Standing in a state of "arrested decay," this ghost town allows for a detailed peek into Gold Rush life in an unusually harsh climate.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

This Oakland fairytale kingdom, fiercely devoted to childlike whimsy, was an early inspiration for Disneyland.

Legends surround this jagged rock formation in the New Mexico desert.

The land is full of geologic eye candy, such as otherworldly spires, mushroom-shaped hoodoos, and prehistoric fossils.

Seemingly grown on some other world, these New Mexico rock formations look like a disused science fiction set.

An Ancestral Puebloan ruin that appears to burst into flames in the sunlight.

A 90-foot-tall psychedelic "tree" on the side of the highway has baffled passersby for decades.

This gallery of prehistoric red ochre art lines the wall of a scenic segment in Utah's San Rafael Swell.

A ghost town that held steady longer than most, but finally gave up the ghost.

Bizarre lunar-like landscape with thousands of large stone "hoodoos."

This 4,000-foot-diameter hole is touted as "the most well known, best preserved meteorite crater on Earth."

Small Nevada town embraced its designation as the "Armpit of America" with an Old Spice-sponsored festival.

Twelve plaster figures inspired by da Vinci's famed painting haunt the desert landscape above a real-life ghost town.

Odd outsider art installations surround a Gold Rush-era ghost town.

Commercial airplanes land mere feet over the heads of sunbathing beachgoers on this tiny island.

Every president in history is immortalized in bronze in downtown Rapid City.

This statue of an obscure comic strip hero stands as a tribute to patriotic service and a cautionary tale about embracing fads.

Self-built house and sculpture park where the creator can still be seen in a glass coffin.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

Internationally-recognized arts center housed in a century-old former military barracks.