Questions About Landmarks

The 19th-century London Bridge that once spanned the River Thames in London, England, was dismantled in 1967 and relocated to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it still stands. By 1962 it was decided that the bridge, dating from 1831, could not handle increasing levels of London road traffic and needed replacing. Following a search for potential buyers, it was sold to American entrepreneur Robert P McCulloch, who had all of the bridge’s exterior granite facing stone removed, numbered and shipped to the United States. McCulloch was developing a new planned community in Arizona on the shore of Lake Havasu, where he had a new concrete bridge built and clad with the original stonework of the old London Bridge. Sir Gilbert Inglefield, Lord Mayor of London, ceremonially laid the foundation stone on September 23rd, 1968, and the reconstruction in Lake Havasu was completed in late 1971. The rededication of the bridge took place on October 10, 1971. A persistent rumor that MCulloch mistakenly thought he was purchasing London’s more prominent Tower Bridge was never established as true.

The flashing red light on the spire atop the Capitol Records Building, near Hollywood and Vine, spells out the word ‘HOLLYWOOD’ in Morse code.

The former summer resort village of Minnewanka Landing lies beneath the waters of Lake Minnewanka, near Banff, Alberta. Minnewanka Landing grew around the Beach House log hotel established on the shores of the original Lake Minnewanka in 1886. The village was a popular summer destination, and by 1912 the resort was laid out along four avenues and three streets, with restaurants, hotels, and two cruise boats, Lady of the Lake and Daughter of the Peaks, offering lake tours to visitors. A small log dam was constructed in 1895 to improve the shoreline for boating, followed by a larger dam in Devil’s Canyon in 1912 to create water storage for a downstream hydro-electric plant, increasing the lake level by 16 feet and claiming part of the village. During World War II, the needs of a growing and energy-hungry city of Calgary were prioritised over national park protections, and a larger dam built in 1941 increased the water level by a further 65 feet, submerging the entire village and the 1912 dam. The remnants of Minnewanka Landing’s structures are well preserved in the icy cold waters, making it a popular scuba diving location.

The Banff Visitor Centre is located next to St Paul’s Presbyterian Church on Banff Avenue in downtown Banff, in a stone and half-timbered black and white heritage building that was once the Banff School Auditorium. Operated by Parks Canada, the visitor information centre includes the Banff Lake Louise Tourism office, and is open until 5 pm daily. The centre offers visitor maps, attraction brochures, Park Passes and activity permits, safety advice, backcountry reservations, weather, trail, avalanche and road condition reports, and features interpretive exhibits and events throughout the year.

The Upper Hot Springs pool in Banff, Alberta, is supplied entirely with natural mineral water from the hot spring for most of the season, although water flow naturally decreases later in the year and there may be times in late fall and winter when the pool is topped up with heated municipal water. The Banff Upper Hot Springs website provides regular updates on the flow status of natural mineral water into the pool, along with water temperature, and signs on site display the same information. The water temperature of the outdoor pool normally ranges between 37 and 40 degrees Celsius (or 98 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit), and the Hot Springs closes whenever the water temperature falls below 37 degrees Celsius. Such unplanned closures are infrequent and typically only occur when ambient temperatures are very cold.

The former townsite of Dillon, Colorado, lies beneath the waters of Dillon Reservoir, and the town moved to its current location, at the northeast edge of the reservoir, for the Denver Water Board to start work on building a dam across the Blue River in 1961 to create the freshwater reservoir, also known as Lake Dillon. Prior to inundating the area with water, a grave site and many of old Dillon’s buildings were moved to the new townsite, including the Town Hall, the former Dillon School House and Community Church building (now the Summit Historical Society museum), and the Arapaho Café. Other buildings were moved to the neighboring towns of Frisco, Silverthorne and Breckenridge, and any remaining structures were demolished. It was the third relocation in its history for Dillon since being established as a stage stop and trading post by the Dillon Mining Company in 1881.

