# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Northeastern United States, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, covers nine states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. All were among the original thirteen colonies settled in the seventeenth century (though Maine and Vermont were considered part of other colonies at the time) and joined the United States of America upon independence in 1776.

The first Europeans to settle New England landed in present-day Massachusetts. These settlers were primarily non-conformists (later called Pilgrims) and Puritans from England seeking religious freedom. Massachusetts was also one of the key colonies in the events that led up to the break away from the British Empire. The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place April 19, 1775, when the British sent a regiment to confiscate arms and arrest revolutionaries in Concord, Massachusetts. It was the first fighting of the American Revolution.

The Northeast is also the richest region of the United States. While they rank high in income, they are predominantly small in overall population and area, with only New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ranking in the top ten states in population and no state ranking in the top ten in size.

The mouths of four major rivers pierce the coastline to empty into the Atlantic:

Delaware River: flows south from its source between the Pocono Mountains and the Catskills, forming the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey and passing through the Trenton and Philadelphia area before emptying into Delaware Bay on the Delaware-New Jersey border;

Hudson: empties into New York Harbor at the New York-New Jersey border and extends north between the Berkshires and the Catskill Mountains to its source in the Adirondack Mountains;

Connecticut River: runs along the border of New Hampshire and Vermont between the Green Mountains and White Mountains before flowing through Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, on its way to empty into Long Island Sound.

Kennebec River: extends over 60 miles (100 km) past Augusta into the thick pine forests of Maine.

Susquehanna River begins in the Catskill Mountains of New York and winds down a valley between the Allegheny Plateau and the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania before crossing the border into Maryland and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.

In the White Mountains of New Hampshire is Mount Washington, the tallest mountain in the Northeast and the windiest location in the United States. The White Mountains were also the location of the famous geological formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, which collapsed in 2003. To the west of the Green Mountains on the New York-Vermont border, and extending into Canada, is glacier-formed Lake Champlain, which drains north into the St. Lawrence river valley.

Below this line, much of the region (except for the higher elevations) has hot, humid summers and moderately cold, snowy winters. Most of the major cities of the Northeast lie within this zone, including Pittsburgh, New York, and Boston. The area around the Chesapeake Bay, (as well as the states of Maryland, Delaware, and extreme southeastern Pennsylvania) has hot, humid summers and more mild winters.

New England

New England has more of a shared heritage than other regions of the country. It has played a dominant role in American history. From the late seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century, New England was the nation's leader in politics, education, culture, and intellectual thought as well as the country's economic center.

Mid-Atlantic

Dutch immigrants moved into the lower Hudson River Valley in what is now New Jersey and New York in the early seventeenth century. An English Protestant sect, the Religious Society of Friends ( Quakers), led by William Penn, settled Pennsylvania. His colony gave equal right to people from different races and religions. In time, all these settlements fell under English control, but the region continued to be a magnet for people of diverse nationalities.

With two of America's largest cities, New York and Philadelphia, the region is a major center of business, media, education, the arts, and cuisine. Though initially settled by Europeans, the region now boasts large Asian and Hispanic populations. African immigrants have many strongholds in urban areas.

While some regions of the United States, such as the South, are predominantly Protestant, half of the states in the Northeast are predominantly Roman Catholic, with Rhode Island having the highest percentage of Catholics in the Continental United States. This is largely due to substantial levels of immigration the region received in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Ireland, Italy, Quebec, and other Catholic regions. The Northeast is also home to many other religious groups. It has the largest concentration and percentage of Jews in the United States.

The Northeast is an ethnically diverse region. It contains the highest concentration of Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in the United States and high numbers of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. It has a generally low number of Native Americans.

As is the case in much of the United States, people from many European American backgrounds live in the Northeast, although white northeasterners frequently identify with their ethnic background more strongly than do U.S.-born whites from other U.S. regions. Massachusetts, particularly in the Boston area, is regarded as the Irish capital of the United States. New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Jersey have long been known for their large populations of Italian-Americans, many of whom have moved to outlying suburban areas. The New York City Borough of Brooklyn historically is a major center of the Jewish-American population; while a significant community still lives there, in the mid-twentieth century Jews made up over 50 percent of the borough's white population (the city as a whole contained over 50 percent of the entire country's Jewish population at the time).

The Northeast has the second largest Asian population in the United States, after the West Coast. The largest of these groups are Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino, in that order. There are also significant populations of Japanese, Vietnamese, Thais, and Cambodians.

Almost all the Asians are concentrated in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. However, Connecticut and Delaware are seeing a rapid surge in Asians.

