Tag Archives: abraham lincoln

Lincoln Memorial

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The Lincoln Memorial is located at the west end of the National Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial was dedicated in 1922 in honor of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln served as the US President from 1861 to his assassination in 1865. He led the country through a very difficult time, the American Civil War, and credited with preserving the Union and for ending slavery. Lincoln has been consistently ranked as one of the greatest US presidents in the history.

The Lincoln Memorial itself over the years had become a special place in the US history as its steps had been the venue for many Civil Right Movement events. It was the place where in 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

I’ve visited the Lincoln Memorial many times whenever I come to the National Mall, especially when taking out-of-town visitors. It’s a great place to visit both during the day and at night. The Lincoln statue is illuminated at night, and it’s open for visitors 24 hours a day, so sometimes late night is a good time to visit as there wouldn’t be as many visitors. I’ve also been there for an Easter sunrise service — it was quite a sight seeing the sunrise over the National Mall area from the steps of Lincoln Memorial.

The photo below was taken during a day visit to the memorial. The whole Memorial building architecture was quite impressive, but even just looking at the Lincoln statue when thinking about what he had to go through to lead the country through such difficult times, gave me goose bumps.

Lincoln Memorial

Mount Rushmore

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In addition to the 58 national parks that were set aside to preserve the nature in the United States, there are also other properties managed by the National Park Service for other reasons, such as monuments or historical sites that are preserved to commemorate historical events or figures. In the next few days, I will add posts about some of these places that I’ve visited.

The first one to mention is a monument located within few hours from the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Mount Rushmore National Memorial. This monument is a sculpture of four American presidents on a granite mountain — very recognizable monument, though given its location in South Dakota, unless you happen to pass the area during a road trip or you live in the state, chances are that you’ve never seen this monument in person. In fact, initially the idea of building this monument was to increase tourism to the state of South Dakota.

The four presidents represented on the monument — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt — were selected by sculptor Gutzon Borglum to represent the first 150 years of American history, and because of their role in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory. The figures were originally supposed to be carved head to waist, but it ended up to be only the heads due to insufficient funding.

I visited Mount Rushmore during a road trip from Rapid City to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We only stopped briefly at the monument to take photos from a couple of different angles, but it was quite neat to see such a familiar monument in person.

The photo below was taken at one of our stops near the monument. You can see the highway in front of the monument and a couple of visitors walking (to give you scale comparison for the size of the monument).

Mount Rushmore