After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

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

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood's most famous landmark, the "temporary" sign that has stood for decades longer than intended.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

The ghostly remains of an accidental sea.

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

World's largest collection of serial killer artwork and other macabre exhibits.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

A pair of giant roadside arrows are all that remains of a former Route 66 trading post.

What is the Thing?

See massive fossils that are over 200 million years old in northeastern Arizona.

This small hut in the middle of a parking lot was once the wooded sanctuary of the 'Hermit of Montrose.'

The only diamond mine in the world where you can keep what you find.