Scroggin’s campaign card from 1955, when he was running for county judge.

A “cedar of Lebanon” sapling was given by Lebanon’s then-first lady, Zalfa Chamoun, to each American representative during the 1955 visit. After two years in an Ohio nursery, only one of the cedars survived. But a tree was sent to each town nonetheless — a juniper tree — and the towns were not informed about the switch. This tree is planted outside the recovery wing of Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital in Lebanon, Oregon.

Tom Thoreson, a retired farmer who lives in Lebanon, North Dakota, was one of the first people BouKaram met on his trip.

A 1929 map BouKaram found in a nearby county library shows different land plots and the names of their then-owners in Lebanon, North Dakota.

This steeple is what remains of Lebanon Lutheran Church, which was destroyed by a storm a few years ago, Thoreson told BouKaram. The cross intended to be on top of the church was planted in the ground.

A newcomer to Lebanon, South Dakota — a drug dealer who didn’t want to show his face — shows off a cross tattoo he had recently gotten as a promise to himself to get clean. “You’re from Lebanon?” he asked BouKaram. “I’m from Palestine.” BouKaram got excited and started speaking to him in Arabic. “Dude,” the man said, “Palestine, Ohio.”

The cedar of Lebanon in Lebanon, South Dakota, is, like the one in Lebanon, Oregon, actually a juniper tree.

Mary Carol Potts, an employee at the Dakota Sunset Museum in nearby Gettysburg, South Dakota, told BouKaram that she was of Lebanese origin. Her grandparents immigrated to the United States in the 1890s.

Peter Ingold, a former mayor of Lebanon, Nebraska, after casting his ballot on Election Day. He told BouKaram that he voted for Hillary Clinton but said the rest of the town had probably voted for Donald Trump. (The county indeed went for Trump.)

An old car fashioned after “The General Lee” from The Dukes of Hazzard sits in a junkyard.

The abandoned Lebanon Gun Club.

Lebanon, Kansas, has promoted itself as the geographical center of the contiguous United States since 1941. It is a great source of pride for the city.

The owner of this gun shop that was once a hospital trains the town’s children on the proper use of guns.

At 99 years old, Gladys Kennedy said she’s the oldest resident of Lebanon, Kansas. She was selling homemade goods to raise money for her church.

The Lebanon Historical Society Museum in Lebanon, Wisconsin.

Town historian Chuck Werth displays a flag featuring the town’s crest. He gifted BouKaram this flag after explaining its four elements: the German imperial eagle, representing the German immigrants who founded the town in the mid-1800s; the hands, a reference to the town’s motto, “Help, where help is needed”; an ear of corn, given the significance of farming in the area’s economy; and a violin, which represents a music teacher who helped the opposing Prussians and Germans who settled there overcome differences when they first immigrated.

Alyssa Cahoon is a nurse and teacher. She has been a volunteer in the emergency medical services at the fire station for 20 years. Her husband, Matt, has his own auto repair business, and he joined Alyssa in the EMS in mid-2016.

“Back in 1989, when the Lebanese civil war was still raging, my family and I had been cooped up in the bomb shelter for longer than I wish to remember. Our next-door neighbors were from a village called Terbol in the Bekaa Valley, and it was peaceful there. When the bombings intensified, they wanted to flee Beirut to the village, and they invited us to come with them. I don’t remember the escape route anymore, but I can vividly recall the week we spent in the Bekaa, where all of us kids would run wild across the cow pastures and beet fields, from dawn until dusk, playing dare games in the cemetery, stealing grapes off the vines, and running away laughing when the owner chased after us. The smell of cows has a different meaning to me. It is the smell of being free and unafraid, away from the terror and screams heard from inside the shelter, away from the stench of gunpowder and charred remains. My road trip across the Lebanons of the United States always had another goal. I was searching for what it meant when someone says, 'I am from Lebanon,' and not know what war or its horrors were. I stayed in that church parking lot, alone, for three days, for fear of leaving this peaceful remembrance behind."

BouKaram met Annette at her farm in Lebanon Township, Michigan. Orphaned by the time she was 14 years old, she said she “married young and married dumb.” She left her husband seven years ago, and he lives in a trailer park with his family. Annette has 14 children, 29 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren on the way.

“One day I want to retire in Florida,” Annette said. “I visited a few times, and everybody looks different. But if they all get along, so what? Though I’ve got to say, people there don’t seem to have as much time talking to you as they do here.”

Dancers at Train’s Tavern, the only bar in Lebanon, Maine.

