The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

This theatre was made famous after Lee Harvey Oswald was captured inside watching a film.

A mythical chimera first sculpted in 1936 as a mix of the main animals of Texas livestock.

This downtown Dallas art installation is always on the lookout.

Turning night into day in Victorian-era Austin to thwart a serial killer.

The world's tallest statue of an American hero.

Artist James Turrell's ode to dawn and dusk on the campus of Rice University.

Beer lover's can-covered house.

At the "Garage Mahal" in Houston, car culture is about more than just driving.

An historic and oft-filmed spot for musclebound iron pumpers on the Pacific coast.

A three-story, three-dimensional hobo clown in a tutu welcomes CVS shoppers.

This brightly made over hotel hides decades of suicide, serial killers, and mysterious deaths.

The final resting place of a space program monolith, soon to be unveiled again to the public.

In a city filled with Frank Gehry buildings, one stands out as one of the architect's weirder works.

Historic funicular railway, believed to be the shortest railroad in the world.

After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

World-famous, Pink's still manages to keep its prized cult fetish status.

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

It should come as no surprise that the best view of the Hollywood sign is from Batman's lair.

The legendary building that needed ghostly approval before being built.