The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

A historic hotel in an old California railroad town with a rowdy reputation.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

Barely visible foundations remain where Stow Lake’s “observatory” once welcomed visitors.

A famous alternative culture epicenter and where Joplin serenaded young hippies.

A creepy steel gremlin has protected the Bay Bridge since 1989.

A temple devoted to inner esoteric mysteries located in a California commercial strip.

This Oakland fairytale kingdom, fiercely devoted to childlike whimsy, was an early inspiration for Disneyland.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

The giant pair of sexy legs sticking out the window of this costume store have become its main draw.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

This turn of the century masterpiece has a mysterious goaty interloper.

An overlooked and unassuming engineering marvel.

This private residence was the template for one of the most beloved television homes of all time.

Bonsai garden in Oakland is curated by the first non-Japanese female bonsai master in the United States.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

This massive redwood tree has a hole in the base big enough to drive through.

A storybook European village in Berkeley.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

The private clubhouse for the members of the Academy of Magical Arts.