What is the best symbol of the United States?

A statue, a bird, a bell with a crack in it. Two hundred and fifty years produced a lot of shorthand, and not all of it aged the same.

1. 1
   Statue of Liberty

   A French gift dedicated in 1886 and the first sight of America for millions of arriving immigrants.
   1000pts
2. 2
   Golden Gate Bridge

   The orange suspension span that has framed San Francisco since 1937.
   733pts
3. 3
   The American Flag

   Thirteen stripes, fifty stars, and a design changed twenty-seven times.
   708pts
4. 4
   Apple Pie

   The dessert that gave English the phrase for anything unimpeachably American.
   655pts
5. 5
   Lincoln Memorial

   The marble temple where the March on Washington ended in 1963.
   640pts
6. 6
   The White House

   The executive residence in Washington, occupied by every president since John Adams.
   594pts
7. 7
   Liberty Bell

   The cracked Philadelphia bell adopted as an emblem by nineteenth-century abolitionists.
   454pts
8. 8
   Mount Rushmore

   Four presidents carved into a South Dakota granite face between 1927 and 1941.
   454pts
9. 9
   Grand Canyon

   A mile-deep Arizona gorge protected as a national park since 1919.
   454pts
10. 10
    Times Square

    The Manhattan intersection whose lights and New Year countdown are exported worldwide.
    374pts
11. 11
    Uncle Sam

    The pointing recruiter from the 1917 poster, now the personification of the federal government.
    374pts
12. 12
    Baseball

    The sport that supplied American English with more idioms than any other.
    374pts
13. 13
    Bald Eagle

    On the Great Seal since 1782 and the legally designated national bird since December 2024.
    175pts
14. 14
    Hollywood Sign

    A 1923 real-estate advertisement that became the emblem of the film industry.
    175pts
15. 15
    Route 66

    The decommissioned Chicago-to-Santa-Monica highway that became the road-trip myth.
    48pts