Diana Hubbell

New York

Journalist at Freelance

Associate Editor, Places at Atlas Obscura

James Beard-winning food journo Associate Editor, Places @atlasobscura Illo by Adam Waito. She/Her

Articles

Mission Point Lighthouse

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Michigan is home to some 129 lighthouses, more than any other state in the country, and the one at the tip of Old Mission Peninsula—located on the 45th parallel looking out across Grand Traverse Bay’s azure waters—is as idyllic as they get. Meander up route M-37, past the many riesling, pinot gris, and cab franc vineyards that make this one of the most celebrated AVAs in the Midwest, until the state highway essentially dead ends into the lake.
Carlson’s Fishery

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Suspended over the mouth of the Leland river, where water tumbles over a dam that connects Lake Leelanau to the ombre turquoise shoreline of Lake Michigan, is Fishtown, a preserved and protected collection of turn-of-the-last-century fishing shanties.
Cannery Boat Museum

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Situated on the water’s edge in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, as a part of Glen Haven Historic Village, this cherry-red building emblazoned with white letters was once the Glen Haven Canning Co. Instead of packing stone fruit, it is now home to a boat museum.
Salt & Straw Wants to Help You Create Your Own Ice Cream Flavors

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell |Tyler Malek

In the eighth century, as Arab Muslims landed on the island of Sicily, they brought with them an ancestral version of ice cream. Known as sharbat, this ancient Persian treat consists of ice or snow drizzled with flavored syrups: rose, lemon, or sour cherries. Back in Persia, confectioners would rely on yakhchāls, ingenious insulated structures capable of preserving ice in the desert, but in Sicily, the upper slopes of Mount Etna provided ample snow.
Gwen Frostic Prints

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Gwen Frostic was, until her death in 2001, one of the Midwest’s most treasured artists. The Michigan native—who never married, never drove, and lived until the day before her 95th birthday—was known for block prints of morel mushrooms, forest trillium, barn owls, birch bark trees, the first violets of spring, the amphibians in her beloved “frog pond,” and more.
The Glenwood

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Across Main Street from Portage Lake, in an early 1900s building that was first a warehouse for “Fountain of Youth” bottled water and later a summer resort (think: Dirty Dancing meets roadside supper club), is today a locally loved restaurant called The Glenwood. For the past 30 years, the white tablecloth and knotty pine-paneled dining room has bridged a delicate gap—charmingly stuck in time without feeling dated.
Black Balsam Knob

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

The large-scale timbering of Appalachia's forest decimated old-growth, but it also opened up huge swaths of land. That's what makes Black Balsam Knob so enticing: most Appalachian peaks are covered in dense woods, blocking potential panoramas. Many mountaintop views are visible only in the winter. That's not the case at Black Balsam Knob, a sprawling grassy area where you can see for miles year-round. These balds were created by a combination of clearcuts and fire.
Burger Bar

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

The most storied country music city that's not named Nashville is probably Bristol. The city sits on the Tennessee/Virginia border in the Great Valley, the preferred route for immigrants who landed in a port on the Eastern Seaboard to head south to Tennessee and points west.
Henry Street

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Black American residents surged through Appalachia in the decades following the Civil War, as part of an exodus from the Deep South. Many families landed in Roanoke, Virginia, after the Norfolk and Western Railway established its headquarters and railway shops there in 1882. The former town of Big Lick became Roanoke, supposedly a Native American term for money, in the form of shell beads.
The Purple Fiddle

1 week ago | atlasobscura.com | Diana Hubbell

Appalachia has been pigeonholed as a place out of time—but Tucker County, West Virginia really does exist in its own dimension. The county frequently records the coldest temperatures on the East Coast with its own microclimate. The area is home to the bathtub-shaped Canaan Valley, the Canada-like bogs and heath barrens of Dolly Sods Wilderness, and the rugged Blackwater Canyon—all of which give it an unearthly aura. Amid these wild wonders are the twin towns of Davis and Thomas.