Four faces carved with dynamite
Mount RUSHMORE in South Dakota shows the faces of four presidents, George WASHINGTON, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham LINCOLN, each about eighteen metres high. The sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, and around four hundred workers carved it between 1927 and 1941, removing roughly 400,000 tonnes of granite, most of it with carefully placed dynamite, and remarkably no one died. The original plan was to carve the presidents down to their waists, but money ran out. The mountain stands on land sacred to the Lakota Sioux, many of whom still object to the carving. Our US presidents page covers the four men.
A copper lady and a golden bridge that is orange
The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor was a gift from France, dedicated in 1886. Its outer skin is copper, thinner than two coins pressed together, and it was originally a shiny reddish brown; over about thirty years the copper reacted with the air and turned the pale green it is today. The iron framework inside was designed by Gustave Eiffel, a few years before he built his tower in Paris, as our world landmarks page shows.
The GOLDEN GATE Bridge in San Francisco, opened in 1937, is not gold at all. Its colour is called International Orange, chosen to stand out in the city's frequent fog, and painters touch it up constantly. The BROOKLYN Bridge in New York, opened in 1883, was finished under the direction of Emily Roebling, who took over the work when her husband, the chief engineer, fell ill.
Signs, prisons and buildings built at speed
The HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles was put up in 1923 as an advert for a new housing estate and originally read Hollywoodland; the last four letters were removed in 1949. ALCATRAZ, a rocky island in San Francisco Bay, was a high-security prison from 1934 to 1963; in 1962 three men escaped on a raft made of raincoats and were never seen again, and nobody knows if they survived.
The EMPIRE State Building in New York was built in just over a year and opened in 1931, the tallest building in the world for nearly forty years. The PENTAGON, headquarters of the American military, was built in about sixteen months during the Second World War and is one of the largest office buildings on Earth. The Freedom Tower at the rebuilt World Trade Center is exactly 1,776 feet tall, after the year of the Declaration of Independence.
Washington, the Capitol and the rest
In Washington, the WHITE HOUSE was burned by British soldiers in 1814 and rebuilt, and the CAPITOL is where Congress meets. The LINCOLN MEMORIAL is where Martin Luther King Jr gave his most famous speech in 1963, and on the Fourth of July the fireworks over the National Mall light up these monuments, as our Fourth of July page describes. The GATEWAY Arch in St Louis, 192 metres tall, is the tallest monument in the country. The HOOVER Dam, DISNEYLAND, BROADWAY, TIMES Square in MANHATTAN, the lights of VEGAS, YOSEMITE and a city SKYLINE complete the grid.