Browse by Era
15 eras, in order — from landscapes older than any record to the places that shaped living memory. Some overlap, as history does: the Civil War sits inside the nineteenth century.
Deep timeGeological & Natural
Canyons, geysers, and forests whose significance predates human record — the landscapes that shaped where and how America was settled.
6 landmarks · including Mammoth Cave
Pre-1500Indigenous America
Cliff dwellings, earthworks, and settlements built by the peoples who lived here for millennia before European contact.
5 landmarks · including Mesa Verde
1565–1763Spanish Colonial
Missions, presidios, and plazas from the Spanish empire's long reach across Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and California.
7 landmarks · including Castillo de San Marcos
1607–1775Colonial America
The English colonies from Jamestown to the eve of revolution — meeting houses, harbours, and the first American towns.
9 landmarks · including Independence Hall
1775–1783Revolutionary War
Where independence was argued, signed, and fought for — statehouses, encampments, and battlefields.
9 landmarks · including Liberty Bell
1783–1815Early Republic
A new nation building its institutions, its capital, and its architecture, then defending them in a second war with Britain.
10 landmarks · including Monticello
1800–1900The 19th Century
A century of expansion, industry, and upheaval, for the places whose significance spans more than a single period.
11 landmarks · including Washington Monument
1803–1890Westward Expansion
Trails, forts, and frontier towns from the Louisiana Purchase to the closing of the frontier.
5 landmarks · including The Alamo
1815–1861Antebellum
The decades before the Civil War — plantation economies, abolitionist networks, and a country pulling apart.
7 landmarks · including French Quarter
1861–1865Civil War
Battlefields, forts, and the houses where the war began and ended.
10 landmarks · including Gettysburg Battlefield
1865–1900Gilded Age
Reconstruction to the turn of the century: immigration, railroads, mills, and the mansions the new fortunes built.
10 landmarks · including Statue of Liberty
1900–2000The 20th Century
Skyscrapers, monuments, and modern memorials — the century that produced most of America's best-known landmarks.
36 landmarks · including Alcatraz Island
1939–1945World War II
Harbours, shipyards, and memorials from the war that remade America's place in the world.
2 landmarks · including Pearl Harbor (USS Arizona Memorial)
1954–1968Civil Rights
Churches, bridges, and schoolhouses where the movement for equal rights was organised and contested.
3 landmarks · including Edmund Pettus Bridge
2000–presentThe 21st Century
Memorials and landmarks of living memory.
1 landmark · Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial