A hidden subterranean installation offers a view of the sky.

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

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

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

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

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

Reverend Franzo Wayne King administers spiritual enlightenment through the music of the jazz legend.

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

Nestled in the heart of San Francisco’s bustling Financial District stands a unique homage to the Mayan and Beaux Arts.

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.

A brooding mansion of clinker brick stands out among the Victorian houses of Pacific Heights.

World-famous, Pink's still manages to keep its prized cult fetish status.

Resting place of Hollywood's immortals is also site of summer film screenings.

This innocuous New Mexico storefront was once the secret jump-off spot for Manhattan Project scientists.

Wedding chapel's mysterious spiral staircase said to be miraculously constructed.

A sign at the end of the Santa Monica Pier marks the traditional end of the legendary American highway.

The unbelievably opulent home built for an infamous newspaperman.

This stretch of beach along California's central coast is a busy highway for the largest seal in the northern hemisphere.

It's not your typical library, memorial, or book store.

This Big Sur waterfall drops 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, and inspired the hillside house up top.

An old whaling station now serves to give the public a look at the commercial whaling industry, no longer a part of Monterey's economy.

This remarkably simple jail went over a century without an escape.