This slowly crumbling mansion was home to one of East Africa's richest and most powerful slave traders.

Freddie Mercury's childhood home is now a monument to the iconic Queen rockstar.

An exquisite and eclectic selection of African masks stands out within a massive woodcarving marketplace.

The beauty and the beast of hydraulic mining is on full display at this California Historic State Park.

Beneath a Virginia City bar is the entrance to an abandoned gold mine.

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

The now-abandoned tunnels were built for the transcontinental railroad on the route where the first wagon train entered California.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

One woman's Viking Castle on Lake Tahoe.

This historic estate on the east shore of Lake Tahoe was home to an eccentric millionaire (and his pet elephant, Mingo).

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

Where the alchemists dream of transmuting base metal into gold was actually achieved.

The rusting remains of the largest assembled WWII fleet on the West Coast.

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

Thousands of crosses and markers for soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan blanket a California hillside.

Cows on a ranch are commonplace, scattered cow bones everywhere? Not so much.