A music-filled, booze-soaked oasis in the desert.

A fake town founded by Western movie stars is now becoming a hip desert community.

Hike amid the palm trees that thrive among Southern California's Indio Hills.

A hand-built folk art installation covered with messages of God's love.

Version of the French Riviera destroyed by the sea.

This abandoned Navy base was transformed into an off-grid alternative living community for thousands of people.

An off-grid art installation that encourages its visitors to imagine a world without waste.

Huge otherworldly domed rocks on the shore of a deadly lake.

Along a California highway is a kind of Jurassic Park made of metal.

The deepest lake in the United States, and once the site of epic destruction that lives on in legends.

Oregon's only closed-basin hypersaline lake, an important stopover for migrating waterfowl, is in danger of drying up completely.

This spectacular fault escarpment, a popular hang-glider launch point, extends some 30 miles long and towers about 2,500 feet over the valley floors to the west.

California's longest-running tourist attraction is a stump.

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

The interior of the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" was based on this Yosemite original.

An abandoned Jazz Age dream home and con man's hideout in Death Valley.

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

Millions of years of oxidation make a drive down this winding Death Valley road surprisingly colorful.

The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

"Only the devil could play golf here."

Ten 25-foot-tall, beehive-shaped kilns, abandoned in Death Valley.

This crumbling Death Valley mining complex was known for its use of giant, 20-mule team wagons.

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

This old mining town, deep in the California desert, has a year-round population of one.