The Northeast has the third largest Hispanic population, after the West Coast and the Southwest. The majority of the nation's Puerto Ricans reside in the region, chiefly in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Also, the Northeast has the most people of "Other Hispanic" heritage in the country, with the majority of them being Dominican, Central American, and Colombian. The Northeast also has the second-largest population of Cuban Americans of any region, but their concentration is more widespread (the South has the largest Cuban population, but it is almost completely concentrated in southern Florida). Hudson County, New Jersey, has the highest Cuban population outside southern Florida. The neighborhood of Washington Heights in Manhattan is regarded as the center of the Dominican diaspora, and Paterson, New Jersey, is the center of Peruvian immigration.

While the Northeast has one of the smallest populations of Mexican Americans of any U.S. region, its Mexican population is growing at a faster rate than that of any other region in the country, and there are many cities and towns with significant populations.

The Northeast also has the second largest population of African-Americans, only behind the South. Most of the black population resides in New York, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey. New York has more blacks than any other state, Pennsylvania is ranked tenth in number of African Americans, and New Jersey is ranked fifteenth. Massachusetts and Connecticut also have large black populations. The Northeast also contains the bulk of the African immigrant population in the United States.

While much of the region is highly diverse, the Northeast also contains the three states with the highest percentage of European Americans: Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. These three states all have high concentrations of French Canadians and many descendants of English immigrants.

The region's large immigrant populations have contributed to a mixture of tastes mingling.

Urban and suburban

Much of the history of the Northeast is characterized by archetypical medium and large manufacturing cities. The sometimes urban character of the region gives it a strange mix of reputations, and many view Northeastern cities as places of economic opportunity. In major northeastern cities, ethnic enclaves are not uncommon. Most of the cities have large artistic and theatrical scenes.

At the same time, major cities are expensive and have large economic disparities. The decreased importance of manufacturing has left many of the cities without an economic base, giving some of them a reputation for urban decay. Notable examples of cities left damaged and often severely depopulated from loss of manufacturing include Yonkers, Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse, and even parts of New York City in New York State; Newark in New Jersey; Lowell in Massachusetts; Hartford and Bridgeport in Connecticut; and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. However, examples dot the entire region and much of the neighboring region of the Midwest.

Some of these cities have enjoyed revivals in recent years, replacing their economic reliance on manufacturing with job development in the medical, technical, and educational industries. Pittsburgh, for example, now counts only 23 percent of its workforce in blue-collar occupations, according to a 2005 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The last of the city's steel mills closed in 1998.

Though it generally is seen as having a very urban character, at least in its most populated areas, the Northeast was one of the first regions to undergo heavy post- World War II suburbanization. The most notable of these early suburbs was Levittown, east of New York City, built in the late 1940s and early 1950s to provide homes for returning soldiers. Today, suburbanization is a rampant trend in United States housing development, driven by widespread use of the automobile. Many of the major and secondary cities in the region also utilize mass transit.

The Northeast as a megalopolis

Today, the coastal Northeast is said to resemble a megalopolis, or megacity, an interdependent network of cities and suburbs that blend into each other. Economically, the region provides many of the financial and government services the rest of the country and much of the world depends on, from New York's Wall Street to Boston's academia. It is linked largely by the I-95 Interstate, which runs from Florida through Philadelphia, New York, and Boston and into Maine. By rail, the cities are linked by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. Suburbs of Boston as far north as New Hampshire and even Maine, as well as Washington, D.C.'s suburbs in Virginia are arguably all part of this megacity.

Despite the heavy urban/suburban characteristics of the region, many rural characteristics survive. Much of Upstate New York has decidedly rural characteristics. The Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey as well as the northwestern part of the state are known as retreats from the urban areas of the Northeast. New York is a heavily agricultural state, and even New York City's boroughs of Queens and Staten Island had some sort of farm production well into the late twentieth century. Small towns and cities dot western Massachusetts' Berkshire region, as well as Vermont, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. While formerly important rural industries like farming and mining have decreased in importance in recent decades, they persist.

Like New England, the Mid-Atlantic region has seen much of its heavy industry relocate elsewhere. Other industries, such as drug manufacturing and communications, have taken up the slack.

As the service sector is less dependent on heavy labor than the formerly dominant industrial sector, the incentive that unskilled laborers and immigrants once had to move to the Northeast has largely diminished. They lack the skills to compete in, for example, the financial, technical, educational, and medical markets. However, the Northeast remains a magnet for skilled workers from around the world.

The Northeast region is known for its political liberalism. For example, every state in the region voted for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Pennsylvania, however, is considered a state that either a Republican or Democratic presidential candidate could win.

