100 Fun Facts About US Landmarks

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

France gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States; sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed it and Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron framework inside.

Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?

Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln were chosen to stand for the nation's birth, growth, development and preservation; each granite head is about 60 feet tall.

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

International Orange was chosen by consulting architect Irving Morrow, who rejected the Navy's proposal of black and yellow stripes meant to make the bridge visible to ships.

Which waterway carved the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon, which is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.

How many stories tall is the Empire State Building?

The Empire State Building has 102 stories; it opened on May 1, 1931 after roughly thirteen and a half months of construction.

Hoover Dam sits on the border between which two states?

Hoover Dam straddles the Nevada and Arizona line in Black Canyon; Interior Secretary Harold Ickes had it called Boulder Dam from 1933 until Congress restored the Hoover name in 1947.

In which city does the Gateway Arch stand?

The Gateway Arch rises 630 feet beside the Mississippi River in St. Louis, completed in 1965 as a monument to westward expansion.

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

Hollywoodland advertised a hillside real-estate development; the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce restored the sign in 1949 and dropped the final four letters.

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

The president's house is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW; every president since John Adams in 1800 has lived there, and British troops burned it in August 1814.

The Liberty Bell hangs in which city?

The Liberty Bell hangs in Philadelphia, across from Independence Hall; cast in London in 1752, it cracked at its first test ringing and was twice recast by local founders John Pass and John Stow.

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

Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary in 1963 after 29 years; it had held Al Capone and 'Birdman' Robert Stroud, and Native American activists occupied the island for 19 months from 1969.

Seattle's Space Needle was built for which event?

The 1962 World's Fair, Seattle's Century 21 Exposition, was the reason the Space Needle was built; at 605 feet it was then the tallest structure west of the Mississippi.

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

Horseshoe Falls carries about 90 percent of the Niagara River's flow and straddles the Ontario–New York border, while the American and Bridal Veil falls lie entirely in the United States.

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

Yellowstone became the world's first national park when President Grant signed the act on March 1, 1872; the Washburn expedition had named Old Faithful two years earlier.

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

The Alamo stands in downtown San Antonio; Davy Crockett and James Bowie both died there when Santa Anna's army stormed the mission on March 6, 1836.

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

A mirrored steel artwork by Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate is made of 168 polished stainless-steel plates welded seamlessly in Millennium Park; Kapoor disliked the 'Bean' nickname at first but came round to it.

On what date was the Statue of Liberty dedicated?

October 28, 1886 was the dedication day; President Grover Cleveland presided over the ceremony on Bedloe's Island, and the tablet in her left hand reads JULY IV MDCCLXXVI.

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

Gutzon Borglum led the carving from 1927 until his death in March 1941; his son Lincoln Borglum finished the work that October, and 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?

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 with a 4,260-foot main span, 60 feet longer than the Golden Gate's, and held the world record until Britain's Humber Bridge opened in 1981.

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

A B-25 bomber, lost in fog on a flight to Newark, struck between the 79th and 80th floors, killing 14 people; most of the building reopened two days later.

Which president dedicated Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935?

Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the dam on September 30, 1935, declaring 'I came, I saw, and I was conquered'; his administration preferred the name Boulder Dam, which lasted until 1947.

Who designed the Gateway Arch, in 1947?

Eero Saarinen, the Finnish-American architect, won the 1947-48 design competition with a weighted catenary curve clad in stainless steel; he died in 1961, four years before the arch was finished.

How tall is the Washington Monument?

The Washington Monument stands 555 feet tall, making it the world's tallest structure from its completion in 1884 until the Eiffel Tower overtook it in 1889.

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

Construction was interrupted repeatedly: work stopped in 1854 when funds ran out and did not resume until 1879, so the later courses came from different quarries and never quite matched.

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

Daniel Chester French designed the 19-foot seated Lincoln, which the Piccirilli brothers carved from 28 blocks of Georgia white marble; the memorial was dedicated in 1922.

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

James Hoban, born in County Kilkenny, won the 1792 design competition and later rebuilt the house after British troops burned it; its walls are Aquia Creek sandstone painted white.

Which group first popularised the name 'Liberty Bell'?

Abolitionists gave the bell its name in the 1830s, adopting its inscription, 'Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land', as an anti-slavery symbol in their newspapers and pamphlets.

Which two founding documents were adopted in Independence Hall?

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both adopted in Independence Hall, in 1776 and 1787; the Continental Army was founded there on June 14, 1775.

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

Devils Tower, a volcanic butte in northeastern Wyoming, was proclaimed on September 24, 1906 under the new Antiquities Act; it later starred in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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

1,776 feet echoes the year of American independence; the tower passed the Empire State Building as New York's tallest in April 2012 and its spire was set in place in May 2013.

