60 Fun Facts About US Landmarks

The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?

Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed it and Gustave Eiffel built the iron framework inside.

Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?

They were chosen to stand for the nation's foundation, expansion, development and preservation; each head is about 60 feet tall.

The Golden Gate Bridge is painted in which officially named colour?

Architect Irving Morrow picked it over the Navy's suggestion of black and yellow stripes.

Which waterway carved the Grand Canyon?

The canyon is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.

How many stories tall is the Empire State Building?

It opened on May 1, 1931 after just thirteen and a half months of construction.

Hoover Dam sits on the border between which two states?

It backs up the Colorado River in Black Canyon; the Roosevelt administration briefly insisted on calling it Boulder Dam.

In which city does the Gateway Arch stand?

At 630 feet it is the world's tallest arch, designed by Eero Saarinen in 1947.

What was the first word originally spelled out by the Hollywood Sign in 1923?

It advertised a real-estate development; the last four letters came down in 1949.

What is the street address of the US president's official residence?

Every president since John Adams in 1800 has lived there; the British burned it in 1814.

The Liberty Bell hangs in which city?

Commissioned in 1752 from a London foundry, it cracked on its first ringing and was twice recast by John Pass and John Stow.

Alcatraz federal prison, on its island in San Francisco Bay, closed in which year?

It had held Al Capone and the 'Birdman' Robert Stroud; Native American activists occupied the island for 19 months from 1969.

Seattle's Space Needle was built for which event?

At 605 feet it was once the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

Which of the three waterfalls at Niagara is the largest, straddling the US-Canada border?

The falls sit at the southern end of Niagara Gorge between Ontario and New York.

Which US national park was the world's first, created in 1872?

President Grant signed it into law on March 1, 1872; Old Faithful had been named by the Washburn expedition two years earlier.

The Alamo, site of the famous 1836 siege, is in which Texas city?

Davy Crockett and James Bowie both died in the battle during the Texas Revolution.

What is Chicago's Cloud Gate, nicknamed 'The Bean'?

Kapoor disliked the nickname at first but came round to it.

On what date was the Statue of Liberty dedicated?

President Grover Cleveland presided; the tablet in her left hand reads JULY IV MDCCLXXVI.

Who sculpted Mount Rushmore, working from 1927 until his death in 1941?

His son Lincoln finished the job later that year; the sculptor called it the Shrine of Democracy.

Which New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title of world's longest suspension span in 1964?

Its main span is 4,200 feet; the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge later took the height record too.

What crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945?

It hit between the 79th and 80th floors in fog; the building reopened for business two days later.

Which president dedicated Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935?

Congress had named it for Hoover during construction, but Roosevelt's administration called it Boulder Dam for years.

Who designed the Gateway Arch, in 1947?

The Finnish-American architect chose a weighted catenary curve clad in stainless steel.

How tall is the Washington Monument?

It was the world's tallest structure from 1884 until the Eiffel Tower overtook it in 1889.

The Washington Monument's exterior is faced with three slightly different kinds of white marble. Why?

Work stalled for decades in the mid-19th century, so the later stone never quite matched.

Who sculpted the seated Abraham Lincoln statue inside the Lincoln Memorial?

Henry Bacon was the architect; the Piccirilli brothers carved French's design in marble, and the memorial was dedicated in 1922.

Which Irish-born architect designed the president's residence in Washington?

Its walls are Aquia Creek sandstone painted white; the British set it ablaze in 1814.

Which group first popularised the name 'Liberty Bell'?

They adopted the bell and its inscription, 'Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land', as a symbol.

Which two founding documents were adopted in the Pennsylvania hall where the Continental Army was also created?

The Continental Army was also founded there, on June 14, 1775.

What was the first US national monument, proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906?

The Wyoming butte later starred in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

How tall is One World Trade Center, to the tip of its spire?

The number is deliberate; it passed the Empire State Building as New York's tallest in April 2012.

The USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor marks the resting place of how many of the ship's crew?

1,177 sailors and Marines died on the ship on December 7, 1941; the memorial was dedicated on Memorial Day 1962.

Roughly how many immigrants were processed at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?

By one estimate two-fifths of Americans descend from them; the island itself lies in both New Jersey and New York.

What stands on top of the US Capitol dome?