Historical

From the 1930s to the early 1990s, despite the power of labor unions, the Democratic Party was regarded as "too economically illiberal" (that is, supportive of heavy government interference in the economy and overly supportive of social programs) for a region that had a large professional class. After World War II, many professionals relocated to suburbs, causing them to take on decidedly Republican leanings as the cities remained largely Democratic enclaves. As a result, the Republicans remained competitive in the Northeast during much of the remainder of the twentieth century. When the Democrats began softening their economic policies in the early 1990s, suburban Northeastern voters responded favorably and became more supportive of them.

Ideological differences have softened between city and suburb in recent decades, strengthening the Democratic Party overall. Over time, residents of the suburbs have begun facing challenges once regarded as uniquely urban: street gangs, urban crowding, and drug abuse, while becoming increasingly ethnically diverse.

Postwar migration patterns weakened the Northeast's economic power considerably. Industry often relocated to the West Coast and South regions which were less expensive, less crowded, and were less prone to unionization. By the 1970s, California had surpassed New York as the most populous state, and by 1994 Texas had pushed New York to third place. While New York City remains by far the largest city in the United States and a large recipient of immigrants, most immigration now comes from Latin America to border states such as Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico. Secondary cities in the Northeast, like Buffalo, never regained their economic foothold after the decline of industry, though larger and more famous cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia developed sophisticated service economies.

References

Alexander, Lewis M. The Northeastern United States. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1967.

Gottmann, Jean. Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States. Literary Licensing, LLC., 2012. ISBN 978-1258416836

Raymo, Chet, and Maureen E. Raymo. Written in Stone: A Geological and Natural History of the Northeastern United States. Chester, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0871066800

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Northeastern United States, as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, covers nine states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. All were among the original thirteen colonies settled in the seventeenth century (though Maine and Vermont were considered part of other colonies at the time) and joined the United States of America upon independence in 1776.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
U.S. STATE FACTS

Statue of Liberty

Introduction - Northeast U.S.
What do you think of when you picture the Northeast Region of the United States? Perhaps it is the major cities like New York City, Washington DC, and Boston. You may think of the miles of beautiful beaches like those on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) or on Long Island New York. Perhaps what comes to mind are one of the amazing natural wonders like Niagara Falls in upstate New York. In fact; there is an incredible variety of people and places in this region. On this page we have listed facts about the Northeast Region of the U.S. which includes the states listed below. You will find links on this page to interesting information about each state in the Northeast geographical region which both kids and adults should find interesting and useful.

Click here for a great selection ofAmazon.com books about the Northeast.

Basic Northeast Region US State Facts

The 11 states that make up the US Northeast Region are Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Six of the states in this region are collectively called the "New England States". They are Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The Northeast states of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania are often referred to as the Middle Atlantic States.

Washington D.C., which is not a US state, is also considered part of the Northeast region.

The climate of the Northeast varies by season. Winters are often extremely cold; especially in the northern most states such as Maine. The regions summers are generally warm and humid.

Northeast Region Points of Interest

New York City - This city is one of the main tourist destinations in the world with way to many attractions to list here.

The Freedom Trail - A walking trail in Boston Massachusetts with 16 important historic sites including Paul Reveres House and Boston Common.

Mark Twain House - Located in Hartford Connecticut this was the home of the famous American author from 1874 to 1891.

Gettysburg Battlefield - Located in Gettysburg Pennsylvania this was the sight of the biggest battle of the American Civil War.

Interesting Northeast Region US State Facts

All 11 states in this region were part of original thirteen British colonies before the US won it's independence in the American Revolution. What are now Vermont and Maine were actually part of other colonies before the Revolution.

The smallest US state (Rhode Island) is located in this region.

At 6,288 feet (1,917 meters) the peak of Mount Washington in New Hampshire is the highest point in the Northeast.

There is an amazing amount of National Historic Landmarks in this region of the US. In fact approximately half of these US landmarks are found in this region.

New York City, which is located in the Northeast, has the highest population of any city in the US; its population exceeds that of most states.

The Northeast states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island are the only US states where the number of Catholics is more than the number of Protestants and other Christian religions. This is due to the huge number of Catholic immigrants arriving from such predominantly Catholic European countries as Ireland and Italy in the late 1800s.

