Explore America’s Most Astonishing National Landmarks

Central Park, New York

When New York state officials approved funding for the purchase of park land for Manhattan in 1853, they could not have known that this rocky swamp covered in small farms would become exactly what it was intended to be: a beloved “lung of the city,” a haven for 42 million visitors a year.

As the park’s designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, described his vision, the park should be “a specimen of God’s work” and allow the public to “do for cheap what would be costly to those more fortunate to spend a month or two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks.” Olmsted and his British architectural partner, Calvert, designed the Greensward Plan, which took into account both the formal and natural surroundings.

One of the park’s most visionary elements was its network of underground crossings, which allowed pedestrians and carriages to enjoy the park without interfering with each other. More than a century later, much of the park’s original infrastructure remains intact, including the mall, lake, and ponds.

Hallett Nature Preserve (formerly Promontory) is the smallest woodland in the park and was off-limits for over 80 years because invasive species like European maple, black cherry, and Japanese knotweed choked out the native vegetation. In 2016, after a five-year restoration by the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that manages the park, Hallett Nature Preserve reopened and is now an oasis for the park’s wildlife.

Quiet woodland strolls aren’t the only activities you can enjoy at the park. Visitors can run, walk, bike or roller skate on countless trails, play a game of Ultimate Frisbee with friends, dine al fresco at Tavern on the Green, or listen to free summer concerts. Just as Olmsted envisioned, Central Park is a beloved destination for residents and visitors alike.

Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

Mammoth Cave is known as the longest cave system in the world, measuring 426 miles on a map. With each expedition, cavers continue to discover new passages, and it is estimated that the cave system extends up to 600 miles underground.

Mammoth’s 330-million-year-old limestone walls tell a fascinating tale of human history, dating back more than 4,000 years, to when prehistoric Native Americans explored more than 12 miles of cave passages in search of minerals. How these ancient people used the materials they obtained through these precarious means remains a mystery. Some clues can be found in what they left behind, from gourd bowls to pottery, textiles, and even some petroglyphs, which are primarily geometric depictions of humans.

Legend has it that the cave was rediscovered in the early 19th century when a Kentucky boy named John Houchin shot and wounded a bear, then followed it into the cave’s entrance, the same one still used by tourists today. Though the bear’s fate is unknown, the cave’s rediscovery has been an economic boon to the region. Over the past two centuries, the mammoths have been used to mine saltpeter, the main ingredient in gunpowder, to grow mushrooms, and to treat the sick as a tuberculosis hospital.

In the mid-1800s, some of the caves’ first public tour guides were enslaved black men like Stephen Bishop, who was the first to traverse the terrifying vertical shafts known as the Bottomless Pits, uncovering miles of previously unmapped territory. Today, guests can take ranger-led tours that last up to six hours. The most comprehensive and demanding is the Wild Cave Tour, which turns visitors into amateur cave explorers, crawling, climbing and wriggling their way through a maze of tiny holes and canyons for five to six miles.

Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, Alabama

This 54-mile National Historic Trail commemorates the route, people and events of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March for Voting Rights.

It began on March 7, 1965, in Selma, where 600 nonviolent protesters, led by Horsey Williams, John Lewis, Albert Turner and Bob Mantz, headed to Montgomery to demand voting rights. When they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police attacked the marchers with batons, tear gas and horses. News of what became known as Bloody Sunday transfixed the nation.

On March 9, 1,500 protesters led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were again stopped by state police on a day that became known as “Turnaround Tuesday.” On March 21, King again set out from Brown Chapel AME Church with 3,000 others. To ensure a peaceful march, President Lyndon B. Johnson used federal powers to call up the Alabama National Guard, who lined U.S. Highway 80 with the FBI and U.S. Marshals.

By the end of the march in Montgomery on March 25, the crowd had grown to 25,000 and King delivered his famous “How long will it last? Not long” speech at the Alabama State Capitol. The three voting rights demonstrations had a profound effect: Five months later, on August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.

Stonewall National Monument, New York

In the 1960s, there were few safe havens for the LGBTQ+ community in the United States, with the one exception being New York City’s Greenwich Village, which was also a hub for artists, musicians, writers, and Vietnam War protesters.

It was home to the Stonewall Inn, a private, mafia-run bottle club where same-sex couples were allowed to openly dance and drink together (it was illegal to serve alcohol to members of the LGBTQ+ community in New York at the time). Outside the Stonewall Inn, LGBTQ+ rights did not exist. After raiding a bar suspected of hosting LGBTQ+ people, police made patrons line up outside and force them to show identification. If they were wearing three or more pieces of clothing that did not match the gender on their ID, the police arrested them.

Anger over the injustice of the LGBTQ+ community reached a boiling point when police stormed the Stonewall Inn in the early hours of June 28, 1969, and began arresting people. No one knows how the riot began, but as more arrests were made, the crowd grew. One taxi driver died of a heart attack and many were beaten, but the resistance, which continued until July 3, sparked the gay rights movement around the world.

In 2016, President Barack Obama designated Christopher Park, with its iron gates and flower-filled gardens across from the Stonewall Inn, as part of a national monument, making it the National Park Service’s first facility to tell the story of the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. Today, the park doesn’t have a visitor’s center, but through park partners like the National Parks Conservation Association, visitors can view photos on the monument’s fence and take a self-guided walk around the important LGBTQ+ sites in the Greenwich Village neighborhood.