A former utopian healing center created by a huckster and built by derelicts.

The highest dunes in California are the most likely place in the area to hear the Singing Sands.

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

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

One of the ghostly stops along Route 66.

The unbelievably opulent home built for an infamous newspaperman.

The "world's biggest dinosaur" once housed a creationist museum in its abdomen.

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

The L.A. Zoo has a secret garden of rare bootleg cycads, a palm specimen dating back 280 million years.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

This naturally heated mountainous creek has created a group of neon blue pools of potentially deadly boiling water.

The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

This traditional garden in the San Fernando Valley doubled for Star Fleet Academy, and is irrigated entirely by wastewater.

This abandoned Navy base was transformed into an off-grid alternative living community for thousands of people.

An extraordinarily ornate museum in San Diego holds wondrous anthropological treasures.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

Once thought to be the oldest living tree in the world, Methuselah was germinated before the Egyptian pyramids were built.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

The ghostly remains of an accidental sea.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

A hand-built folk art installation covered with messages of God's love.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.