A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

Once the largest windmill outside of Holland, with enormous 114 foot sails.

The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

An extensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

An elaborate gift from Claus Spreckels is now a piece of San Francisco history.

Join the circus for a few lessons to learn clowning, acrobatics, and Chinese contortion.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

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

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

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

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

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

A decommissioned Naval base now rents itself out for people who want to blow stuff up.

This (occupied) house is 10 feet wide and full of spite.

With statues of Nelson Mandela and Harvey Milk this monument has been called the Mount Rushmore of California.

This mysterious series of teeny guerrilla installations sheds a whimsical light on street art in Oakland.