Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

Thousands of crosses and markers for soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan blanket a California hillside.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

A porcelain company's former dumping ground, completely covered in pieces of collectible ceramics.

Where a staggering 747 ships were constructed during World War II.

The remains of a deserted steamboat sit rusting beside an old ferry pier and an abandoned train platform.

A sparse, solitary sequoia still stands as a living tribute to the famous conservationist who planted it—but it's dying.

The Laureates here get something even more coveted than a Nobel Prize: free parking for life.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

One of America's largest retail chains got its start in one of its most remote rural destinations.

Allegedly haunted by Walt Disney himself, this inconspicuous lamp is always kept lit in his honor.

This rustic old building is said to be the most photographed barn in America.

A church now sits over the site of one of the worst urban disasters of early 19th-century America.

An impressive waterfall nestled in the cliffs of Idaho's Snake River Canyon.

These falls, sometimes called the "Niagara of the West," still put on a good show at the right time of year.

Home to the deepest rift anywhere on Earth.

Despite his legacy of work in Spain, Cuba, and Florida, the larger-than-life writer's grave is a simple affair tucked in an Idaho cemetery.

This tiny movie theater was the last one in the U.S. constructed in the Nuevo Deco architectural style.

A smoke stack so large, the Washington Monument could fit inside!

Modeled after a famous church in Vienna, Austria—but in Helena, Montana.

One home in the historic strip hides secret compartments and the ghostly songs of long-gone canaries.

The old fire tower is one of the last of its kind in the United States.

Multiple monuments to a grizzled old mutt that survived the landscape of Butte's treacherous Berkeley Pit.