US Landmarks Trivia
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This US landmarks trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and tours the whole country: the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the Empire State Building, Brooklyn Bridge and Times Square, the White House, Capitol, Washington Monument and the memorials of the National Mall, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, the Alamo, Graceland and Route 66, the Gateway Arch, Willis Tower and Cloud Gate, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, the Golden Gate, Alcatraz and the Hollywood Sign, and natural icons from the Grand Canyon and Old Faithful to Half Dome, Delicate Arch, Devils Tower and Niagara Falls. Easy questions ask who gave America the Statue of Liberty and which river carved the Grand Canyon. Harder ones want the sculptor of the Lincoln statue, the architect of the White House, the year Alcatraz closed and the group that first called it the Liberty Bell. The expert tier covers the Las Vegas sign's designer, Faneuil Hall's weathervane, Fallingwater's stream and the man who first pointed at Plymouth Rock. Good for road-trip planning, classrooms and Fourth of July quiz nights. Every answer has been checked against the encyclopaedia entry for each landmark, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?
France
France gave the Statue of Liberty to the United States; sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi designed it and Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron framework inside.
Q 02Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?
Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln
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.
Q 03The Golden Gate Bridge is painted in which officially named colour?
International Orange
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.
Q 04Which waterway carved the Grand Canyon?
The Colorado
The Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon, which is 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide and more than a mile deep.
Q 05How many stories tall is the Empire State Building?
102
The Empire State Building has 102 stories; it opened on May 1, 1931 after roughly thirteen and a half months of construction.
Q 06Hoover Dam sits on the border between which two states?
Nevada and Arizona
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.
Q 07In which city does the Gateway Arch stand?
St. Louis
The Gateway Arch rises 630 feet beside the Mississippi River in St. Louis, completed in 1965 as a monument to westward expansion.
Q 08What was the first word originally spelled out by the Hollywood Sign in 1923?
Hollywoodland
Hollywoodland advertised a hillside real-estate development; the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce restored the sign in 1949 and dropped the final four letters.
Q 09What is the street address of the US president's official residence?
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
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.
Q 10The Liberty Bell hangs in which city?
Philadelphia
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.
Q 11Alcatraz federal prison, on its island in San Francisco Bay, closed in which year?
1963
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.
Q 12Seattle's Space Needle was built for which event?
The 1962 World's Fair
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.
Q 13Which of the three waterfalls at Niagara is the largest, straddling the US-Canada border?
Horseshoe Falls
Q 21Which president dedicated Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
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.
Q 22Who designed the Gateway Arch, in 1947?
Eero Saarinen
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.
Q 23How tall is the Washington Monument?
555 feet
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.
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.
Q 14Which US national park was the world's first, created in 1872?
Yellowstone
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.
Q 15The Alamo, site of the famous 1836 siege, is in which Texas city?
San Antonio
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.
Q 16What is Chicago's Cloud Gate, nicknamed 'The Bean'?
A mirrored steel artwork by Anish Kapoor
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.
Q 17On what date was the Statue of Liberty dedicated?
October 28, 1886
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.
Q 18Who sculpted Mount Rushmore, working from 1927 until his death in 1941?
Gutzon Borglum
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.
Q 19Which New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title of world's longest suspension span in 1964?
The Verrazzano-Narrows
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.
Q 20What crashed into the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945?
A B-25 bomber
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.
Q 24Why is the Washington Monument's exterior faced with three slightly different kinds of white marble?
Construction was interrupted repeatedly
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.
Q 25Who sculpted the seated Abraham Lincoln statue inside the Lincoln Memorial?
Daniel Chester French
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.
Q 26Which Irish-born architect designed the president's residence in Washington?
James Hoban
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.
Q 27Which group first popularised the name 'Liberty Bell'?
Abolitionists
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.
Q 28Which two founding documents were adopted in Independence Hall?
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
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.
Q 29What was the first US national monument, proclaimed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906?
Devils Tower
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.
Q 30How tall is One World Trade Center, to the tip of its spire?
1,776 feet
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.