A Saint Nicholas-themed ghost town in the Mojave desert.

An abandoned stretch of highway, deteriorating next to the operational one.

The tragic reality of a town riddled with rumors of haunts, chemical spills, and serial killers.

An abandoned town is hidden in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This road in the Great Smoky Mountains was supposed to assuage a displaced community, but ended up a $52 million dead end.

One of America’s oldest and spookiest hotels, thanks to the residency of ghosts, dead presidents, and Alfred Hitchcock.

One of only five observatories in the world built to measure the Earth's wobble.

Behind legendary Meltdown Comics is a marker for an engineered musical roadway of the Tehachapi, the great road builders of Kcymaerxthaere.

An Aladdin's cave of old Silicon Valley tech.

In the middle of the desert, miles from any human life, sat an anomalous pay phone that still magically answers your calls.

Each winter this underground cave forms a dazzling ice palace.

The Route 66 institution that inspired Taco Bell also served as an important headquarters for Mexican-American social movements.

Eat a tasty meal in the house where John Steinbeck was born.

One of the largest free-standing structures ever built, this dirigible hangar is now simply a giant skeleton.

The ghostly remains of an accidental sea.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

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

No one's quite sure why there's a metal megaphone bolted on two rocks in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Abandoned Air Force base that has fallen into disrepair.

This Japanese treats shop may have been the first business to mass-produce fortune cookies in the United States.

This grinning pup statue is all that's left of what was once a ubiquitous Bay Area diner chain.

Steinbeck's old stomping grounds, immortalized in Cannery Row.

A Cold War site complete with rusty structures, hiking trails, and beautiful views.

One of the oldest producers of hand-folded fortune cookies still uses its original secret recipe.