99 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, but the pedestal was America's to build: when the money ran out, Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper appeal raised over $100,000 to finish it.

Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?

Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln were chosen to stand, in that order, for the nation's birth, growth, development and preservation.

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

International Orange was consulting architect Irving Morrow's personal choice, winning out over the Navy's suggestion of black and yellow stripes to make the bridge visible to ships.

Which waterway carved the Grand Canyon?

The Colorado River is thought to have begun cutting the Grand Canyon about five to six million years ago, after the whole region had been lifted into a high plateau; the gorge is now over a mile deep.

Which skyscraper did the Empire State Building overtake as the world's tallest?

The Chrysler Building held the title only briefly: on May 1, 1931 President Hoover pressed a button in Washington to switch on the lights of the 102-story Empire State Building.

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 did the Hollywood Sign originally spell out when it was put up 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.

Which gangster arrived at Alcatraz in August 1934, soon after it opened?

Al Capone was sent there after officials suspected he was winning special treatment inside Atlanta's federal prison; Alcatraz was designed to cut inmates off from outside influence.

Seattle's Space Needle was built for which event?

The 1962 World's Fair was barely a year away when private investors bought the site for $75,000; the Space Needle then went up in less than a year, ready just as the fair opened.

Which of the three waterfalls that make up Niagara Falls is by far the largest?

Horseshoe Falls takes most of the Niagara River's flow, but less at night: under a 1950 treaty, extra water is diverted to power stations after tourist hours, so the falls run fullest by day.

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 168 steel plates welded into one seamless skin; Chicagoans nicknamed it from early drawings, before the artist had even given it a title.

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 died in March 1941 with the work unfinished; his son Lincoln, who had started on the mountain as an unpaid pointer, took over as sculptor and closed the project that October.

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

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge beat the Golden Gate's span by 60 feet; its towers stand so far apart that engineers had to allow for the curve of the Earth, leaving the tops slightly wider apart than the bases.

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

A B-25 bomber, lost in fog over Manhattan, struck the 79th floor; elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver then survived a plunge to the basement in a car the crash had cut loose.

Which president dedicated Hoover Dam on September 30, 1935?

Franklin D. Roosevelt called it Boulder Dam throughout his speech and never mentioned Hoover: his Interior Secretary had dropped the name in 1933, and Congress restored it only in 1947.

Which architect designed the Gateway Arch, winning a competition launched in 1947?

Eero Saarinen made the final round, but the telegram went to his father Eliel, a rival entrant; the family toasted the wrong Saarinen with champagne before an official rang to correct it.

Which metal, as costly as silver in 1884, tips the Washington Monument?

Aluminium was then so hard to refine that the 100-ounce cap counted as precious metal; within two years a cheap new smelting process sent its price tumbling.

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 won the 1792 design competition; George Washington chose the site but never lived in the finished house.

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 documents were adopted in Independence Hall?

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were both adopted in its Assembly Room; as the last delegates signed in 1787, Franklin said the sun on Washington's chair was rising, not setting.

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

Devils Tower, an igneous rock tower in Wyoming, made headlines in 1941 when a stunt parachutist landed on its summit and was stranded for six days until climbers brought him down.

Which New York skyscraper rises a symbolic 1,776 feet?

One World Trade Center was designed to reach 1,776 feet as a nod to the year of American independence; its spire, completed in May 2013, made it the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

Which singer's 1961 benefit concert in Hawaii helped pay for the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor?

Elvis Presley's show raised more than $50,000 for an appeal still well short of its $500,000 goal; more public and private money followed, and the memorial was dedicated the following year.

A 1998 Supreme Court ruling placed most of Ellis Island in which state?

New Jersey won the landfill: the court left the original island with New York but ruled that the ground added by filling in the harbour, most of today's island, lay on New Jersey's side.

What stands on top of the US Capitol dome?

The Statue of Freedom, Thomas Crawford's bronze of a helmeted woman, was cast with the help of Philip Reid, an enslaved foundry worker, and was raised onto the dome in December 1863.

Who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington?

Maya Lin was still an architecture student when her design won; some critics saw the black wall as a symbol of defeat, so a bronze statue of three soldiers was later added nearby as a compromise.

Which Lakota leader is being carved into a mountain in the Black Hills?

Crazy Horse was the choice of Lakota elder Henry Standing Bear, who wrote to the sculptor that his fellow chiefs wanted the white man to know the red man has great heroes too.

