Aerial America

The Badlands of South Dakota are filled with the fossils of fascinating and surprising prehistoric animals: saber-toothed cats, large-headed pigs, and even the first camels.

The white beaches on the Florida Panhandle make up what's known as Florida's forgotten coast; its sandy beaches and natural beauty have remained trapped in time.

Kentucky's State Penitentiary has been serving up justice since 1889 - a time when family feuds, like the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feuds, were settled with violence and blood.

In the middle of Flamenco Beach lies an abandoned U.S. army tank covered in graffiti -- a remnant of a time when the U.S. valued Puerto Rico for its strategic military value.

In the 19th century, many people believed that landscapes like the Grand Canyon were shaped by volcanoes and earthquakes. But one American geologist named John Newberry had different ideas.

It took more than 14 years for Mount Rushmore to be completed. During it's construction, unstable stone forced the the sculptor to dynamite Jefferson's original face.

Alaska's Bagley Icefield is a gargantuan pool of solid ice that spans 120 miles. It produces many glaciers, including the massive Bering Glacier, which deposits 6.5 trillion tons of water a year into the Gulf of Alaska.

As many as 500,000 tule elk once roamed the coast of California, but they were hunted to extinction in the mid-1860s. Or so we thought...

Pebble Beach, one of the most famous and pristine golf courses in the world, was developed by Samuel F.B. Morse in the early 1900's.

The Florida Everglades are home to a patchwork of ecosystems in a constant state of change--so much so, they look different from one year to the next. Here's how this magnificent floating landscape came to be.