AMERICA is a great and still-evolving experiment. Only 225 years old as a nation, it has benefited from unsurpassed natural beauty and resources, a vibrant and continuously changing culture and population, and a history that, ultimately, is blessed. It's also a great place to travel. There are sights to see in every corner of the land, each offering clues about the country and its people. Few Americans can visit them all, but with an audacity we at USA WEEKEND are well aware of, we drew on the diverse experience of our staff and contributing editors to compile a list of 10 must-see sights. Through them, our culture and history are placed in sharp relief, and visitors come to a fresh understanding of what it means to be American. We're proud to report the process resulted in more than 200 nominations. That was fine by us: No one, least of all Jefferson and company during that hot summer of 1776, ever said democracy would be tidy. After spirited debate, we whittled the proposals down to 10 essential places. Then, with characteristic American confidence, we ranked them in order of importance. You may quibble with our list, or its order, but we stand behind it as a starting point for a journey of discovery. We hope it inspires discussion, education and, most of all, travel.

1. Gettysburg National Military Park
The consensus top choice as the essential American place, Gettysburg is the symbolic heart of America. On this sacred ground, turning point of the Civil War, visitors gain powerful insight into the meanings, often conflicting, of those celebrated national virtues of liberty, justice and honor. In these Pennsylvania fields, the fate of the republic was decided during three terrible days in 1863. Here, the young nation was nearly torn asunder. And here, at great cost of life, it ultimately held. A combined 48,000 Union and Confederate men gave their lives on this blood-soaked soil, home of Cemetery Hill, Pickett's Charge and so many other names and events seared into the American consciousness. Today, none who visits the battlefield, maintained by the National Park Service, can fail to be moved. July 1-3, the battle's 138th anniversary will be commemorated with a full schedule of ranger-conducted "Battle Walks." For more information, visit www.gettysburg.com or call 717-334-1124.

2. Acadia National Park
In a country graced with abundant natural beauty, we chose Acadia, in Maine, to represent our beloved wilderness areas. The Grand Canyon also would have been a fine choice, or Yosemite, or Yellowstone, or Alaska's Denali, among our national treasures. Acadia is neither the oldest (that's Yellowstone, established in 1872) nor the largest (Alaska's 8.9 million-acre Wrangel-St. Elias National Park) of the 383 national parks, monuments, forests and historic sites currently overseen by the park service. As the easternmost jewel in our system, however, it is where the sun first rises each morning. As such, we think it makes a wonderful symbol of the unspoiled wilderness. Of course, Acadia stands on its own merits, too: Encompassing more than 40,000 breathtaking acres of granite mountains, dense woods, lakes, ponds and rocky Atlantic coast, this is the America that stirs the rugged individualist in all of us.

For more information, visit www.nps.gov/acad.

3. Gateway Arch
Westward ho! The famous cry of continental expansion still resonates with the young, the restless, the bold. In the 19th century, pioneers in wagon trains opened the Great Plains, forging a new nation that truly did stretch from sea to shining sea. Space-age architect Eero Saarinen's 630-foot-high arch of stainless steel soars above the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis, memorializing westward expansion and our ongoing national love affair with open spaces. A highlight of any visit is a tram ride to the top of the arch for a panoramic view of the city and the surrounding landscape in Missouri and Illinois. On a clear day, you can see for 30 miles. Directly beneath the arch lies the football-field-size Museum of National Expansion, a repository of American Indian and pioneer-era artifacts. Among the exhibits is an in-depth examination of the Lewis and Clark expedition, which left from a camp near St. Louis in 1804 to explore Thomas Jefferson's new Louisiana Purchase. On June 30, July 1 and July 4, as part of the Fair St. Louis, the National Park Service presents "National Parks: Uncover the Treasures," a range of concerts, interpretive programs and living-history demonstrations.
For more information, visit www.stlouisarch.com

4. Statue of Liberty
In this great nation of immigrants, no monument stands more proudly than the Statue of Liberty. A gift to the United States from the people of France in 1886, Lady Liberty is revered the world over as the embodiment of American freedom and democracy. To fully understand the landmark's universal reach, one must look as far away as Tiananmen Square in Beijing, where in 1989 Chinese students erected a scale-model tribute. To see the real 151-foot statue is to feel the awe, the dreams of the 12 million immigrants who sailed by her on their way to Ellis Island and new lives in their chosen country. It has been estimated that two in five Americans are descended from someone who passed through Ellis Island. For them, for all of us, the statue's inscription will always resonate: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." This is America at its most open and generous, a place of boundless hope and possibility.

For more information, visit www.nps.gov/stli.

