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

A petroglyph map of the upper Snake River carved by prehistoric hunter-gatherers.

An earthwork sculpture built by Robert Smithson in the Great Salt Lake only reemerges during drought.

This plaque marks the site where the penultimate chapter in the journey of two doomed boys unfolded in an imagined parallel universe.

A proto micro-nation sometimes populated by artists, surrounded on all sides by a Utah most barren.

A quirky old tree covered in tokens, cans, and bottles of wishes.

This former rail stop in Utah was abandoned, repopulated by some nostalgic friends, and now is home to a single DIY aviator who lives in a hangar.

A 90-foot-tall psychedelic "tree" on the side of the highway has baffled passersby for decades.

Come for the speed, leave in love with the desert.

An ill-fated attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush steppe of northeastern Nevada.

The world's largest dead polar bear, immortalized by taxidermy and Hunter S. Thompson.

This ancient village provides insight into the complexity of the pre-Columbian Fremont Culture.

A whimsical, punny collection of "fence art" outside the tiny mountain town of Baker, Nevada.

A gothic palace of endless stalagmites and pseudoscorpions waits within one of the world's most beautiful caves.

This crumbling stump is all that remains of what was once thought to be the oldest living organism.

Rich red almandine gemstones are waiting inside the volcanic rock strewn across this eastern Nevada hillside.

These huge stone ovens in the desert fueled the Nevada silver boom, and may have also been a hideout for outlaws.

Michael Heizer's masterwork in the Nevada Basin.

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

The American rainmaker and a burst dam.

The classic Atari game's iconic aliens have invaded downtown San Diego.

This historic Chinese church was relocated and revived as a museum that preserves and celebrates Chinese art, history, and culture.

A magnificent, reportedly haunted mansion built for a composer by Spiritualists.

The oldest standing structure in downtown San Diego.