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

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

In a city filled with Frank Gehry buildings, one stands out as one of the architect's weirder works.

Magical-looking cottages that inspired one of the most famous animated films ever.

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

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

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

Stripes of flowers bloom each spring in a 50 acre rainbow of color.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

Canyon walls shrouded in ferns.

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

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

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

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

A "gravitational anomaly" located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

A trash dump made beautiful by nature's power.

High on a hill overlooking Los Angeles lives a world famous, high power conical Tesla Coil.

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