60 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.