A former gold rush boomtown has managed to stay in business for over 100 ramshackle years.

This deserted Gold Rush town is home to a Masonic lodge that, strangely enough, still holds meetings.

This dormant volcanic crater has been converted from a roiling pit of magma to a pleasant hiking spot.

Narrow slot canyons in a badland eroded into soft sedimentary rock provide an otherworldly landscape in this remote Nevada state park.

The ghost town that ended up on Ebay.

The "Fun Spot of the Desert" is now a haunting ruin, and a reminder that putting a water park in a desert is a bad idea.

A pair of large white marble lions guard this stretch of the Mojave Desert, and it is utterly mysterious how they got there.

One of the ghostly stops along Route 66.

The first motion picture theater in southern Utah, reimagined and renovated as an arts hub.

Opened in 1911, this small shop is the oldest ongoing establishment in St. George.

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

Ten 25-foot-tall, beehive-shaped kilns, abandoned in Death Valley.

A tribute to the statues of Easter Island along Route 66.

A memorial to the firefighters who died in an industrial disaster is housed in a small public park.

No one's quite sure why there's a metal megaphone bolted on two rocks in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

A secret fresh water spring for animals and humans alike hidden along the most famous road in the United States.

The largest dune field in the Mojave offers a chance of hearing the 'singing sands.'

The abandoned train depot now doubles as a well-placed rest stop for those who take the road less traveled.

Thousands of glyphs created by an unknown culture decorate the rock formations of this canyon.

A volcanic tunnel illuminated by natural skylights offers a shaded respite from the desert sun.

The lost ruins of the forgotten ferry lie hidden beneath the silt.

Marta Becket's hand-painted theater in the desert.

Harder layers in colorful sandstone weather out as prominent “fins" and even more intricate and bizarre shapes.

Nearly 300,000 acres of wildlife, natural splendor, and a hidden ghost town have been designated a national monument.