but it wasn’t until 1979 that people became aware of the scale of the problem:

a gas-station owner inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 77.8°C (172°F).

A couple of years later a 12-year-old boy fell into a 45 metre-deep sinkhole that suddenly opened beneath his feet, and people began to leave this place in earnest. Centralia’s population dwindled from over 1,000 residents in 1981 to just 9 in 2007. Today, all buildings within the borough have been condemned (you can see in the satellite shots that there are hardly any left now), and the few that remain lost their ZIP codes back in 2002.

To the south we can see a section of Pennsylvania Route 61 which had to be abandoned when, despite repeated repairs, huge smoking cracks kept appearing in the highway. We can see in Google’s imagery that today the road is becoming overgrown with plant-life, and yet the cracks in the earth still belch toxic smoke into the air here every day.

In 1994, this section of Route 61 was permanently closed, and we can easily see the road block which is used to direct traffic along Byrnesville Road instead.

As you read this post the underground fire continues to burn, and it is now estimated to underlie around 160 hectares (400 acres) of land.

Furthermore, it seems that this fire will continue to burn for some time to come; there are no current plans to extinguish it and the eight-mile coal seam constitutes enough fuel to last about 250 years.

Read more about Centralia at Wikipedia, explore a photo gallery of the area, or see some before and after shots of a previously inhabited area.

Thanks to George Dorn, greg, David, Rich Holmes, Sensei Sparky and Lars Christensen.

When we first saw this sports field of a Pennsylvania high school, we reacted with “Oh, great, another crudely drawn willy, are there really no original field graffitti artists anymore?”

Unable to say anything worthwhile, we forgot about this sight and relegated it to the slow news day pile.

However, today we’ve been swamped with emails suggesting the sight, so we’re posting it now purely because we really don’t want to see it ever again.

Please, stop suggesting we look at this penis. We can’t take it anymore.¹

Many thanks to Tom, Steve, J Brett, Rich, Guido, H Dog, Mike and many, many others for thinking of us

Despite being widely touted as the longest trains in the world, the up-to 2.5 kilometre-long freight trains which bring iron ore to Nouadhibou, Mauritania may not be particularly unique in their length.

On the day these images were captured, the longest train we can see at Nouadhibou (as measured with Google Earth’s measuring tool) is approximately 1.97km long.

In the past we’ve seen some other extremely long trains, like these 2.2 kilometre-plus coal trains in Wyoming, and over in Pennsylvania there’s a freight train which measures 2.98km from one end to the other - a whole kilometre longer than those in Mauritania.

However, all these trains could have been put to shame by the locomotives of Port Hedland, Western Australia - if only there had been any really long ones around when these images were taken.

Sadly, the longest I could find here was a distinctly average 2.2km, which falls far short of their longest ever, which purportedly consisted of 8 engines, 682 cars and totalled a staggering 7.3km - which quite probably would have made it the longest train of all time.

So, has anyone got a longer one to show us?

For more like this, see our posts on Incredibly Long Trains and Bailey Yard. Thanks to Helge Fahrnberger, Romke Soldaat and the Keyhole users.

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that:

if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

So in celebration, we’re posting Woodstock, Illinois, the location where most of the scenes from the excellent Bill Murray comedy of the same name were filmed (although it was actually set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania). And yes, in our thumbnail of the town square you can actually see “Gobbler’s Knob”…

For fans of the movie, the official Woodstock website has a PDF map which identifies all the locations used.

Thanks to Nev, Arthur and Pat.

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that:

if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

So in celebration, we’re posting Woodstock, Illinois, the location where most of the scenes from the excellent Bill Murray comedy of the same name were filmed (although it was actually set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania). And yes, in our thumbnail of the town square you can actually see “Gobbler’s Knob”…

For fans of the movie, the official Woodstock website has a PDF map which identifies all the locations used.

Thanks to Nev, Arthur and Pat.

Here’s the longest stone arch bridge in the world, the Rockville Bridge in Pennsylvania (Wikipedia page). It was opened in 1902 and (as you can clearly see on the linked Google map) carries heavy railroad traffic to this day.

There’s a great-old postcard of the bridge at Wikipedia which claims the record of “longest stone bridge”. However the Anping Bridge in China is also made of stone, and has been around much, much longer.

It seems that there truly is no end to the number of possible records to be broken.

Thanks to Jonathan Hoppe and RJ Marquette.

Not as popular here in the UK as it is in the US, we still know all about Hershey’s chocolate - we’ve even had S’mores! Damn they were good… I see you don’t even have to bother making them yourself anymore though.

However, we didn’t know that Hershey’s had a chocolate-themed amusment park! Actually, Hersheypark has some pretty cool-looking wooden coasters as well as around 60 other rides and attractions.

More about Hershey’s, Hersheypark and other chocolate-related stuff over at Wikipedia.

Thanks to GoatJuggler.