MENU
Home Connecticut Facts Delaware Facts Maine Facts Maryland Facts Massachusetts Facts New Hampshire Facts New Jersey Facts New York Facts Pennsylvania Facts Rhode Island Facts Vermont Facts

Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NORTHEAST U.S.- over 20 interesting key facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
U.S. STATE FACTS What do you think of when you picture the Northeast Region of the United States? Perhaps it is the major cities like New York City, Washington DC, and Boston. You may think of the miles of beautiful beaches like those on Cape Cod (Massachusetts) or on Long Island New York.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southern United States to its south, and the Midwestern United States to its west. The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the U.S. Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics. The region is usually defined as including nine U.S. states: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The U.S. Census Bureau-defined region of the Northeastern United States has a total area of 181,324 sq mi (469,630 km ²) with 162,257 sq mi (420,240 km ²) of that being land mass, making it the smallest region of the United States by both land mass and total area. The Northeastern region is the nation's most economically developed, densely populated, and culturally diverse region. Of the nation's four census regions, the Northeast has the second-largest percentage of residents living in an urban setting, with 85 percent, and is home to the nation's largest metropolitan area. The Northeast is home to most of the Northeast megalopolis, the most economically significant and second most-populated of eleven megaregions within the United States, accounting for 20% of U.S. GDP as of 2016.

Indigenous people

Anthropologists recognize the "Northeastern Woodlands" as one of the cultural regions that existed in the Western Hemisphere at the time of European colonists in the 15th and later centuries. Most did not settle in North America until the 17th century. The cultural area, known as the " Northeastern Woodlands", in addition to covering the entire Northeast U.S., also covered much of what is now Canada and others regions of what is now the eastern United States.

Among the many tribes that inhabited this area were those that made up the Iroquois nations and the numerous Algonquian peoples. In the United States of the 21st century, 18 federally recognized tribes reside in the Northeast. For the most part, the people of the Northeastern Woodlands, on whose lands European fishermen began camping to dry their codfish in the early 1600s, lived in villages, especially after being influenced by the agricultural traditions of the Ohio and Mississippi valley societies.

Colonial history

All of the U.S. states making up the Northeastern region were among the original Thirteen Colonies, though Maine, Vermont, and Delaware were part of other colonies before the United States became independent in the American Revolution. The two cultural and geographic regions that form parts of the Northeastern region have distinct histories.

New England

The first Europeans to settle New England were Pilgrims from England, who landed in present-day Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims arrived on the ship and founded Plymouth Colony so they could practice religion freely. Ten years later, a larger group of Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston to form Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1636, colonists established Connecticut Colony and Providence Plantations. Providence was founded by Roger Williams, who was banished by Massachusetts for his beliefs in freedom of religion, and it was the first colony to guarantee all citizens freedom of worship. Anne Hutchinson, who was also banished by Massachusetts, formed the town of Portsmouth. Providence, Portsmouth and two other towns ( Newport and Warwick) consolidated to form the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Although the first settlers of New England were motivated by religion, since the 21st century, New England had become one of the least religious parts of the United States. In a 2009 Gallup survey, less than half of residents in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts reported religion as an important part of their daily life. In a 2010 Gallup survey, less than 30% of residents in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts reported attending church weekly, giving them the lowest church attendance among U.S. states.

New England played a prominent role in early American education. Starting in the 17th century, the larger towns in New England opened grammar schools, the forerunner of the modern high school. The first public school in the English colonies was the Boston Latin School, founded in 1635. In 1636, the colonial legislature of Massachusetts founded Harvard College, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States.

Mid-Atlantic

The first European explorer known to have explored the Atlantic shoreline of the Northeast since the Norse was Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. His ship La Dauphine explored the coast from what is now known as Florida to New Brunswick. Henry Hudson explored the area of present-day New York in 1609 and claimed it for the Netherlands. His journey stimulated Dutch interest, and the area became known as New Netherland. In 1625, the city of New Amsterdam (the location of present-day New York City) was designated the capital of the province. The Dutch New Netherland settlement along the Hudson River and, for a time, the New Sweden settlement along the Delaware River divided the English settlements in the north and the south. In 1664, Charles II of England formally annexed New Netherland and incorporated it into the English colonial empire. The territory became the colonies of New York and New Jersey. New Jersey was originally split into East Jersey and West Jersey until the two were united as a royal colony in 1702.

In 1681, William Penn, who wanted to give Quakers a land of religious freedom, founded Pennsylvania and extended freedom of religion to all citizens. Penn strongly desired access to the sea for his Pennsylvania Province and leased what then came to be known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware" from the Duke. Penn established representative government and briefly combined his two possessions under one General Assembly in 1682. However, by 1704 the Province of Pennsylvania had grown so large that their representatives wanted to make decisions without the assent of the Lower Counties and the two groups of representatives began meeting on their own, one at Philadelphia, and the other at New Castle, Delaware. Penn and his heirs remained proprietors of both and always appointed the same person Governor for their Province of Pennsylvania and their territory of the Lower Counties. The fact that Delaware and Pennsylvania shared the same governor was not unique. From 1703 to 1738, New York and New Jersey shared a governor. Massachusetts and New Hampshire also shared a governor for some time.

