Collective dedicated to restoring steam engines.

A creepy steel gremlin has protected the Bay Bridge since 1989.

International delicatessen has been owned and operated by the same family for more than 110 years.

A restored 1920s cascade stairway provides one of the best views of Oakland's Lake Merritt.

A temple devoted to inner esoteric mysteries located in a California commercial strip.

Neoclassical Revival mansion and set of horror cult classic Phantasm.

This Oakland fairytale kingdom, fiercely devoted to childlike whimsy, was an early inspiration for Disneyland.

The memorial to the victims of the Jonestown Massacre carries the names of 918 lost, including one name people wish wasn't there.

Dive bar built out of the remains of a whaling ship.

Bonsai garden in Oakland is curated by the first non-Japanese female bonsai master in the United States.

This restaurant offers the original California cuisine.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

This subtle Berkeley paving stone actually marks off a lawless tube of air that extends into space.

The Laureates here get something even more coveted than a Nobel Prize: free parking for life.

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

A sparse, solitary sequoia still stands as a living tribute to the famous conservationist who planted it—but it's dying.

A free, public museum dedicated to the fascinating science of sight.

Art in the form of a winding, man made crack in stone.

Thirteen trees representing the original thirteen colonies were planted with soil from historic Revolutionary battlefields.

An abandoned, unfinished mansion on grounds strewn with lava rocks.

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

San Francisco's oldest operating hotel, with a Victorian atmosphere and a "haunted" fourth floor.

This museum in San Francisco's Chinatown is one of the oldest and largest archives of Chinese American history and culture.

The first AIDS memorial chapel in San Francisco and one of only a few in the U.S.