See the West’s most treasured historic views for USA 250

Few structures shaped the modern American West like Hoover Dam. Rising from Black Canyon in the early 1930s, the massive concrete arch tamed the Colorado River, created Lake Mead and helped power a growing Southwest.

Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California high desert is a hikers dream featuring surreal desert landscapes with rugged rock formations and star-filled skies.

Formed from the uplift of igneous and metamorphic rock and carved by the Colorado River through erosion, the Grand Canyon remains one of America's natural treasures.

Perched atop Telegraph Hill, Coit Tower offers a 360‑degree sweep of the city and San Francisco Bay. From the observation deck, visitors can spot the Golden Gate Bridge, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, Alcatraz Island and a patchwork of neighborhoods draped across rolling hills. I

Few views in the United States are as breathtaking as the first glimpses upon passing into California’s Yosemite Valley, where sweeping views, granite cliffs and majestic waterfalls appear suddenly with every turn.

From sparkling, blue freshwater to diverse flora and fauna, Crater Lake, the deepest lake in the United States, offers some of the most stunning views in southern Oregon.

During the summer of 1893, poet and literature professor Katharine Lee Bates joined other teachers working in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the summer and took a ride to the top of Pikes Peak. She was so moved by what she saw that she wrote the poem that became “America the Beautiful.” The Rocky Mountains were “purple mountain majesties,” while Kansas’ “amber waves of grain” loomed in the distance.

Canyon de Chelly is a stunning natural and cultural landmark tucked inside the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. Its sheer red sandstone cliffs, carved over millions of years, cradle ancient cliff dwellings and rock art that tell stories of the Ancestral Puebloans. Beyond the scenery, the canyon is a living landscape, home to Navajo families who continue traditions of farming and herding.

In the earliest days of Oregon statehood, around 1865, a quirky Irish minister and self-trained geologist named Thomas Condon traveled to the John Day Basin. Everywhere were well-preserved fossils of mammals that lived around an ancient sea and forest between 5 to 54 million years ago, preserved in what is now a desert landscape.