The vast area from central Virginia to northern Maine, and from western Pennsylvania, from Pittsburgh in the west to the Atlantic Ocean in the east, have all been loosely grouped into the Northeast, including six of Pennsylvania's seven largest cities, Allentown, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Reading, Scranton, and Bethlehem.

Using the U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the Northeast, the region includes nine states: Maine, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. The region is often subdivided into New England (the six states east of New York State) and the Mid-Atlantic states (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania). This definition has been essentially unchanged since 1880 and is widely used as a standard for data tabulation. However, the U.S. Census Bureau has acknowledged the obvious limitations of this definition and the potential merits of a proposal created after the 1950 census, that would include changing regional boundaries to include Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia with the Mid-Atlantic states, but ultimately decided that "the new system did not win enough overall acceptance among data users to warrant adoption as an official new set of general-purpose state groupings. The previous development of many series of statistics, arranged and issued over long periods of time on the basis of the existing State groupings, favored the retention of the summary units of the current regions and divisions." The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed in 1994 that it would continue to "review the components of the regions and divisions to ensure that they continue to represent the most useful combinations of states and state equivalents."

Many organizations and reference works follow the Census Bureau's definition for the region. In the history of the United States, the Mason-Dixon line between Pennsylvania ( the North) and Maryland ( the South) traditionally divided the regions, but in modern times, various entities define the Northeastern United States in somewhat different ways. The Association of American Geographers divides the Northeast into two divisions: "New England", which is the same as the Census Bureau; and it has the same "Middle States" but adds Delaware. Similarly, the Geological Society of America defines the Northeast as these same states but with the addition of Maryland and the District of Columbia. The narrowest definitions include only the states of New England. Other more restrictive definitions include New England and New York as part of the Northeast United States, but exclude Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

States beyond the Census Bureau definition are included in Northeast Region by various other entities:

Various organizations include: Delaware, Maryland and District of Columbia.

The US EPA and NOAA include in their Northeast Region: Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia.

The National Fish and Wildlife Service includes in their Northeast Region: Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, West Virginia, and Virginia.

The National Park Service includes in their Northeast Region: Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia (though small parts are also in the National Capital Region).

Environment

Topography

While most of the Northeastern United States lie in the Appalachian Highlands physiographic region; some are also part of the Atlantic coastal plain, which extends south to the southern tip of Florida. The coastal plain areas include Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Long Island in New York, most of New Jersey, Delaware and the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland and Virginia) are generally low and flat, with sandy soil and marshy land. The highlands, including the Piedmont and the Appalachian Mountains, are generally heavily forested, ranging from rolling hills to summits greater than 6,000 feet (1,800 m), and pocked with many lakes. The highest peak in the Northeast is Mount Washington, New Hampshire at 6,288 feet (1,917 m).

As of 2012, forest-use covered approximately 60% of the Northeastern states (including Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia), about twice the national average. About 11% was cropland and another 4% grassland pasture or range. There is also more urbanized land in the Northeast (12%) than any other region in the U.S.

The climate of the Northeastern United States varies from northernmost Maine to southernmost Maryland. The climate of the region is created by the position of the general west to east flow of weather in the middle latitudes that much of the USA is controlled by and the position and movement of the subtropical highs. Summers are normally warm in northern areas to hot in southern areas. In summer, the building Bermuda High pumps warm and sultry air toward the Northeast, and frequent (but brief) thundershowers are common on hot summer days. In winter the subtropical high retreats southeastward, and the polar jet stream moves south bringing colder air masses from up in Canada and more frequent storm systems to the region. Winter often brings both rain and snow as well as surges of both warm and cold air.

The basic climate of the Northeast can be divided into a colder and snowier interior (western Maryland, most of Pennsylvania, most of northern New Jersey, Upstate New York, and most of New England), and a milder coast and coastal plain from Cape Cod and southern Rhode Island southward, including Long Island, New Haven, New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. In the latter region the hardiness zones are 7a and 7b. Annual mean temperatures range from the low-to-mid 50s F from Maryland to southern Connecticut, to the 40s F in most of New York State, New England, and northern Pennsylvania.

Most of the Northeast has a humid continental climate ( Dfa/Dfb/Dc). The northernmost portion of the humid subtropical zone ( Cfa/Do) begins at Martha's Vineyard and extreme SW Rhode Island and extends southwestward down the coastal plain to central and southern Maryland. The oceanic climate zone ( Cfb/Do) only exists on Block Island and Nantucket and is the only area of the Northeast where all months average between 0 and 22 °C (32 and 71.6 °F).

