Yale University's home for rare works, including the mysterious Voynich Manuscript.

This striking art museum holds an amazing series of curiosity cabinets.

Largest collection of mounted dinosaur specimens in the world.

Dig for your own trilobites in this goldmine of invertebrates.

North America's largest accredited model railroad museum.

The fossilized remains of ancient California redwoods.

Nursery with extensive collection of flesh-eating plants operated by the author of "The Savage Garden."

After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.

A stellar example of Art & Crafts architecture, and a movie set to boot.

Hollywood's most famous landmark, the "temporary" sign that has stood for decades longer than intended.

Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

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 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.

Depicting scenes of everyday life - and specific individuals - in Great Depression era San Francisco.

Once the largest windmill outside of Holland, with enormous 114 foot sails.

Once the gateway to the utopian dream-village of a Civil War embalmer.

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

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

A favorite haunt of dinosaur loving children and hallucinogen loving hippies alike.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

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

An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.

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