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.

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

Ninety feet off the valley floor is an ancient dwelling put under protection of the U.S. government by Teddy Roosevelt.

A Wild West jailhouse that slid down the mountainside.

On the outskirts of a reborn ghost town, a decaying post office remembers the bad old days.

Once the product of an inexplicable gold strike, this ghost town is now home to one man and his love of classic machines.

Arizona's first government hub is a rustic cabin now preserved as part of a historical museum.

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

A tiny survivor of the Donner Party disaster.

A "gravitational anomaly" located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California.

Here, visitors can swing with the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

Only hotel where you can legally launder money.

Home of modern dancer famously strangled by her own scarf.

The neighborhood church casts a breast-shaped shadow that locals have come to call the “two o’clock titty.”

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

Longtime headquarters of controversial boys' club for the world's wealthiest and most powerful.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

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

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

The haunting ruins of Jack London's dream house.

A 100-year-old purveyor of curiosities, curios, and kitsch featuring mummies, shrunken heads, and a Fiji Mermaid.