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

The Navajo Nation runs Monument Valley as a tribal park; John Ford shot Stagecoach there after, by the local trading post's account, its owners drove to Hollywood to pitch the valley.

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

Utah made Delicate Arch its emblem, on plates and a statehood-centennial stamp, though local cowboys had earlier known it by ruder names such as the Chaps and Old Maid's Bloomers.

The Old Faithful Inn, beside the famous geyser, is one of the world's largest buildings made of what?

Logs of local lodgepole pine were chosen so the hotel would suit its wild setting; architect Robert Reamer's crews built it through the long winter of 1903–04.

The Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, spans which waterway?

The East River crossing was finished under Emily Warren Roebling, who carried her husband's instructions to the site each day after caisson disease left the chief engineer bedridden.

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

Sears, then the world's largest retailer, built the tower to gather its Chicago staff under one roof; the name changed in 2009 when insurance broker Willis leased offices with naming rights attached.

Route 66 ran from Chicago to which Californian city?

Santa Monica became the western end in 1936, when the highway was extended from Los Angeles; Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, with its Dust Bowl families heading west, made it the 'Mother Road'.

George Washington's Mount Vernon estate overlooks which river?

The Potomac flows past Mount Vernon, which fell into disrepair after Washington died there in 1799; the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association bought it in 1858 and has looked after the estate ever since.

Which ballpark, opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park, is the major leagues' second oldest after Fenway Park?

Wrigley Field was built for the Chicago Whales of the rival Federal League; when that league folded after two seasons, the Cubs moved in for 1916 and have played there ever since.

Why can anyone copy Las Vegas's famous welcome sign?

It was never copyrighted: designer Betty Willis, who drew it for a neon sign company, is said to have called it her gift to the city.

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

A grasshopper, gilded and made by Shem Drowne in 1742, crowns the cupola; legend says that in the War of 1812 anyone who could not name it was taken for a spy.

What happened to Plymouth Rock when townspeople tried to move it in 1774?

It split in two as they lifted it: some patriots took the break as an omen of the split with Britain, the top half was carted to the town square, and the halves were not reunited until 1880.

What are visitors to Cadillac Ranch encouraged to do?

Spray-paint the cars: the art group Ant Farm half-buried ten Cadillacs nose-down near Amarillo, Texas, in 1974, and its makers came to encourage the graffiti, so the cars now wear coat upon coat of visitors' paint.

Which architect designed Fallingwater, the 1930s Pennsylvania house built directly over a waterfall?

Frank Lloyd Wright surprised his clients, the Kaufmanns, who had expected a house looking across at the falls: he set it on top so they would live with the waterfall, not just view it.

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

Biltmore, George Vanderbilt's 250-room mansion near Asheville, still belongs to his descendants; they opened it to paying visitors in 1930 to boost Depression-era tourism and fund its upkeep.

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

Julia Morgan worked with Hearst on the hilltop estate for nearly 30 years, partly because he kept rethinking finished work: the Neptune Pool was rebuilt three times before he was satisfied.

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 ancient Roman building was the model for the domed Jefferson Memorial in Washington?

The Pantheon in Rome had already inspired Jefferson's own Rotunda at the University of Virginia, so architect John Russell Pope echoed both when he designed the memorial.

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

A pair of steel cables takes hikers up the last 400 feet of a summit that state geologist Josiah Whitney called 'perfectly inaccessible'; George Anderson first reached it in 1875 by drilling bolts into the rock.

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.

Architect John Graham gave Seattle's Space Needle a top modelled on what?

A flying saucer was Graham's contribution; earlier sketches had tried a tethered balloon, and a third designer added the hourglass tower that holds the saucer aloft.

The Mackinac Bridge, opened in 1957, stands in which Great Lakes state?

Michigan's two peninsulas were linked only by car ferries until the 'Mighty Mac' opened; nervous drivers can pay bridge staff to drive their car across for them.

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.

Which Lincoln speech is carved on the Lincoln Memorial's south wall?

The Gettysburg Address fills the south chamber; in the speech opposite, a carver cut an E where the F of FUTURE belonged, and the slip had to be filled in to turn the letter back into an F.

What is painted across Grand Central Terminal's concourse ceiling?

The zodiac's constellations were hidden under decades of grime until a restoration finished in 1998 cleaned the ceiling and brought the painted sky back.

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.