5. National Civil Rights Museum
The words ring clear and pure: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." And yet almost two centuries would pass from the framing of the Constitution until America finally guaranteed equal rights to all of her citizens. Housed in the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, the National Civil Rights Museum thrusts visitors face to face with the seminal, often excruciating, and still ongoing struggle to build a fair society. The museum speaks to our commitment as a nation to going back and getting things right -- and our capacity, no matter how long it takes, to do so. The focus is on the African-American struggle of the 1950s and '60s, but the spirit extends to every social group that has felt the sting of discrimination and had the courage to stand up for what is right. The tradition of civil disobedience celebrated in more than 10,000 square feet of exhibition space is as American as apple pie, traceable through Henry David Thoreau all the way back to the Boston Tea Party. Meanwhile, the specific techniques of protest -- organized marches, sit-ins -- are still practiced wherever discrimination is found.

For more information, visit civilrightsmuseum.org

.

6. Brooklyn Bridge
In the graceful neo-Gothic arches and elegant steel-cable lacework of the Brooklyn Bridge are wed two great American preoccupations: old-fashioned ingenuity and newfangled technology. On opening in 1883, John A. Roebling's 1,595-foot span across New York's East River was hailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World. More than twice the length of any previous suspension bridge, it took 14 years to build and cost the lives of 27 men. And, by virtue of joining Manhattan and Brooklyn, it created America's first megacity. The apotheosis of the "can-do" spirit of 19th-century America, it was also, symbolically, the bridge to the 20th.

For more information, visit nyctourist.com

7. Acoma Indian Pueblo
Centuries before the first Europeans arrived in America, it was home to a dynamic native civilization. At New Mexico's Acoma Indian Pueblo, the ancient traditions remain vibrant. Considered the oldest continuously occupied village in what is now the United States, the thousand-year-old pueblo sits atop a sheer 367-foot-high sandstone mesa, a site that has earned it the nickname Sky City. On encountering Acoma in 1540, the Spanish conquistador Coronado described it as the strongest defensive settlement in the world. Today, the village and its stunning 1641 mission church, San Esteban del Rey, are National Historic Landmarks. History echoes down its narrow lanes, even as current residents write new chapters in the ongoing saga of Native American life. Tours, festivals and ceremonial dances occur through the summer at Acoma and 18 other New Mexico pueblos.

For more information, visit newmexico.org

8. USS Arizona Memorial
Straddling the sunken hull of the USS Arizona, where 1,177 crewmen perished, the Pearl Harbor memorial commemorates one of the most painful episodes in American history. More than 4,700 military personnel and civilians died in the surprise Japanese attack that catapulted the United States into World War II. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stirringly and correctly predicted that the date -- Dec. 7, 1941 -- would live in infamy. Sixty years later, we understand that more than infamy resides here. For if the attack shook the United States to its core, it also set the country in motion. From a standstill, the nation mobilized seemingly overnight. Four years later, with totalitarianism defeated in Japan and Germany, we could look with pride on our capacity as a nation to stand shoulder to shoulder against a common foe and emerge victorious. A somber reminder of the fragility of peace and the ultimate sacrifice America asks of her men and women in uniform, the hushed monument, seemingly floating in the harbor, also carries an inspirational message: United as a nation, we can overcome even the gravest crises. For more information, visit www.nps.gov/usar

9. "Hollywood" sign
If America is a land of dreamers, Hollywood is where fantasies come to life. The movie industry as we know it today was born here in 1907, when warm sunshine and affordable land began drawing filmmakers to what was then a quiet area of farms and cattle ranches. By 1911, the Nestor Film Co., the first real studio, was churning out three features a week. A year later, 15 companies had set up shop. The rest, as they say, is history: From its humble origins, the Hollywood film industry has grown into our most glamorous big business, an exporter of adventure, drama, comedy and romance to every corner of the globe. Erected in 1923 to advertise a real estate development, the landmark sign (which originally read "Hollywoodland") has long since become a beacon to would-be stars and starlets. It perches high in the famous hills, overlooking such prime movieland sites as Mann's Chinese Theatre and the Walk of Fame, where the shooting stars of yesteryear achieve immortality.

For more information, visit hollywood.about.com

10. Home, sweet home
In other countries, a family can live in the same town for centuries, generation after generation. Here, we're more restless, more mobile. In a very real way, mobility is what makes us American. We all came from somewhere else -- and we continue to find new places to go, lighting out for new territories and fresh pastures. Our transiency leads us to re-create a sense of family at work and among friends, but in the end our first home -- be it Brooklyn, County Cork, Grosse Pointe or Ghana -- remains with us in the way we think, act and experience the world. To return to the old family home is to rediscover the special ingredients each of us adds to the great melting pot that is our national character. Like the mosaic on the cover of this week's issue, America embraces the differences her citizenry offers and turns them into a dazzling self-image. Here, when we say there's no place like home, we equally mean our backyard and our nation.

USA Travel