A working model of the entire San Francisco Bay and much of the Sacramento River Delta, complete with regular tides that change every 14 minutes.

The park that the Chicago Stockyards built.

Tenacious mummies survived dental problems, eternal entombment, and more than their fair share of devastating fires.

A promotional sun clock on the site of San Francisco's great raceway.

Sitting atop San Francisco's tallest hill, a cross honors the victims of the Armenian genocide.

A statue based on a tragic Japanese nursery rhyme, commemorating San Diego's sisterhood with Yokohama.

An ode to the friendship between four Pacific Rim countries.

The world's largest outdoor organ is played weekly by one of just two civic organists in the U.S.

Home to one of the world’s largest collections of model yachts.

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

Perfect your fly fishing technique on their practice ponds.

A miniature view of the park, caught in time.

A hidden gem, named after a San Franciscan icon, offers spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean.

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

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

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

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

One-of-a-kind preserved ruins of an abandoned 1880s church in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

A hidden oasis just north of Chicago's Chinatown.

Once the fastest ship from San Francisco to Tahiti, the Galilee now lays in pieces in three different cities.

The grand, column-fronted, sculpture-adorned home of the ambitious digital library.

Once the site of speeding horses, now home to picnickers and public concerts.

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

A monumental cross hides in the trees in Golden Gate Park.