Places badgersofdoom Wants to Go

This massive redwood tree has a hole in the base big enough to drive through.

Downieville's largest Gold Rush structure still standing has one of the longest bars in California.

This historic steamboat is scuttled just a few hundred feet from where it was built over a hundred years ago.

A crumbling wizard is one of the final reminders of a roadside Middle Earth.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

Experience the "opulence, grace, and grandeur of Eureka's most famous Victorian Inn."

A lighthouse built to save lives that took quite a few with its treacherous location.

This lesser known Hearst estate is a fairytale village built from the stolen bones of historic European buildings.

Four hundred granite steps were built into this massive rock by the National Park Service.

A charming desert roadside bakery that produces 10 times more bread daily than it has residents in its town.

An abandoned cyanide mill is now a haunting magnet for graffiti and illegal parties.

Home of what was the largest hydraulic mine in the world, producing gold and the first diamonds in the U.S.

Standing in a state of "arrested decay," this ghost town allows for a detailed peek into Gold Rush life in an unusually harsh climate.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

One woman's Viking Castle on Lake Tahoe.

A watering hole where the options for seating include a bar, patio, or subterranean cave.

The first U.S. town to secede from the Union, only to vote themselves right back in.

The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California."

This former boomtown "island" is now submerged below Folsom Lake.

A popular tourist cave with a dark past.

Hidden beneath a lake for decades, this brutalist mine has now emerged from beneath the receding waters.

One of the oldest reform schools in the United States, home to wayward boys such as Merle Haggard, now abandoned.

A working miniature city designed to teach kids about safety and presumably city planning.

The fossilized remains of ancient California redwoods.