Rooted into locale, the Lands End Lookout is a remarkable urban encounter with the natural forces that still shape this region.

A state-of-the-art visitor's center will open this weekend at Lands end in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The Parks Conservancy in partnership with the National Park Service engaged 34,484 volunteers who put in 513,884 hours in 2011 alone. That kind of work would cost $10.9 million on the open market.

Most of the more than one million tourists who visit the famous former prison annually never get to experience Alcatraz Island at night or see its spooky, decrepit hospital experiences unique only to the night tour.