Places Calmmseas Wants to Go

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

A 250 million-year-old rock formation has earned a rather unique nickname.

Chewing gum tycoon's memorial lies perched over wife's botanical gardens on Santa Catalina Island.

One poet's handmade, anachronistic home.

This simple highway curve has become a comedic pilgrimage site.

The so-called "Bridge of Thighs" in Palm Springs allows nudists to discreetly cross the road.

The Los Angeles flood disaster that took 400 lives and ended the career of William Mulholland.

A performance hall at the American Jewish University moonlights as a sci-fi film location set.

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

This outdoor observatory offers stellar views and a scale model of our solar system.

This concrete ship has had four careers - World War I tanker, floating amusement park, fishing pier, and artificial reef.

The flow from this waterfall sometimes comes out of springs below its rim.

A small, peaceful sculpture garden with a grim memorial to a disaster that took place a few blocks away.

A massive hydrovolcanic explosion left a half-mile wide crater in Death Valley.

The remnants of a failed socialist commune can still be found just off a California highway.

A stranded woman lived alone on this remote island for 18 years, inspiring the great children's novel "Island of the Blue Dolphins."

The beauty and the beast of hydraulic mining is on full display at this California Historic State Park.

This hidden fire lookout offers spectacular views of Sequoia National Park.

Across Ring Mountain is a vast collection of Native American petroglyphs unique to the region.

Once the gateway to the utopian dream-village of a Civil War embalmer.

These lush groves of fan palms rise up like oases out of southern California's Colorado Desert.

The hundreds of movies and television shows shot in this high desert town are commemorated in a unique museum.

Inky sludge oozes to the surface of this beach thanks to a rare natural tar seep.

A ghost town originally established and governed solely by Black Americans seeking a place of their own, free from discrimination.