The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

These subterranean storage areas hold emergency water reserves.

Recovered from the brink of extinction, at home in the Financial District.

Over 315,000 preserved amphibians and reptiles in jars.

Gold Rush ship-turned-hotel buried underneath San Francisco's financial district.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

Get lost in this haunting fairytale art walk through a man-made eucalyptus grove.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

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

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

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