The Tobin Bridge carries US Route 1 over the Mystic River between Chelsea and the Charlestown area of Boston, Massachusetts. Officially named the Maurice J Tobin Memorial Bridge, it is sometimes informally called the Mystic River Bridge, its original name until 1967. The double-deck cantilevered truss bridge carries southbound traffic into Boston on its upper level and Chelsea-bound traffic going north on the lower level, with a cashless toll system operational in both directions. Including approaches, the bridge is approximately 2¼ miles (or 3.6 kilometers) long.

Bruce’s Beach park in Manhattan Beach, California, is named after a former beach resort of the same name in the park’s location, operated by a black couple, Charles and Willa Bruce. The Bruces purchased beachfront property along the Strand between 26th and 27th streets in Manhattan Beach in 1912, developing it into a popular resort for African-American beachgoers and vacationers. By the early 1920s there was a small community of black families living in the area, despite simmering hostility towards them in the predominantly white town. In 1924, the city condemned the area and seized several properties through eminent domain, with the purported aim of creating a public park. The action drove the black community away from the area, and the Bruces left town altogether. It was another 30 years before a park was developed, which later became Bayview Terrace Park, and renamed Parque Culiacan in 1974 after a sister city in Mexico. In 2006, Manhattan Beach City Council voted to rename the park Bruce’s Beach to recognize the racism and prejudice behind the city’s actions against its African-American community some eighty years earlier.

The Ponte Vecchio bridge crosses the Arno River, in Florence, Italy, connecting the Duomo area with Oltrarno on the south side of the river. Completed in its current form in 1345, the segmental arch bridge also carries the Vasari Corridor enclosed passageway, added in 1565, which runs between Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti. The Ponte Vecchio was the only one of Florence’s bridges not destroyed by the German army as they retreated in 1944 during World War II.

When San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts was demolished in 1963, it was rebuilt with modern construction materials over the next decade, to the same design. The only parts reused were in the exhibition hall which was rebuilt on its 1915 steel frame, and retains some of the original fireplaces and doors. The Palace of Fine Arts was originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition which celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal. Designed by architect Bernard Maybeck to resemble faux ruins inspired by Roman and Greek architecture, the Palace of Fine Arts was one of eleven exhibition palaces constructed for the event. None of the structures were intended to be retained after the exposition, but such was the appeal of the Palace of Fine Art’s magnificent structures, it was saved from demolition. But the lack of durability in its construction materials, for the most part plaster-covered timber, saw a progressive decline in its condition until it could no longer be economically maintained and demolition was the only option.

The entire o.6-mile (or 1 kilometer) loop of Mount Rushmore’s Presidential Trail can be completed in around 30 minutes, depending on visitor numbers at the time. There are various interpretive panels and viewpoints along the route. As there are steps on the Presidential Trail, it is only accessible to wheelchairs and strollers from the Grand View Terrace to the viewing areas at the base of the mountain.

The Foresthill Bridge over the North Fork American River, northeast of Auburn, California, is the highest bridge in California, with a road deck that’s 730 feet (or 220 meters) above the river. The steel cantilever bridge, also known as the Auburn-Foresthill Bridge or the Auburn Bridge, is situated some 35 miles (or 56 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. Opened in 1973, the bridge carries both pedestrian and road traffic.

The Presidio of San Francisco is a 1,491-acre former US Army installation in the northwest corner of the city, at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge, transferred to the National Park Service when it was vacated by the military in 1994. Today, the Presidio is a thriving urban park with a unique mix of residential communities, businesses, historic sites, recreation areas, forests, grasslands, beaches and bluffs, connected by a network of hiking and biking trails. In 1996, after considering a sale of the Presidio, it was effectively privatized by transfer of its management to the Presidio Trust, a federal government corporation tasked with making the Presidio self-sufficient and independent of direct taxpayer support. The Presidio Trust now manages most of the park, with the National Park Service managing the coastal areas, both working in partnership with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

Auckland’s Sky Tower is 328 metres (or 1,076 feet) high to the top of its mast, making it the tallest freestanding structure in the Southern Hemisphere. On clear days, the Skydeck observation deck on Level 60, just below the mast at 220 meters (or 720 feet) above street level, offers 360-degree views over distances of up to 80 kilometres (or 50 miles). The Sky Tower is open daily from 10 am – 8 pm, with last entry at 7.30 pm.