Steven, a former furniture salesman, at Train’s Tavern. After his company in Missouri went under, he retired and returned to Lebanon.

An abandoned shop in Lebanon, Maine.

The Lebanon Municipal Airport in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

View from the town hall in Lebanon, New York.

A road sign signals drivers to slow down to accommodate horse-drawn buggies used by the small Amish community living in Lebanon, New York.

A farmhouse in Lebanon, New York.

The ruins of the Shaker Great Stone Barn that was gutted by a fire in 1972 in New Lebanon, New York.

Wyatt Erchak is the programs and operations manager at the Mount Lebanon Shaker Museum. The museum contains the Shakers’ belongings, as well as some of their crafts and a history of their time in Mount Lebanon.

Ibrahim Pedrinan, the programs director at the “Abode of the Message” Sufi community. In 1975, the Shakers who founded the area sold some of their land and buildings to a Sufi Muslim community that still exists today. Pedrinan invited BouKaram for a night of “Hasidic meditation” based off rituals performed by the Jewish sect of Hasidism. That night, BouKaram found himself in a room with Sufi Muslims, performing Jewish rituals, chanting in Arabic, and even reading passages from the New Testament.

The grave of Samuel Tilden in New Lebanon, New York, the 25th governor of New York and former Democratic candidate for president who lost against Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. The epitaph reads, “I still trust the people.”

Ed Tollmann is a former president of the Lebanon Historical Society in Lebanon, Connecticut.

During the American Revolutionary War, French troops supporting the United States in its fight against England were stationed in Lebanon, Connecticut.

Workers at the Lebanon Boro General Store in Lebanon, New Jersey.

The scene next to the train station below the Heights of Lebanon residential community.

The Lebanon, New Jersey, post office.

A decorated house and yard in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

A Confederate flag covers an office window in downtown Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Lebanopoly, a local version of Monopoly with properties named after landmarks and streets in the small Pennsylvania city.

An anti-abortion sign at a parking lot entrance in Lebanon, Kentucky.

A smoking cowboy at a local McDonald’s.

Inside a pizzeria in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky.

Winterhawk, a Cheyenne Native American, playing pool at a bar called “Our War” in Lebanon Junction, Kentucky.

Winterhawk kept avoiding BouKaram as he tried to speak with him. “I’ve got a 1954 Firebird, had it all my life,” Winterhawk finally said. “Wanna see it?” He proceeded to stand up, raise his middle finger, and light a lighter behind it.

A building in downtown Lebanon, Tennessee.

The tombstone at Frank Baddour’s grave. Baddour, a Lebanese-American, was the vice mayor of Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1955 and traveled to Beirut as part of the delegation of the seven representatives from the United States’ Lebanon towns.

A view of the Appalachian Mountains from Lebanon, Virginia.

A cemetery in Lebanon, Virginia.

Krishna, an Indian immigrant who moved to Lebanon, Ohio, and goes by Kris now, holds his daughter at the gas station he owns and operates. A computer engineer by training, he considers his move to the United States and his business as investments in the future of his family.

The only true cedar of Lebanon that was brought back from Beirut in 1955 stands in Lebanon, Ohio.

Pool players at the Bottoms Up trucker bar in Lebanon, Indiana.

BouKaram and his journey across the United States made it on the front page of the local newspaper, the

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Harriet and Harrison Church from Lebanon, Illinois. Harrison is the town’s historian and the former owner of its newspaper, the

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The front page of the March 30, 1967, edition of the Lebanon Advertiser featured Assad Moukaddem’s visit to the town and the planting of the town’s cedar of Lebanon. Moukaddem was the information and tourism counselor at the Lebanese Embassy in the United States.

Mayor Rich Wilkin surprised BouKaram with a gift: a key to the city of Lebanon, Illinois.

A gas station on Route 66 in Lebanon, Missouri.

A water tower in Lebanon, Missouri.

The entrance to an underground tornado shelter by the fire station in Lebanon, Oklahoma.

BouKaram met Bob Garsee, a pastor from a local Baptist church, when Garsee asked if the RV BouKaram was traveling in was for sale. They ended up driving around town together for a few hours while Garsee introduced BouKaram to locals and explained his work trying to help residents who were either using or dealing drugs. After leaving the home of Truman, a 79-year-old church deacon, BouKaram asked Bob why he took him there. “I wanted you to meet good people,” Garsee said. “Anytime we meet decent folks, it makes us less cynical about the rest.”

A view of Lake Texoma, where Garsee asked BouKaram if he could baptize him.