Travelers leave tea kettles in a remote part of Death Valley as part of a mysterious, decades-old tradition.

"Only the devil could play golf here."

A trash dump made beautiful by nature's power.

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

An extraordinarily ornate museum in San Diego holds wondrous anthropological treasures.

Trails through lava-carved tube-caves display sparkling bacteria and a rich history.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

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

A replica of the first public theater built in California.

I Street Bridge is the heaviest swinging center bridge in the United States.

The capitol city's oldest existing cemetery.

A modest reminder of treacherous waters at the Golden Gate.

The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

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

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

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

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

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

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

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

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.