The headquarters of a secretive order is also a beautifully-designed park.

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

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

The Internet Age began with a transmission from this biker bar.

A hidden world of exotic succulents and cacti.

Guarded by the Angel of Grief, the Stanford family tomb attracts an odd mix of halloween revelry and somber contemplation.

Rodin's famous depiction of Dante's 'Inferno', amidst a sculpture garden of many of his other works.

An Aladdin's cave of old Silicon Valley tech.

Two hundred tons of pioneer artifacts were painstakingly recovered from a shipwreck at the bottom of the Missouri River.

Elephant seals and sea lions have turned the abandoned buildings on this island into their endangered love shack.

One of the tallest buildings in Iceland, and perhaps, the most visually impressive.

Oldest existing church in New York and the inspiration for Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

Storage units with a wartime past.

A fitting attraction for the corn capital of the world.

A piece of John the Baptist in the American heartland.

Four, 18-foot-tall badminton shuttlecocks lie scattered about the lawn of a Kansas City museum.

A century and a half of research in the sciences and natural history, still going strong.

An elaborate gift from Claus Spreckels is now a piece of San Francisco history.

A good place to research the Freemasons, esoterica, occultism, and hermeticism.

Blighted Irish field and the ruins of a 19th-century cottage on the edge of urban Manhattan.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

Named the fifth most beautiful building in America in 1885, this former courthouse boasts the best view in the Village.