The huge granite obelisk that towers over a small California town.

A glimpse into the lives of the the Miwok and Paiute people in Yosemite National Park.

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

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

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

The echoes of a railroad town that solemnly mark the end of the line.

Four hundred granite steps were built into this massive rock by the National Park Service.

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

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

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

Brightly colored 30-foot-tall totems light up the desert sky just outside Las Vegas.

One of the ghostly stops along Route 66.

This crumbling Death Valley mining complex was known for its use of giant, 20-mule team wagons.

The hundreds of movies and television shows shot in this high desert town are commemorated in a unique museum.

Millions of years of oxidation make a drive down this winding Death Valley road surprisingly colorful.

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

Hundreds of trees made from glass bottles make up this forest on Route 66.

Built by one man in the '20s, this site is now a museum representing the Great Basin cultures.

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

"Only the devil could play golf here."

Thousands of turbines whir at at the origin of North American wind power.

Ten 25-foot-tall, beehive-shaped kilns, abandoned in Death Valley.

Everything you always wanted to know about borates is here.

This old mining town, deep in the California desert, has a year-round population of one.