A stranded woman lived alone on this remote island for 18 years, inspiring the great children's novel "Island of the Blue Dolphins."

The only remnant of a small mining town is an abandoned railroad tunnel that is steeped in ghostly lore.

This massive underground salt mine now holds a sci-fi theme park in its depths.

This historic oak tree has been around for over 300 years and might last for 300 more so long as it doesn't fall apart first.

A beautifully detailed Victorian house designed to be easy to flee, built by a man haunted by fire.

Dedicated to the "World's Luckiest Fishing Village."

Of course the guy with the first patent for an ice machine lived in Florida.

A 1950s eccentric's vision of Eden preserved as a hiking trail.

A humid oasis combines recreation with exploration in a unique underwater cavern.

Interact with jury-selected works of art at this Gulf Coast underwater museum.

A graveyard of bathyspheres and diving bells paints a weirdly accurate account of ocean exploration's rickety history.

For decades, the largest tungsten producer in the U.S. was located in a spectacular setting in the high Sierra Nevada, with some of the workings over 11,000 feet.

A charming desert roadside bakery that produces 10 times more bread daily than it has residents in its town.

The echoes of a railroad town that solemnly mark the end of the line.

An early 20th-century fire lookout, still in intermittent use, preserves legacy fire-locating equipment.

The first lookout in Yosemite.

A glimpse into the lives of the the Miwok and Paiute people in Yosemite National Park.

The interior of the Overlook Hotel in "The Shining" was based on this Yosemite original.

Under the right circumstances, this waterfall in Yosemite briefly turns a luminescent fiery orange.

This trench, some 2,300 feet long, is only the most prominent relic of a largely forgotten episode of placer mining on the east slope of the Sierra Nevada.

A scenic hike in the High Sierra that ends at an old gold mine.

This large chunk of dark rock is a relic from an ancient volcanic eruption.

Deep vertical fissures like miniature slot canyons cut across the cemented volcanic rock of Black Point above Mono Lake.

A volcanic cone that formed over 600 years ago.