The Lincoln Memorial is a US national memorial built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument. Taking the form of a neoclassical temple, the memorial's architect was Henry Bacon. The designer of the memorial interior's large central statue – Abraham Lincoln, 1920 – was Daniel Chester French; the Lincoln statue was carved by the Piccirilli Brothers. The painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin. Dedicated in May 1922, it is one of several memorials built to honor an American president. It has always been a major tourist attraction and since the 1930s has been a symbolic center focused on race relations. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address. The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
The United States Capitol, often called the Capitol Building, is the meeting place of the United States Congress and the seat of the legislative branch of the U.S. federal government. It is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. Though no longer at the geographic center of the federal district, the Capitol forms the origin point for the district's street-numbering system and the district's four quadrants. The original building was completed in 1800. Although the Capitol was temporarily rendered unusable as a consequence of the 1814 burning of Washington, the building was fully restored within five years. The building was later enlarged, with the addition of a massive dome, and extended wings with expanded chambers for the bicameral legislature, the House of Representatives in the south wing and the Senate in the north wing. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in a distinctive neoclassical style and has a white exterior.
The Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest is a protected area high in the White Mountains in Inyo County in eastern California. Protected within the Inyo National Forest, the Bristlecone Pine Forest is home to the oldest trees in the world, bristlecone pines. The bristlecone pine trees grow between 9,800 and 11,000 feet above sea level, in xeric alpine conditions. Some of these living trees exceed 4000 years of age and exhibit spectacular growth forms of twisted and beautifully colored wood.
