A sign at the end of the Santa Monica Pier marks the traditional end of the legendary American highway.

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

A Masterpiece with a Tragic History.

Shop selling 500 flavors of soda has something for everyone.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

An enormous illuminated figure dances on the Las Vegas strip.

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

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

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

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

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

This private residence was the template for one of the most beloved television homes of all time.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

Alleyway plaque commemorating the death of a fictional character in The Maltese Falcon, not far from the author's home.

Furniture tries to escape an abandoned building in San Francisco.

A 1920s speakeasy that had rum runners racing up and down the shores of California.

This controversial depiction of the "Founder of California" looks as though it was sculpted from mashed potatoes.

From the Difference Engine to the Cray-1, all under one roof.

Rodin's famous depiction of Dante's 'Inferno', amidst a sculpture garden of many of his other works.

The heroic sled dog of the 1925 serum run is preserved in taxidermy.

The only presidential monument to display a late POTUS's actual casket.

This too-low North Carolina railroad trestle is still a notorious big rig executioner.