Unique and Unusual Stores Across America

Aladdin feels less like a recreated historic attraction than a 19th-century mercantile that simply kept adapting to modern travelers.

American Science & Surplus turns closeouts, overruns, scientific equipment and miscellaneous industrial leftovers into an employee-owned store where useful tools, educational gear, toys and inexplicable components occupy the same aisles.

Angoon Trading Co. serves the Admiralty Island community as far more than a grocery store, combining everyday food with hardware, building supplies, clothing, gifts, freight logistics, and coffee in one independent shop.

Ax-Man Surplus has spent decades turning unwanted industrial and scientific inventory into a retail treasure hunt for artists, engineers, teachers, makers and anyone drawn to inexplicable components.

Big Chicken Barn turns a relic of Maine's poultry era into a two-story collecting universe: antiques and household objects below, mountains of books, magazines, newspapers and paper ephemera above.

Cowtown combines one of South Jersey's largest long-running vendor markets with a seasonal professional rodeo born from the same family-run commercial complex.

Crane’s takes the old rural one-stop-shop idea literally, combining groceries and deli food with practical farm, hardware, clothing, footwear and outdoor departments.

H.J. Smith's Son combines an operating hardware and general store with a densely packed family museum that includes a cypress dugout, old tools, a cast-iron casket and other artifacts.

Hasegawa General Store preserves the old catch-all meaning of 'general store,' serving Hāna with groceries and produce alongside apparel, fishing gear, books, household objects, wine, souvenirs and famously miscellaneous necessities.

Housewerks sells architectural and industrial antiques, furniture, lighting, hardware, doors, windows, garden pieces, and decorative objects inside Baltimore’s historic Bayard Station.

Hussey's turns the old one-stop rural mercantile idea up to an almost implausible scale, combining everyday groceries and hardware with sporting goods, clothing, farm supplies, furnishings and a serious bridal department.

Kaffie-Frederick combines practical hardware and housewares with classic toys and an upstairs gift shop inside a nineteenth-century Front Street store that still uses historic retail equipment.