This odd California folly seems like it was almost designed to accumulate urban legends.

Hike amid the palm trees that thrive among Southern California's Indio Hills.

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

The blinking light atop the iconic landmark has been sending secret messages for decades.

This quirky UFO-shaped curiosity is often mistaken for the airport’s control tower.

An historic and oft-filmed spot for musclebound iron pumpers on the Pacific coast.

There are lots of hands and feet stamped in the cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, but Mel left behind something extra.

One of the world's longest murals depicts the history of diversity in Los Angeles.

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

Hollywood's most famous landmark, the "temporary" sign that has stood for decades longer than intended.

California's own majestic geyser is powered by a subterranean volcano.

The fossilized remains of ancient California redwoods.

Haunting and beautiful trees, doomed to die.

The bank that helped fund the Mexican-American War and the purchase of Alaska met its downfall after helping Augusto Pinochet launder money.

The iconic D.C. restaurant where the Cuban Missile Crisis was negotiated, now a Walgreens.

On the Fourth of July this area will transform into a Pompeii-like storm of falling embers and ash.

A secret greenspace hides atop a Capitol parking garage.

The 28,000-year-old specimen is remarkably intact.

The 5.5-mile ring of steel posts around the Capitol Building is one of the largest (and most uniform) of its kind in the world.

The first memorial dedicated solely to the Black troops who fought for the Union.

This statue of one of baseball’s greatest pitchers looks like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.

The grand marble structure next to the White House is Andrew Carnegie's temple to Pan-American diplomacy.

One critic described it as "middle Mussolini, early Ramses, and late Neiman-Marcus." Another called it an architectural "natural disaster."

The U.S. Navy’s preposterously detailed mini battleship took 77,000 hours to complete.