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

1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed aboard on December 7, 1941 remain entombed in the hull; the memorial above them was dedicated on Memorial Day 1962.

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

12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island, and by one estimate two-fifths of Americans descend from them; since a 1998 Supreme Court ruling most of the island counts as New Jersey.

What stands on top of the US Capitol dome?

The Statue of Freedom, Thomas Crawford's 19.5-foot bronze of a female figure in a feathered helmet, was hoisted into place on December 2, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War.

Who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington?

Maya Lin was a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate when her minimalist black granite design won the 1981 competition; the wall was dedicated in November 1982.

Work on the Crazy Horse Memorial in South Dakota's Black Hills began in which year?

1948 saw the first blast on June 3, after Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear invited sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski to carve the mountain; the planned figure is 563 feet high and 641 feet long.

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

The Navajo Nation reservation contains Monument Valley, whose Navajo name means 'valley of the rocks'; its tallest buttes rise about 1,000 feet above the desert floor.

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

Utah put Delicate Arch on its standard licence plate in 1996, the centenary of statehood, and the arch appeared on a commemorative postage stamp the same year.

Old Faithful erupts in which geyser basin?

Upper Geyser Basin is home to Old Faithful and the densest concentration of geysers on Earth, including Castle, Grand, Daisy and Riverside, all reachable on foot from the Old Faithful Inn.

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

The East River separates Manhattan from Brooklyn; the bridge's 1,595-foot main span made it the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened on May 24, 1883.

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

Sears Tower was its name until 2009, when the Willis Group took naming rights; Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan of SOM designed it, and it held the world-height title for nearly 25 years.

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

Longacre Square, named after London's carriage-trade district, was renamed in April 1904 when the Times built its tower there; the first New Year's Eve ball drop followed on December 31, 1907.

Route 66 ran from Chicago to which Californian city?

Santa Monica became the western terminus in 1936; the 2,448-mile 'Mother Road', a nickname from Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, crossed eight states on its way from Chicago.

George Washington's Mount Vernon estate overlooks which river?

The Potomac flows past Mount Vernon's east lawn in Virginia; George Washington farmed the estate for more than 40 years and died there in December 1799.

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

Fenway Park, then Wrigley Field: Fenway opened in April 1912, and Wrigley followed in 1914 as Weeghman Park, home of the Federal League's Chicago Whales.

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

Betty Willis designed it while working for Western Neon, never copyrighted it, and called it her gift to the city; it is a landmark of Googie style.

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

A grasshopper, gilded copper and made by Shem Drowne in 1742, has topped the cupola since the hall opened; painter John Smibert designed the building.

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

Thomas Faunce, in 1741, then a 94-year-old church elder, said the original settlers had shown him the rock as a boy, 121 years after the Mayflower arrived.

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

Ant Farm members Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels planted ten Cadillacs nose-down at the angle of the Great Pyramid; visitors are welcome to spray-paint them.

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

Bear Run, a tributary of the Youghiogheny, drops beneath the cantilevered terraces; the 1930s house was a weekend retreat 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?

Biltmore, George Washington Vanderbilt II's Châteauesque mansion near Asheville, was finished in 1895 with almost 179,000 square feet of floor space and 250 rooms.

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

Julia Morgan, the first woman admitted to the architecture programme at Paris's École des Beaux-Arts, spent 28 years on La Cuesta Encantada, 'The Enchanted Hill', for Hearst.

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

Baltimore's harbour was saved when the bombardment failed; the garrison raised its 30-by-42-foot flag on the morning of September 14 as the British fleet withdrew, and Francis Scott Key watched from a truce ship.

Which architect designed the Jefferson Memorial, completed in 1943?

John Russell Pope modelled the rotunda on the Pantheon and Jefferson's own Rotunda at the University of Virginia; he died in 1937, and contractor John McShain finished building it.

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

A pair of steel cables, first strung by the Sierra Club in 1919, lets hikers haul themselves up the final 400 feet of the dome's east shoulder, which rises to about 8,840 feet.

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

Woodrow Wilson signed the act on February 26, 1919; Theodore Roosevelt had protected the canyon as a national monument in 1908 after declaring it the one great sight every American should see.

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

41 seconds is the ride at about 10 miles an hour; the 605-foot tower is engineered to survive a magnitude-9 earthquake and winds of 200 mph.

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

David B. Steinman designed the 'Mighty Mac', whose 3,800-foot main span opened on November 1, 1957; until then ferries across the Straits of Mackinac were the only link.

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

Pennsylvania State House was its name as the colonial legislature's seat; 'Independence Hall' caught on after the Marquis de Lafayette's 1824 visit, and it became a World Heritage Site in 1979.

