Offering commanding views of the California coastline, this restaurant was a hub for the artists and bohemians of Big Sur.

It's not your typical library, memorial, or book store.

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

The unbelievably opulent home built for an infamous newspaperman.

A chain of bells connect the California Missions and honor the legend of the "King’s Highway."

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

A remote crossroads honoring a fallen talent.

A massive volcanic plug is now a protected area that hosts a number of bird species.

Odd stone and concrete monuments in the "Poet of the Sierras" eclectic folly garden.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

Where the alchemists dream of transmuting base metal into gold was actually achieved.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

A private home built to resemble the shape of a microscopic creature.

The newsstand that never closes its doors—well, almost never.

The miraculous hydrant that saved the Mission District in 1906.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

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

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

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

Big gun installations, built over a massive cemetery, now abandoned & hidden in trees.