Scenic Splendours
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America has more than its fair share of man-made icons but it's the country's awe-inspiring natural beauty which really steals the show
thrill N
ew York’s Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building, San
Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, Washington’s Capitol Building and Lincoln Memorial, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis – the USA has a wealth of man-made icons, including 21 listed
UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The nation is even more richly
endowed when it comes to natural scenic splendours, many of them to be found within rigorously protected national and state parks. It was America that gave birth to
the very concept of such much-loved areas, the world’s first designated national park being Yellowstone, in Wyoming, which was signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1872 and followed by California’s Sequoia and Yosemite, in 1890. Today the US has 58 national parks,
spread across 27 states, as well as a range of national preserves, together covering a total of eight million acres.
20
"It was America that gave birth to the very concept of such much-loved areas, the world’s fi rst designated national park being Yellowstone"
www.visitusa.org.uk
To these can be added the state parks, large and small, to be dotted across every state from Hawaii in the west to Maine in the north-east. Picture postcards from across the
country reveal a host of evocative scenic splendours, from towering mountains to lush marshland, searing desert to dense forest. The rough and tumble days of the
Wild West lived longer on the Hollywood screen than they ever did in real life but who can gaze at the amazing red pinnacles of Utah‘s hauntingly beautiful Monument Valley without images of John Wayne
Left, stunning fall colours in West Virginia
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