Places thecjlane Wants to Go

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

The second seat of Nye County, still mostly a ghost town, has become a magnet for those looking to live "away from it all."

Once a staging site for World War II munitions.

This trench, some 2,300 feet long, is only the most prominent relic of a largely forgotten episode of placer mining on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada.

A memorial to the unknown and unheralded men and women of the Cold War military and intelligence services.

Standing in a state of "arrested decay," this ghost town allows for a detailed peek into Gold Rush life in an unusually harsh climate.

Bodie's 20th-century rival was a paragon of respectability and calm—but the mines eventually ran dry.

An abandoned early 20th-century gold mine in a spectacular setting overlooking Bridgeport Valley and the Sierra Nevada.

A monument to the center of the North American continent may be off by a few miles.

A desert ghost town—occupied for only 12 years—was once home to more than 500 silver mines.

This old mining town, deep in the California desert, has a year-round population of one.

A Nevada mining boomtown that ran out of silver and luck.

A lawless town deep in Death Valley was famous for its riches and death rate turned YouTube famous.

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

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

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

The remote resting place of a notorious Wild West outlaw whose death is shrouded in mystery.

The peaceful gravesite of a rugged wild west gunman echoes the touching story of his last days.

Another of California's unused Cold War missile defense complexes has become a graffiti gallery.