This municipal playground was co-created by the father of one of the most playful characters ever.

The first safe in this California town had to hold all the gold.

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

A glimpse into the lives of the the Miwok and Paiute people in Yosemite National Park.

These once-beautiful historic graveyards are set against the barren Virginia City hills.

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

Back in the day everyone who was anyone played this historic western theater.

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

The only surviving prototype of Buckminster Fuller's revolutionary car.

Fake rail crossings mark the site of an influential doctor's demise.

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

It should come as no surprise that the world's largest artichoke lies in the town that calls itself the "Artichoke Center of the World."

A historic Civil War estate-turned-museum looks back on the Confederate States of America.

The headquarters of a secretive order is also a beautifully-designed park.

An extensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

The graffiti-covered remnants of a former triangulation station are balanced precariously on this California peak.

The stately birthplace of California's statehood.

This remarkably simple jail went over a century without an escape.

A tree grown from astronaut seeds which were exposed to cosmic rays.

An old whaling station now serves to give the public a look at the commercial whaling industry, no longer a part of Monterey's economy.

The oldest U.S. Government building in California, and it's State Historic Landmark #1.

A preserved Nazi labor camp now has a Holocaust museum on site and memorials to the thousands that died while imprisoned at the camp.

Housed in a memorial lighthouse, this museum relays the history of surfing, beginning with the antics of royal Hawaiian teenagers.

Welcome to old Florida, where a 1940s mermaid show is still enchanting visitors.