The Northeast has 72 National Wildlife Refuges, encompassing more than 500,000 acres (780 sq mi; 2,000 km ²) of habitat and designed to protect some of the 92 different threatened and endangered species living in the region.

Demographics

As of the 2020 United States census, the population of the region totaled 57,609,148. With an average of 345.5 people per square mile, the Northeast is 2.5 times as densely populated as the second-most dense region, the South. Since the last century, the U.S. population has been shifting away from the Northeast and Midwest toward the South and West.

The two U.S. Census Bureau divisions in the Northeast ( New England and Mid-Atlantic) rank #2 and #1 among the 9 divisions in population density according to the 2013 population estimate. The South Atlantic region (233.1) was very close behind New England (233.2). Due to the faster growth of the South Atlantic region, it will take over the #2 division rank in population density in the next estimate, dropping New England to 3rd position. New England is projected to retain the number 3 rank for many, many years, as the only other lower-ranked division with even half the population density of New England is the East North Central division (192.1) and this region's population is projected to grow slowly.

As of 2012, the Northeast U.S. accounts for approximately 23% of the nation's gross domestic product.

New York City, considered the world's financial center, is the most populous city in both the U.S. and Northeast U.S. As of 2018, the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of nearly $1.8 trillion, ranking it first in the U.S. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees 34 nuclear reactors, eight for research or testing and 26 for power production in the Northeastern United States.

Transportation

Rail systems

The following table includes all airports categorized by the FAA as large hubs located in the Northeastern states (New England and Eastern regions):

One geographer, Wilbur Zelinsky, asserts that the Northeast region lacks a unified cultural identity, but has served as a "culture hearth" for the rest of the nation. Several much smaller geographical regions within the Northeast have distinct cultural identities.

Almost half of the National Historic Landmarks maintained by the National Park Service are located in the Northeastern United States.

According to a 2009 Gallup poll, the Northeastern states differ from most of the rest of the U.S. in religious affiliation, generally reflecting the descendants of immigration patterns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with many Catholics arriving from Ireland, Italy, French Canada - Quebec, Portugal and east-central Europe. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey are the only states in the nation where Catholics outnumber Protestants and other Christian denominations. More than 20% of respondents in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont declared no religious identity. Compared to other U.S. regions, the Northeast, along with the Pacific Northwest, has had the lowest regular religious service attendance and the fewest people for whom religion is an important part of their daily lives as of 2015.

The Northeast region is home to numerous professional sports franchises in the "Big Four" leagues (NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB), with more than 100 championships collectively among them.

Major League Soccer features four Northeastern teams: New England Revolution, New York City FC, New York Red Bulls and Philadelphia Union. The region also has two WNBA teams: Connecticut Sun and New York Liberty.

Notable golf tournaments in the Northeastern United States include The Northern Trust, Travelers Championship, and Atlantic City LPGA Classic. The US Open, held in New York, is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments.

Notable Northeastern motorsports tracks include Watkins Glen International, Pocono Raceway, New Hampshire Motor Speedway and Lime Rock Park, which have hosted Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR and International Motor Sports Association races. Also, drag strips such as Englishtown, Epping and Reading have hosted NHRA national events. Belmont Park at New York hosts the Belmont Stakes horse races, which is part of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing.

The region has also been noted for the prevalence of the traditionally Northeastern sports of ice hockey and lacrosse.

The rate of potentially preventable hospitalizations in the Northeastern United States fell from 2005 to 2011 for overall conditions, acute conditions, and chronic conditions.

Main page: Political party strength in U.S. states

The Northeastern United States tended to vote Republican in federal elections through the first half of the 20th century, but the region has since the 1990s shifted to become the most Democratic in the nation. Results from a 2008 Gallup poll indicated that eight of the top ten Democratic states were located in the region, with every Northeastern state having a Democratic Party affiliation advantage of at least ten points. The following table demonstrates Democratic support in the Northeast as compared to the remainder of the nation.

The following table of United States presidential election results since 1920 illustrates that over the past seven presidential elections, only three Northeastern states supported a Republican candidate (New Hampshire voted for George W. Bush in 2000; Pennsylvania and Maine's 2nd congressional district voted for Donald Trump in 2016). 2004 is so far the only election in U.S. history in which the winner did not win any northeastern state. Bolded entries indicate that party's candidate also won the general election.

The following table shows the breakdown of party affiliation of governors, attorneys general, state legislative houses and U.S. congressional delegation for the Northeastern states, as of May 2020. (Demographics reflect registration-by-party figures from that state's registered voter statistics.)

