The Seven Wonders of American Engineering

The American Society of Civil Engineers’ 1952 list.

In 1952, marking its centennial, the American Society of Civil Engineers polled its members and named seven wonders of American engineering — dams, a canal, an aqueduct, a bridge, a skyscraper and a sewage system that together reshaped how Americans lived. Every one is still in service more than seven decades later.

#	Place	Why it's here
1	Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Chicago to Lockport, Illinois	Chicago’s sewage system — reversed the Chicago River (1900)
2	Colorado River Aqueduct Lake Havasu to Riverside County, California	Carries the Colorado River 242 miles to Southern California (1939)
3	The Empire State Building Manhattan, New York City	The world’s tallest building for nearly 40 years (1931)
4	Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee, Washington	Grand Coulee Dam and the Columbia Basin Project (1942)
5	Hoover Dam Black Canyon, Arizona–Nevada border	Tamed the Colorado River and created Lake Mead (1936)
6	Panama Canal Zone Balboa, Panama	The Panama Canal, built and run by the U.S. (1914)
7	San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge San Francisco Bay, California	San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge (1936)

Place

Why it's here