The decaying adobe remains of an old homestead are just off the beaten path in Joshua Tree National Park.

The ghostly remains of an accidental sea.

Someone really, really wanted to save this fast-food icon from demolition.

In Houston's airport, a cow is properly equipped to jump over the moon.

The only airport with a people mover system designed by Walt Disney Imagineering.

A small island hides in plain sight on Austin's Lady Bird Lake.

This unassuming North Austin neighborhood was built to test the novel idea of home air conditioning.

A grove of colossal man-made flowers built to collect the sun's rays.

A view-altering observatory at the University of Texas.

Turning night into day in Victorian-era Austin to thwart a serial killer.

The oldest alley in San Francisco is paved with a reminder of the city's original shoreline.

Beneath the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge is the “Gibraltar of the West Coast,” a fort built to protect the San Francisco Bay from naval attack.

Overflowing with shipping containers, this location has been transformed into a massive workspace for artists.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

Longtime headquarters of controversial boys' club for the world's wealthiest and most powerful.

The grand, column-fronted, sculpture-adorned home of the ambitious digital library.

A promotional sun clock on the site of San Francisco's great raceway.

This partially buried wreck is one of the most complete of its kind but is only revealed when the sea allows.

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

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

A pair of slides and a tree-lined stair corridor have been an urban oasis for nearly 40 years.

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

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.