State

Governor

Attorney general

Upper House majority

Lower House majority

Senior U.S. senator

Junior U.S. senator

U.S. House delegation

Demographics

In Spanish: Nordeste de Estados Unidos para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Northeastern United States Facts for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn Northeastern United States facts for kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
the South, region, southeastern United States, generally though not exclusively considered to be south of the Mason and Dixon Line, the Ohio River, and the 36°30′ parallel. As defined by the U.S. federal government, it includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. The South was historically set apart from other sections of the country by a complex of factors: a long growing season, its staple crop patterns, the plantation system, and Black agricultural labour, whether slave or free. White domination of Blacks characterized Southern politics and economics from the 17th century and began to yield only after World War II.

The warm climate of the South affords a period of 200-290 frost-free days per year, enabling such profitable crops as tobacco, rice, sugarcane, and cotton to be grown. This climate, coupled with abundant rainfall, offered 17th- and 18th-century European settlers a superb opportunity to raise crops for export if an adequate permanent labour supply could be found. The source proved to be enslaved Africans, made available for purchase through the international slave trade. From this unique situation of supply and demand arose the system of plantation slavery, which above all other factors distinguished the South from other U.S. regions. By 1790, Black people constituted about one-third of the Southern population and almost the entire workforce on the plantations. At the beginning of the American Civil War (1861), more than four million Black people remained in bondage, though less than one-sixth of the white population actually owned slaves.

Economically, the antebellum and cotton-oriented South looked to the British textile industry for its market and opposed the growing politico-economic power of the industrializing North. The Southern social philosophy, holding to an ideal of rural gentry, presented a sharp contrast to that of the North: it stressed a genteel, aristocratic lifestyle rather than one based on the earnest accumulation of money.

In the period between the American Revolution (1775-83) and about 1830, the North, spurred by the abolitionists, passed from mild opposition to strong condemnation of slavery. In response, the white South rose to an unqualified defense of its "peculiar institution," supporting it on the grounds of biblical sanction, economic justification, the supposed racial inferiority of Black people, and the necessity for a well-ordered society. Southern separatism in defense of slavery culminated in 1860-61, when 11 Southern states (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee) seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. The ensuing Civil War (1861-65) wrought immense destruction on much of the South, which emerged the loser in the conflict. In many areas, cropland was ruined, livestock lost, railroads destroyed, and billions of dollars in slave-related investments wiped out. Recovering slowly from this destruction, much of the South continued to rely largely on a one-crop economy-cotton, tobacco, or rice-and to cultivate the crops with the labour of African American freedmen. After Reconstruction ended (1877), the white-dominated South's continuing insistence on the inferiority and subordination of African Americans through a system of legalized racial control measures known as Jim Crow laws resulted in the replacement of slavery with three institutions: the economic system of sharecropping (tenant farming), the political system of one-party politics ( Democratic), and the social system of racial segregation, supported by law and custom.

Until 1932 the South remained an impoverished and undiversified region. The growth of a textile industry in the Carolinas and the movement to develop a "New South" after the Civil War had not seriously qualified the region's commitment to cotton, to agriculture, and to a rural way of life. African Americans remained a kind of peasantry, and the income of the South stood at only $372 per capita in 1929, while income outside the South was $797 per capita. Chronic overproduction of cotton, with its attendant low prices, forced more and more farmers, both Black and white, into sharecropping; between 1880 and 1930 Southern land tenancy increased from 36 to 55 percent. The Great Depression of the 1930s caused a total bankruptcy of the cotton economy, which was not relieved until federal New Deal legislation intervened to provide payments for reducing cotton acreage and for unemployment relief. Both of these devices encouraged migration to the cities, a trend that was accelerated during World War II by a heavy influx of Southern African Americans in Northern industrial centres ( see Great Migration).

The New Deal, however, was ultimately to benefit the South. The cotton acreage quota system led to improvements in productivity and to diversification of the agricultural base. The Tennessee Valley Authority, a vast river-development scheme created in 1933, brought electricity to many rural families, further increased farmland productivity through flood control and improved soil management, and laid the groundwork for new industry.

Norris Dam Courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority

After World War II the South began to experience sustained growth and industrialization, particularly in the lumber, paper, petrochemical, and aerospace industries. The cultivation of citrus and other fruits, peanuts (groundnuts), and soybeans eradicated the Deep South's historic dependence on cotton, which fell below livestock, poultry, and textiles in production value. By the 21st century, manufacturing was the largest sector of the economy in most Southern states.

