The first declared National Monument in the United States.

One of America’s oldest and spookiest hotels, thanks to the residency of ghosts, dead presidents, and Alfred Hitchcock.

A town honors its legacy of traditional American Indian pipe carving with one gigantic pipe.

This grinning pup statue is all that's left of what was once a ubiquitous Bay Area diner chain.

An ominous concrete cube cuts a dystopian silhouette atop this California mountain.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

The oldest house in the capital of Silicon Valley.

This odd California folly seems like it was almost designed to accumulate urban legends.

Three plaques mark the spot where the "forgotten father of broadcasting" worked.

For roadside fast food, pull over at the giant orange.

L. Frank Baum wrote part of the "Wizard of Oz" series in this wooden Victorian beach resort.

A museum, walk-through diorama, and library nestled under one castle-like roof.

This ancient Irish tower could easily have stood in for Rapunzel's prison.

Oldest building in California still in use.

A life-sized mammoth sculpture marks the spot where the remains of a Columbian mammoth were discovered in 2005.

The huge granite obelisk that towers over a small California town.

Back in the day everyone who was anyone played this historic western theater.

Beneath a Virginia City bar is the entrance to an abandoned gold mine.

A striking sculpture built to honor the women of the Lakota and Dakota Nations.

It is locally loved and ridiculed for literally looking like poop.

One of the largest Marian shrines on the West Coast stands rather unexpectedly in Silicon Valley.

An impressive collection of farm equipment and other artifacts from life on the prairie.

A 1914 beaux arts auditorium that sat shuttered for 20 years, restored and reopened in 2026