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

Furniture tries to escape an abandoned building in San Francisco.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

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

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

Guns that have been defending San Francisco since 1904.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

A store that sells all manner of bones, insects, and animal curiosities.

Tenacious mummies survived dental problems, eternal entombment, and more than their fair share of devastating fires.

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

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

Continuing the tradition of the dime museum in style.

One part antique store, one part curiosities hodge-podge.

Home to the largest urban bat colony in North America, estimated at 1.5 million bats.

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