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.

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

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

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

What was once a presidential estate is now an exotic menagerie and home to the Budweiser Clydesdales.

The capitol city's oldest existing cemetery.

One of nature's most well-scheduled phenomenons resides in Wyoming's Yellowstone National Park.

The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California."

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

A wild west cemetery in Tombstone, Arizona, provides a window into the Old West.

The only thing stranger than stumbling onto these philosophical musings is the story of the homesteader who created them.

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

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.

A century and a half of research in the sciences and natural history, still going strong.

This float factory takes the mask off of Mardi Gras and lets visitors see where the magic happens.

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

This symbolic piece of New Orleans architecture is also home to a few ghastly stories.

Two mammoth statues inspired by equally tall tales lure tourists to this roadside attraction.

The only visible piece of San Francisco's most famous shipwreck.

If New Orleans is the birthplace of the "cocktail," why does their own museum of cocktail memorabilia beg to differ?

The final resting place of New Orleans' most famous voodoo priestess.

The oldest cemetery in New Orleans, resting peacefully for over 200 years now.