A 56-foot tall statue of the god of fire looks out over Birmingham, Alabama.

A miniature city built by a single hunchbacked monk.

A burnt orange monolithic dome structure perched on a hillside near Interstate 280.

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

Once close to extinction, there is no shortage of elephant seals on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park.

These six walrus head statues harken back to a time when this area wasn't far from the oceanfront.

A shining, cold, black organ lies in San Francisco's financial district.

This tall and trim architectural oddity is one of the skinniest buildings in San Francisco.

A pair of mutilated bronze octopuses slump at the base of the monument honoring California's admission to the U.S.

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

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

A strange house built only at night, with rumored mystic inspiration.

An extensive, if one-sided, history of U.S. law enforcement's war on drugs.

At 207 feet, one of the world's longest continuous escalators.

One of the last remnants of the city's Chinese nightclub scene is now a dive bar selling killer mai tais.

The taxidermied remains of the "last wild grizzly bear in California" and of the symbol of the state of California.

Faceless white figures loom over the city from the rooftop.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

Commonly referred to as the most photographed Victorian home in the United States.

Canyon walls shrouded in ferns.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.