A hidden garden of stones engraved with scriptures, a Joseph Smith Sphinx, all carved by one man.

This granite monument at the site of an ill-conceived tourist attraction is built from the same stone as the Mormon Temple.

This museum remembers the tough Mormon trek across America through an intriguing array of artifacts.

Visitors to this library are in for a real-world education in modernist architecture.

A rich history stashed behind an unassuming door in the heart of Gold Country.

Built in 1895, this bed and breakfast was once a hospital that served an early 1900s Gold Rush boomtown.

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

"You don't need a rocket scientist to build a steam engine, but we've got one." -Museum docent on the credentials of a restoration volunteer.

The beauty and the beast of hydraulic mining is on full display at this California Historic State Park.

This fully intact Neoclassical-Greek Revival style firehouse operated until 1938.

Hidden in a hotel parking lot is a strange historical plaque erected by an obscure fraternal society.

The viewpoint for this attractive, off-the-beaten-path waterfall is reached by a paved, wheelchair-accessible trail.

A fire lookout atop a glacial pinnacle is reached by climbing three vertiginous flights of stairs.

Colorful outcrops and cliffs just north of Reno provide a scenic backdrop for hiking and mountain biking.

An eccentric millionaire's personal curio collection includes at least one shrunken head.

Its founder calls it a "proletariat art renaissance".

A concrete arrow from a 1920s network of airmail beacons is still preserved at the western edge of suburban Reno.

Bill Murray bowled three straight strikes here at Reno's "Taj Mahal of Tenpins."

The only surviving prototype of Buckminster Fuller's revolutionary car.

This settlement on the original Transcontinental Railroad began by harvesting timber, but transitioned to a forgotten 19th-century industry: harvesting ice.

The smallest country in the world.

These once-beautiful historic graveyards are set against the barren Virginia City hills.

Here lies Lilly E. Gray, an alleged "victim of the beast," but the reason long remained a mystery.