Wyatt Earp, who died on January 13th, 1929, was cremated and his remains are interred in a burial plot at the Hills of Eternity Memorial Park, a Jewish cemetery in Colma, California. At the time of his death, the former Old West lawman was living in Los Angeles with his Jewish wife, Josephine Marcus, and she arranged for Earp’s ashes to be buried in the Marcus family plot in Colma, near her native San Francisco. When Josephine died in 1944, her cremated remains were buried alongside those of her husband. That Wyatt Earp’s ashes were buried in Colma was not widely known for many years, but the grave’s granite marker was stolen in 1957 after a newspaper publicized the grave’s location, and the thieves also reportedly dug down in a failed attempt to locate Wyatt Earp’s ashes. The stolen headstone was found three months later in undergrowth on Crystal Springs Road in San Bruno. A new black marble headstone was erected in the late 1990s, replacing the existing marker which is now on display at the nearby Colma Historical Association museum.

The 1980 movie Somewhere in Time was mostly filmed on Mackinac Island, Michigan, with much of the film centered around the Grand Hotel, and other scenes filmed at the sound stage of The Mission Point Film Studio and Fine Arts Building (now Mission Point Resort). Some scenes were also filmed in Chicago, Illinois. Directed by Jeannot Szwarc, Somewhere in Time was a film adaptation by Richard Matheson of his 1975 novel Bid Time Return, although the setting for the novel is the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego rather than the Crown Hotel on Mackinac. The film starred Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, and Christopher Plummer, and during filming, the cast and crew were based at The Inn on Mackinac. Cars had to be brought in especially for the movie as the island is substantially free of motor vehicles.

Some of the best times to observe bioluminescence in northern California’s Tomales Bay inlet are on completely dark, moonless nights in late summer or fall. The bioluminescence is caused by tiny marine plankton known as dinoflagellates, which emit blue-green light when the water is agitated by wave action or a boat cutting through the surface. It is thought that the light emission is the dinoflagellate’s defense response to ward off predators. There are several commercial kayak tour operators in the area that organize night time paddles in Tomales Bay to view the phenomenon. Ideal conditions for bioluminescence are total darkness, with calm waters and relatively warm surface temperatures.

Spinning Chandelier, BC artist Rodney Graham’s giant chandelier art installation under the north end of the Granville Bridge in Vancouver, illuminates, descends and spins for two minutes at noon, 4 pm and 9 pm daily. The 4.2 metre-wide chandelier is made of stainless steel and over 600 polyurethane faux crystals, and was installed on the underside of Granville Bridge at Beach Avenue in 2019. The $4.8 million piece of public art was sponsored by Westbank Corp, developer of the nearby Vancouver House condo tower.

The San Diego-Coronado Bridge follows a curved route across San Diego Bay between Coronado and San Diego in order to achieve a water clearance of 200 feet (or 61 meters) at its highest point with just a gradual incline of the bridge. The water clearance was designed so that aircraft carriers from the nearby Naval Base San Diego could pass under the bridge. The total bridge length, including approaches, is 2.1 miles (or 3.4 kilometers). A shorter, straight bridge taking the most direct route across the bay would require a much steeper grade to achieve the same water clearance.

American actor John Wayne was born in a house on South 2nd Street in Winterset, Iowa, on May 26th, 1907. Born Marion Robert Morrison, he only spent a few early years in Winterset, where his father was a pharmacist, before the family moved, eventually settling in Southern California. The house still stands today and has been restored to reflect its appearance in 1907. The John Wayne Birthplace Museum is located nearby at the corner of John Wayne Drive and Washington Street, and offers self-guided tours of the birthplace house and museum.