The Cave Store

This guide to The Cave Store in San Diego starts with an odd admission: most of this souvenir shop's revenue comes not from anything on its shelves but from a staircase cut into solid rock. It follows Gustav Schultz, a German mining engineer and part-time painter who bought this coastline in 1902 and hired two laborers to hollow a passage down to a hidden sea cave using only picks and shovels. You'll hear how a famous writer, visiting a few years later, gave the cave the unusual name it still carries. Count the steps on your way down and you're following the exact route those laborers carved by hand.