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

Henry Bacon modelled the memorial on a Greek temple, with 36 Doric columns for the states at Lincoln's death, Jules Guérin murals and the Gettysburg Address carved on the south wall.

How many passenger platforms does New York's Grand Central Terminal have?

44 platforms, more than any other railroad station, all sit below ground, serving 30 tracks on the upper level and 26 on the lower across 48 acres of Midtown Manhattan.

Which 1830s British crossing was sold in 1968 and shipped in numbered blocks to Lake Havasu City?

London Bridge was sold because it could no longer carry the capital's traffic. The buyer, developer McCulloch, always denied the rumour that he thought he was getting Tower Bridge.

The Statue of Liberty turned green within twenty years of its unveiling as which metal in its skin oxidised?

Copper was chosen over bronze or stone because it was cheaper, lighter and easier to ship. The green layer is left alone because it shields the thin skin from further corrosion.

Which Yosemite granite monolith did Alex Honnold climb alone without ropes in June 2017, a feat filmed for Free Solo?

El Capitan rises about 3,000 feet from base to summit. Its Spanish name, 'the captain', was given in 1851 as a loose translation of the cliff's Miwok name, said to mean 'rock chief'.

Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, lies in which national park?

Death Valley's Badwater pool is fed by a spring but is too salty to drink, hence the name. Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States, stands only 85 miles to the west.

What did Leland Stanford drive at Promontory Summit in 1869 to complete the first transcontinental railroad?

A golden spike of 17.6-karat gold was driven into a pre-bored laurel tie, then pulled out straight away in case it was stolen. It is now on display at Stanford University.

A 1980s children's drawing contest put which film villain's head high on Washington National Cathedral?

Darth Vader was the third-place entry in a National Geographic World competition, drawn by a boy named Christopher Rader. The carving sits so high that binoculars are needed to spot it.

General Sherman, the largest living single-stem tree on Earth by volume, belongs to which Californian species?

General Sherman, a giant sequoia, was renamed for Karl Marx in the 1880s by a socialist logging colony that controlled the land. The tallest known tree, Hyperion, is a coast redwood.

Arlington National Cemetery was created in 1864 on land confiscated from which Confederate general's family?

Robert E. Lee's wife sent an agent to pay the $92.07 tax bill on the estate, but the Union government turned him away and took the property at a tax sale.

Which Virginia plantation house, designed by the president who lived there, has appeared on the US nickel since 1938?

Monticello was reworked by Thomas Jefferson for decades. The room under its octagonal dome was rarely used, perhaps because the only way up was a steep and very narrow staircase.

Which Cascade Range volcano lost about 1,300 feet of its summit in a May 1980 eruption that killed 57 people?

Mount St. Helens dropped from 9,677 to 8,363 feet when an earthquake set off a huge landslide and a sideways blast, leaving a mile-wide crater.

In which Pennsylvania town did Abraham Lincoln give a two-minute speech at a soldiers' cemetery in November 1863?

Gettysburg's ceremony drew about 15,000 people to the battlefield, where the fighting had ended only four and a half months earlier.

At which Washington playhouse was Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865?

Ford's Theatre was later used as a warehouse and government offices, and part of its flooring collapsed in 1893, killing 22 people. It reopened as a working playhouse in 1968.

Which 1607 settlement, nearly wiped out by the Starving Time, became England's first permanent American colony?

Jamestown had only about 60 colonists left alive after the winter of 1609-10 and was briefly abandoned that June. It went on to serve as Virginia's colonial capital until 1699.

The first shots of the American Civil War were fired in April 1861 at which stronghold in Charleston Harbor?

Fort Sumter was still unfinished when Confederate guns opened fire, although work on its artificial island had begun back in 1829.

Elvis Presley's mansion Graceland, opened as a museum in 1982 and now his burial place, stands in which Tennessee city?

Memphis's centre is about nine miles north of the mansion, where Presley died in 1977 and lies buried beside his parents, his grandmother and his daughter.

Dealey Plaza, where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade, is in which Texas city?

Dallas sometimes calls the plaza its birthplace, as the site of the city's first home. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1993, thirty years after the shooting.

Walt Disney bought 160 acres of orange groves and walnut trees in which California city to build Disneyland?

Anaheim's park opened in July 1955 and is the only Disney theme park designed and built under Walt Disney's direct supervision.

Hoover Dam holds back which reservoir, the largest in the United States by water capacity?

Lake Mead is named after Elwood Mead, who ran the US Bureau of Reclamation while the dam was planned and built. Its rising water forced whole communities to move out.

The Marine Corps War Memorial near Washington recreates a 1945 photograph of a flag-raising on which Pacific island?

Iwo Jima's flag-raising photograph so struck sculptor Felix de Weldon that he modelled a first version of the statue in a single weekend.

