A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

An abandoned convention space that has been left to the homeless and the radical.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

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

This historic California cemetery holds the bodies of veterans of both the Civil War and the Donner Party.

Hidden beneath a lake for decades, this brutalist mine has now emerged from beneath the receding waters.

This corn maze so big you may want to pack a lunch, and possibly a flaregun.

Seven ceramic sculptures are scattered around this California college campus.

One woman's Viking Castle on Lake Tahoe.

The California capital city once stood 10 feet lower than it does today.

I Street Bridge is the heaviest swinging center bridge in the United States.

This 19th century train workshop is a treasure trove of railroad history.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

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

Dentist's hated concrete colossi are now beloved icons of the community.

The beauty and the beast of hydraulic mining is on full display at this California Historic State Park.

California's oldest existing theater building hosted an impressive cast of celebrities, including hosting Mark Twain's first lecture.

A watering hole where the options for seating include a bar, patio, or subterranean cave.

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.

A fine mixture of the old and the new topped with an art deco neon spire.

The modest home of the very immodest dancer who cost a king his crown.

The oldest continuously operating Catholic school west of the Mississippi.