The colossal statue was hoisted up in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War; the dome itself was finished around 1866.

Who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington?

She was a 21-year-old Yale student when her minimalist black granite design won the competition; the wall was completed in 1982.

The Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota's Black Hills has been under construction since which year?

Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear commissioned sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski; the finished carving is planned to be 563 feet high.

Monument Valley's famous buttes lie within which tribe's reservation?

The Navajo name means 'valley of the rocks'; the tallest butte rises 1,000 feet above the floor along the Utah-Arizona line.

Delicate Arch, the 52-foot natural arch in Arches National Park, appears on which state's licence plates?

It also featured on a postage stamp for Utah's centenary of statehood in 1896.

How often, on average, does Old Faithful erupt?

Gaps range from 35 to 120 minutes; it was the first geyser in Yellowstone to be named, in 1870.

The Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883 as the first fixed crossing of which waterway?

With a 1,595-foot main span it was the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.

Chicago's Willis Tower carried what name when it opened in 1973 as the world's tallest building?

Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan of SOM designed it; it held the world title for nearly 25 years.

What was Times Square known as before The New York Times moved there in 1904?

The New Year's Eve ball drop began three years later, on December 31, 1907.

Route 66 ran from Chicago to which Californian city?

The 2,448-mile 'Mother Road', a nickname popularised by The Grapes of Wrath, crossed eight states.

Graceland is the second most visited home in the United States. Which presidential residence is first?

Elvis's Memphis mansion opened as a museum in 1982 and draws about 600,000 people a year.

Which two Boston and Chicago ballparks are the oldest in the major leagues, in order?

Wrigley opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park for the Federal League's Chicago Whales, two years after Fenway.

The Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign was designed by whom, in 1959?

It is a landmark of Googie architecture and was built by Western Neon for Clark County.

Faneuil Hall in Boston, the 'Cradle of Liberty', has a weathervane shaped like which creature?

The hall opened in 1742 to designs by the painter John Smibert.

Who first identified Plymouth Rock as the Pilgrims' landing place, and when?

He was 94 at the time, 121 years after the Mayflower arrived.

Which art collective created Cadillac Ranch, the half-buried cars in Amarillo, in 1974?

Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels planted the cars nose-down; visitors are welcome to spray-paint them.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater is built partly over a waterfall on which Pennsylvania stream?

It was a weekend house for Pittsburgh department-store owner Edgar Kaufmann and his wife Liliane.

Which North Carolina estate is the largest privately owned house in the United States?

George Washington Vanderbilt II's Châteauesque mansion, finished in 1895, has almost 179,000 square feet of floor space.

Which architect built Hearst Castle at San Simeon for William Randolph Hearst between 1919 and 1947?

Its formal name is La Cuesta Encantada, 'The Enchanted Hill'.

Fort McHenry's defence of which harbour in September 1814 inspired The Star-Spangled Banner?

The garrison ran up a 30-by-42-foot flag on the morning of September 14 as the British fleet withdrew.

Which architect designed the Jefferson Memorial, completed in 1943?

Philadelphia contractor John McShain built it, and it is lined with quotations from Jefferson.

Yosemite's Half Dome is climbed with the help of what, installed in 1919?

The dome tops 8,800 feet and is made of quartz monzonite that solidified deep underground.

Which president signed the law making the Grand Canyon a national park in 1919?

Roosevelt had made it a national monument in 1908.

How long do the Space Needle's elevators take to reach the observation deck 520 feet up?

The 605-foot tower was built for the 1962 World's Fair and is engineered to survive a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and 200 mph winds.

Which engineer designed the Mackinac Bridge linking Michigan's two peninsulas, opened in 1957?

Before the 'Mighty Mac' opened, the Upper and Lower peninsulas were linked only by ferries across the Straits of Mackinac.

What was Independence Hall originally called when it was completed in 1753?

It was renamed in 1824 when it hosted the visiting Marquis de Lafayette, and became a World Heritage Site in 1979.

Who was the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, dedicated in 1922?

The temple-style memorial has Doric columns, Jules Guérin murals and the Gettysburg Address carved on an interior wall.

Grand Central Terminal has more platforms than any other railroad station in the world. How many?

All of them sit below ground, serving 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower, across 48 acres of Midtown Manhattan.