Salt is slowly eating away this abandoned saltworks town in the desert.

The liveliest ghost town in the state.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

Commonly referred to as the most photographed Victorian home in the United States.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

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

This rare example of a "tidefall" is a spectacular drop from the cliffs down onto the beach.

This massive redwood tree has a hole in the base big enough to drive through.

The tragedy of the Japanese internment camps is remembered here by a stark "Soul Consoling Tower."

Millions of years of oxidation make a drive down this winding Death Valley road surprisingly colorful.

Ten 25-foot-tall, beehive-shaped kilns, abandoned in Death Valley.

This crumbling Death Valley mining complex was known for its use of giant, 20-mule team wagons.

Marta Becket's hand-painted theater in the desert.

The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

A desert ghost town—occupied for only 12 years—was once home to more than 500 silver mines.

One of the ghostly stops along Route 66.

The ghost town that ended up on Ebay.

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

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

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

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

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

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