On the side of Highway 50 East, between Carson City and Dayton, Nevada, sits a giant metal spider made from a vintage Volkswagen Beetle.

Nuclear reactor created the plutonium used on Nagasaki.

A 1940s nuclear reactor built to produce plutonium for the Manhattan Project.

The remote graves of a Scottish family who died of thirst while attempting to reach St. George.

Cross the Continental Divide through an old railroad tunnel, and ride back to the top on a shuttle.

This arid landscape was once a lush wetland. Today, it's a paleontological site filled with fossilized mammoths, sabertooth cats, and more.

Unopened beer cans are left at this monument to honor the Navy men who lost their lives during a training mission.

This silver-mining camp has been active intermittently from the 1860s to the present.

This incongruous small ferry across the Willamette River north of Salem, Oregon has been operating continuously since the 1850s.

Oregon's only closed-basin hypersaline lake, an important stopover for migrating waterfowl, is in danger of drying up completely.

These falls, sometimes called the "Niagara of the West," still put on a good show at the right time of year.

Railways may have forged this quintet of lovely tunnels, but now they are open to hikers.

Some 46,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption led to a flooding event that carved this short canyon with steep vertical walls.

Dyed by iron oxide over centuries, these sandstone rocks rise thousands of feet into the sky.

Rare and gorgeous birds abound in this protected wildlife sanctuary.

One of the "twins" in these falls on the Snake River was sacrificed for hydropower generation in the 1930s.

This Idaho state park boasts the tallest single-structured sand dune in North America.

These wave-cut overhangs on ancient Lake Chewaucan contain some of the oldest evidence of human habitation in North America.

A volcanic fissure over two miles long and up to 70 feet deep.

Let Ouray’s tallest waterfall sweep your breath away on a dealer’s choice of scenic hikes.

This supper club is a slice of old Las Vegas.

Well-preserved ruins in the Pine Grove Hills of western Nevada.

Two geologically young and nearly circular volcanic subsidence craters, each about a half-mile in diameter, abruptly break the nearly featureless Snake River Plain.

Many believe these images represent interstellar lifeforms.