Its founder calls it a "proletariat art renaissance".

The smallest country in the world.

A statue commemorating the heroic life of a Viking postman who was the Godfather of California skiing.

A breathtaking 19th-century trail overlooks Lake Tahoe.

Eastern zen meets Western grit in these four little trees growing out of a rock on Lake Tahoe’s Nevada shore.

One woman's Viking Castle on Lake Tahoe.

An archive of nearly every day of Buckminster Fuller's life.

The memorial to the victims of the Jonestown Massacre carries the names of 918 lost, including one name people wish wasn't there.

The world's most famous donkey lives in this pen.

Neoclassical Revival mansion and set of horror cult classic Phantasm.

One of the largest free-standing structures ever built, this dirigible hangar is now simply a giant skeleton.

A giant can of fruit cocktail is all that remains of what was once the world's largest cannery.

The rest of him lived another 61 years and was buried elsewhere.

A plaque outside the San Jose airport commemorates the insect's arrival to the West Coast.

A life-sized mammoth sculpture marks the spot where the remains of a Columbian mammoth were discovered in 2005.

This mountaintop beacon is only lit three times a year but shines like some kind of all-seeing eye.

The old Niles Canyon Aqueduct in the San Francisco Bay Area is a bemusing and secret trail through nature for wayward travelers.

One of the oldest reform schools in the United States, home to wayward boys such as Merle Haggard, now abandoned.

Exquisite irises bloom every spring in this hillside garden.

The longest burning light bulb in the world.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

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

Abandoned hotel with adjacent lake and golf course.

This Gold Rush ghost town was once the subject of a territorial dispute between California and Nevada.