A cozy bookstore is tucked within an old gold mine shaft beneath the cafe and ice cream shop.

A water tower shaped like a giant coffee pot looms over a small Swedish village in Central California.

Inky sludge oozes to the surface of this beach thanks to a rare natural tar seep.

This wilderness hike to a waterfall has an unlikely beginning in suburban Reno.

This bridge over D.C.'s Rock Creek Park is sometimes called the "Buffalo Bridge" because of its four buffalo sculptures, which were cast from a single piece of bronze.

A tunnel that brings more than a century of history to life from the deepest parts of the Niagara Gorge.

The museum is housed inside the historic 1863 Carson City Mint.

The first U.S. town to secede from the Union, only to vote themselves right back in.

A middle school sports field that many believe was the true location of the first successful powered flight - and not by the Wright Brothers.

The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California."

An abandoned lot littered with concrete debris was once the home of the world's first female railroad president.

"You don't need a rocket scientist to build a steam engine, but we've got one." -Museum docent on the credentials of a restoration volunteer.

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

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

Downieville's largest Gold Rush structure still standing has one of the longest bars in California.

Rising out of miles of farmland, these buttes are sometimes called the world's smallest mountain range.

Home of what was the largest hydraulic mine in the world, producing gold and the first diamonds in the U.S.

A train tunnel that was made obsolete by the dam it helped create.

The oldest orange tree in California spawned a generation of citrus farmers.

California's first suspension bridge.

In 1954, two enormous earthquakes occurred just minutes apart, resulting in prominent scarps that extend for miles along the range fronts.

Only intact Ichthyosaur skeleton in the United States.

Once designed as the entrance to Buckingham Palace, this structure was later relocated and stands as a victory arch.

Designed by famed 20th-century architect Cass Gilbert, the future of this abandoned 1908 rail station is currently in limbo.