Places Edited by Ike Allen

Vacant Beaux-Arts buildings that serve as reminders of a beach town’s glory days.

A desperate final message left by a POW on the run serves as a memorial for himself and the 97 that died with him.

The site of one of history's most indelible and horrific tragedies.

The highest dunes in California are the most likely place in the area to hear the Singing Sands.

This impressive tunnel was dug entirely by hand over the course of 36 years.

A modest museum in the final home of Italian poet and father of modern Italian, Francesco Petrarca.

An abandoned guano-mining city in the South Pacific.

A small but industrious mining operation that allows visitors to touch precious gems while they are still in the rock.

A Bicycle Path in the Sky.

Once home to the country's most gargantuan ships, this graving dock now waits for people to buy furniture.

A self-made museum in Queens, New York continues to display the work of a sculptor known for paving his own way.

No Gordon Lightfoot song, only a barebones monument to greed.

One of the most extreme deserts in the world, these snow-free valleys harbor life, despite the hostile environment.

From the sky, a kaleidoscope of color brightens the grey landscape of the San Francisco Bay.

The sign at the garden gate reads: “These Plants Can Kill.”

The first "Hall of Fame" in America was designed by legendary Gilded Age architect Stanford White for what was then the NYU uptown campus.

A scenic fort on the harbor protected Philadelphia from an attack that never came.

Mount Nyiragongo has erupted at least 34 times since 1882 and is home to the world's largest lava lake.

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

This everlasting lightning storm may be the world's largest generator of ozone.

A nuclear power plant abandoned along with an international allegience.

The building that inspired Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House."

Tombstones buried in overgrown grass mark the deceased occupants of this abandoned graveyard.

The second-longest continuous wall on the planet protects a hidden secret in the deserts of India.