Which Art Deco Manhattan skyscraper, ringed with eagle gargoyles, was the world's tallest for 11 months?

The Chrysler Building raced 40 Wall Street for the height record in 1930, then lost it within a year. Its 31st floor carries replicas of 1929 radiator caps from the carmaker's own models.

Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States, fills a collapsed volcano in which state?

Oregon's Crater Lake has no rivers flowing in or out, so rain and snow alone keep it topped up. Its basin formed when the volcano Mount Mazama collapsed about 7,700 years ago.

Which Kentucky national park protects more than 400 miles of mapped underground passages, the longest such system known?

Mammoth Cave was mapped extensively in the 1840s by Stephen Bishop, an enslaved guide who named many of its features. A doctor also ran a short-lived tuberculosis hospital inside.

The Twin Spires, added to the grandstand in 1895, rise above which Louisville racetrack that hosts the Kentucky Derby?

Churchill Downs takes its name from a family long prominent in Kentucky. The garland of roses for the Derby winner arrived in 1896, a year after the spires.

Which Houston stadium, nicknamed the Eighth Wonder of the World, was the first major venue with artificial turf?

The Astrodome opened with natural grass, but it died indoors, and the synthetic replacement laid in 1966 became known as AstroTurf.

On Bloody Sunday in 1965, police attacked civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in which Alabama city?

Selma's bridge is named after Edmund Pettus, a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader. The marchers were trying to reach the state capital, Montgomery.

Two lanterns in which Boston steeple signalled British troop movements on the night of Paul Revere's ride?

Old North Church, built in 1723, is Boston's oldest standing church. Accounts differ on whether the sexton, a sea captain, or both men together lit the lanterns.

Which Hollywood Boulevard cinema, opened in 1927, has film stars' handprints set in its concrete forecourt?

The Chinese Theatre was built by showman Sid Grauman and opened with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings. New slabs have been added to the forecourt ever since.

Which Fifth Avenue museum, built around a six-storey spiral ramp, took Frank Lloyd Wright 15 years to design and build?

The Guggenheim was completed in 1959 and drew controversy for the unusual shape of its display spaces. In 2019 it joined UNESCO's World Heritage List with seven other Wright buildings.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 1995, stands in which Ohio city?

Cleveland won the museum in 1986 by pledging $65 million and pointing to local DJ Alan Freed, who championed the term 'rock and roll' and staged an early rock concert there.

The Winchester Mystery House, a rifle heiress's mansion with stairs that end at a ceiling, is in which California city?

San Jose's strangest mansion owes many dead ends to the 1906 earthquake: its owner cleared the rubble but repaired little, leaving staircases that stop short and doors that open onto nothing.

The Breakers, a 70-room summer residence in Newport, Rhode Island, was built in the 1890s for which wealthy family?

The Vanderbilts lost an earlier house on the site to fire in 1892, so Cornelius Vanderbilt II insisted the replacement be built of masonry and steel with no wooden parts.

Which landscape architect won the 1858 competition to design New York's Central Park with Calvert Vaux?

Frederick Law Olmsted and Vaux called their winning entry the Greensward Plan. Building it meant razing Seneca Village, a majority-Black settlement seized through eminent domain.

Which poet wrote The New Colossus in 1883 to raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?

Emma Lazarus wrote the sonnet for a fundraising exhibition. It was only in 1903 that it was cast onto a bronze plaque and mounted inside the pedestal.

Who took over daily supervision of the Brooklyn Bridge when caisson disease disabled her husband, the chief engineer?

Emily Roebling was the first to cross the finished bridge by carriage, ahead of the official opening, carrying a rooster as a sign of victory.

Which contralto sang to more than 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being barred from a concert hall?

Marian Anderson gave the open-air Easter concert after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her their hall. Thousands of members, the First Lady among them, resigned in protest.

Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in North America, was built by Ancestral Puebloans at which protected site?

Mesa Verde's biggest dwelling was abandoned by 1300, for reasons that are still debated.

Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States, guards which Florida city?

St. Augustine's fort is built of coquina, a rock made of ancient shells bonded together. Its Spanish builders laid the first stones in 1672.

Chimney Rock, a rock spire that guided wagon trains on the California and Mormon Trails, stands in which state?

Nebraska's spire went by other names, including Chimley Rock and Elk Brick, before the present one stuck. Early fur traders probably coined it.

Which North Carolina lighthouse, the tallest in the United States, was moved 2,900 feet in 1999 to escape erosion?

Cape Hatteras Light warns ships off the shifting shoals known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Its 1999 move inland left it about 1,500 feet from the shoreline.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, site of Custer's Last Stand in June 1876, lies in which state?

Montana's battlefield was officially named after Custer until 1991, when a new law renamed it and called for a memorial to the Native American warriors to be built near Last Stand Hill.