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

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

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.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

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

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

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

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

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

Three hundred years of preserved Spanish colonial history in San Antonio.

A National Historic Landmark with a scenic clock tower and park filled with deer and peacocks, plus a military museum.

A modernist landscape of water and sci-fi concrete.

A Texas museum filled with Broncos and Betties.

Belly up to the bar in Cowtown, don't forget to buy some boots.