The hundreds of movies and television shows shot in this high desert town are commemorated in a unique museum.

Haunting and beautiful trees, doomed to die.

Where the writer penned his famous story about a jumping frog.

Hidden in the Santa Ynez Mountains off Highway 154, this tiny restaurant once served as a stagecoach stop.

Like a kitschy mirage in the Mojave, this eatery serves up classic 50s-style diner meals and a dinosaur sculpture garden.

Colorful Native American paintings are hidden within this small cavern.

Where there's quartz, there must be gold. Thus is the story of the mines of Julian, and the titillating times of the Gold Rush.

Its dark depths conceal millions of rare, delicate crystal formations.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

While exploring the desert, you can stop by the home of a fictional heretic from a parallel universe.

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

A popular tourist cave with a dark past.

The abandoned train depot now doubles as a well-placed rest stop for those who take the road less traveled.

Dive bar built out of the remains of a whaling ship.

A grove of "candelabra redwoods" deep in California's Lost Coast.

A fake town founded by Western movie stars is now becoming a hip desert community.

A crumbling wizard is one of the final reminders of a roadside Middle Earth.

The lighthouse central to the 1980s horror classic "The Fog" is, in fact, located in one of the foggiest areas of the Pacific Coast.

The liveliest ghost town in the state.

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

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

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

Once thought to be the oldest living tree in the world, Methuselah was germinated before the Egyptian pyramids were built.