Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Zion, the flat-earth theocracy
1900
Zion, Lake County, Illinois
22thecrobot · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A Scottish-Australian faith healer named John Alexander Dowie laid out this town on a grid in 1900 and ran it as his own church's property, with doctors, tobacco, alcohol, oysters and pork all forbidden. He was pushed out after a stroke by his lieutenant Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who took over the town, the church and the finances, and who spent the next thirty years using them to broadcast that the earth is flat. He offered a standing prize to anyone who could disprove it, and never paid out. The street plan is still Dowie's.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: approximate area
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