Malakoff Diggins State Park, California

Not many states have a park about pollution and environmental destruction, which gives this location a strange eerie feel.

During the gold rush and for many decades after, the precious metal was extracted here using high pressure water jets called monitors. The stripped the hills, as is seen in this photograph, wiping away the landscape and sending the sludge down to processing pools where it was extracted using arsenic and other poisonous chemicals.

The vegetation in these areas, even today, has an unhealthy and off-putting look to it. And the land itself is not likely to recover for hundreds of years, if ever.

This park serves as a monument to the destructiveness of unchecked greed, and a warning to us all.