A Jazzy Beginning
They’re whoopin’ it up on Bourbon Street, but the real heart of New Orleans jazz lies a half-dozen blocks over, at the run-down intersection of Perdido and South Rampart. A hundred years ago, this was a dodgy neighbourhood, but it was also a hive of activity. Now, the corner is sacred ground for jazzophiles.

The three-storey, red brick building on the corner is locked up tight. The windows are boarded shut. This is the old Eagle Saloon, where a cocky street kid named Louis Armstrong fired off a pistol one New Year's Eve, was collared by the cops and shipped off to the Municipal Waif’s Home. To keep the 12-year old Armstrong occupied, he was given a cornet and encouraged to play. The rest is history – and perhaps the most important individual career in the history of jazz.

After you’ve visited this lost landscape of jazz, head over to the Louisiana State Museum in the Old U.S. Mint building – look for the glass case with Armstrong’s battered first cornet.

The Four Corners
A cursory glance at a map of northeast Arizona shows nothing: few roads, no towns of any size. But this sprawling, rugged landscape is known as the Four Corners: the only spot in the United States where four states touch borders – Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. This desert landscape is home to mountains, mesas, buttes, red rock and gaping canyons. Sure, that canyon is down the road (you know, the really big one) but the Four Corners boasts some of Arizona’s best scenery.

Play a round of Twister at the granite and brass marker by planting a hand and foot in each state. You won’t be the first to have thought up the pose, but it will make a great shot in your photo album.

By the way, Canada has its own quadripoint as well – since the creation of Nunavut in 1999, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories join at a single boundary point.

Portage and Main
As if Winnipegers didn’t already know it, Neil Young and Randy Bachman’s classic rock song – Prairie Town – enshrines the city’s famous intersection as the coldest intersection in the country.

Winter nights are long, summer days are gone, Portage and Main 50 below;
Springtime melts the snow, rivers overflow, Portage and Main 50 below

And if “the coldest” wasn’t enough, Portage and Main has also earned a reputation as the windiest corner in Canada. But neither wind nor cold stopped trader Henry McKenney from opening a dry goods store in 1862 at the exact spot – a junction of two fur trading trails. People laughed at McKenney for opening a store so far from the river; today Portage and Main is the heart of Winnipeg’s financial district, home to upscale shops and hotels (like The Fairmont Winnipeg). But there were days of unrest as well: in 1919, workers clashed with police at the corner during the Winnipeg General Strike, the largest strike in Canadian history.

If you aren’t heading to Winnipeg soon you can catch some of the vibe by playing a round of Canadian Monopoly – Portage and Main has its own square on the board.

U.S. Highways 49 and 61
There’s a legend that every modern blues fan knows. It’s about a certain intersection deep in the Mississippi Delta – one where American blues legend Robert Johnson is reputed to have made a deal with the Devil. Legend says that the young Johnson sold his soul to the Devil in return for giving him mastery of the blues guitar. Before his untimely death in 1938 at a young 27 years of age, Johnson wrote the tune Cross Road Blues . . . and blues scholars are still debating about the meaning of the lyrics.

The people in Clarksdale, Mississippi like to claim the crossroads, and an entire industry has sprung up to celebrate the intersection at U.S. Highways 49 and 61. Once you’ve visited the marker at the intersection head over to the Delta Blues Museum. Right next door, the Ground Zero Blues Club (owned by actor Morgan Freeman) is home base for blues aficionados.

By: Josephine Matyas

Photo Credits: Josephine Matyas, wikimedia.org