A hidden subterranean installation offers a view of the sky.

Thirteen trees representing the original thirteen colonies were planted with soil from historic Revolutionary battlefields.

The grand, column-fronted, sculpture-adorned home of the ambitious digital library.

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

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

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.

A library built during San Francisco's pioneer times is a student's retreat, bibliophile's sanctuary, and chess player's delight.

This magnificent, quirky home sits atop a literal gold mine in the middle of the Nevada desert.

An abandoned Jazz Age dream home and con man's hideout in Death Valley.

A massive hydrovolcanic explosion left a half-mile wide crater in Death Valley.

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

This desert oddity hides in plain sight thanks to a cartographic error and a desert explorer with a punny sense of humor.

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

A hard-to-reach oasis in a desolate corner of Death Valley National Park.

A lawless town deep in Death Valley was famous for its riches and death rate.

The first life claimed by this record-breaking peak wasn't lost to exposure or a fall but rather lightning.

The tragedy of the Japanese internment camps is remembered here by a stark "Soul Consoling Tower."

This rock formation named for its unique shape is one of many that call the Alabama Hills home.

The ruins of the castle that chemicals built.

Machinery left over from California's once thriving mercury industry now attracts artists and explorers.

The abandoned personal amusement park of the King of Pop.

A ghost town originally established and governed solely by Black Americans seeking a place of their own, free from discrimination.

The oldest pictographs on this decorated rock formation in California's Carrizo Plain date back as many as 4,000 years.