During the second half of the 20th century, the population of the South boomed, exceeding 100 million by the end of the century, when the increasingly urban region contained two-fifths of the nation's 50 largest metropolitan areas. By the 2000 census, Texas had surpassed New York as the second most populous state. Moreover, Florida's population more than doubled in the final three decades of the 20th century. As the demographic balance of the country shifted southward, the South consistently gained Congressional representation. Meanwhile, the region's political profile changed dramatically. A split in the Democratic Party in response to its postwar civil rights platform led to the ascendency of George Wallace and caused many segregationist Southern conservatives to flee to the Republican Party. This split was so exacerbated by the growing civil rights movement of the 1960s that by the 1980s the Democratic monopoly of the South was fully broken. Ever wealthier, the South played an increasing role in national politics beginning in the final quarter of the 20th century. Democrats Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas as well as Republicans George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush of Texas were elected president, and Southern support became pivotal to successful presidential campaigns. The controversial continued use of the Confederate flag by some Southern states remains a hotly debated political issue, as are Confederate monuments.

Selma March Peter Pettus/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ppmsca-08102)

Culturally, the South boasts a literary tradition stretching from Sidney Lanier and Kate Chopin in the 19th century to William Faulkner, James Agee, and Eudora Welty in the 20th century and to Jesmyn Ward, Ron Rash, Natasha Trethewey, Wendell Berry, and Tayari Jones in the 21st century. It has also been the crucible of jazz, blues, rock, and country music.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
the South | Definition, States, & History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
the South, region, southeastern United States, generally though not exclusively considered to be south of the Mason and Dixon Line, the Ohio River, and the 36°30′ parallel. As defined by the U.S. federal government, it includes Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kids learn about the geograhical regions of the United States including the northeast, southeast, midwest, southwest, and west.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn Midwestern United States facts for kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Table of Contents

Read a brief summary of this topic

This article was most recently revised and updated by

Midwest, also called Middle West or North Central States, region, northern and central United States, lying midway between the Appalachians and Rocky Mountains and north of the Ohio River and the 37th parallel. The Midwest, as defined by the federal government, comprises the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Actually composed of two regions, the Northwest Territory, or the Old Northwest, and the Great Plains, the Midwest has become more an idea than a region: an area of immense diversity but somehow consciously representative of a national average.

The Northwest Territory entered the United States in 1783 at the conclusion of the American Revolution and was organized under a series of ordinances that set the precedent for the admission of future territories into the Union. The Great Plains entered the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The Plains were to develop primarily agriculturally, but the Northwest Territory, blessed with both fertile soil and valuable natural resources (coal, oil, iron ore, and limestone), would develop both industrially and agriculturally.

United States: The Midwest

Emerging transportation arteries, first canals and then railroads, linked the Midwest with Eastern markets and firmly established it as part of the industrially expanding North, thus concluding a process begun in 1787 when slavery was outlawed in the Northwest Territory. The region was not without its Southern sympathizers, however, as a number of its settlers, particularly in the Ohio River valley, had migrated from the South, but the Midwest was to give to the brewing sectional crisis not only a new political party (the Republicans, launched in Wisconsin and Michigan) that was devoted to the nonextension of slavery but also two of the Union's staunchest defenders- Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.

After the American Civil War, the growth experienced by the Midwest was dramatic. Transportation, immigration, and industrialization all played a part. By 1890 Chicago, not even 60 years old, had become the second largest city in the country, and the Midwest accounted for 29 percent of the country's manufacturing employment and nearly one-third of its value added by manufacture. The Great Plains, however, developed more slowly. Westward migration tended to skip the Plains for the Pacific Coast, and it was not until the late 1800s, when most American Indians had been subjugated, barbed-wire fencing had been introduced, and railroads had penetrated the interior, that the Plains experienced rapid settlement by farmers, ranchers, and tradesmen.

The influence of the Midwest on national life has been significant. In the 1870s it was the main area of activity of the Granger movement and a hotbed of labour agitation. It provided some of the most prominent figures of the Progressive movement (including Robert M. La Follette) and was home for many of America's most famous industrial giants. It was an innovator in architecture and retailing, a potent force in the settlement-house movement, a centre of temperance activity, and an inspiration to a new school of naturalistic writers such as Hamlin Garland.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now

Unique in American life, the Midwest has fused the raw and expansive muscle of an urban industrial establishment with the sturdy conservatism of a rural hinterland. But like its neighbours to the northeast, the Midwest's growth rate has lagged behind that of the country as a whole.

Despite regional economic shifts adverse to the Midwest, the region has continued to be the most important economic region in the country, leading all other sections in value added by manufacture and in total value of farm marketings.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Midwest | History, States, Map, Culture, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Midwest, also called Middle West or North Central States, region, northern and central United States, lying midway between the Appalachians and Rocky Mountains and north of the Ohio River and the 37th parallel. The Midwest, as defined by the federal government, comprises the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
U.S. STATE FACTS

The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis

Introduction - U.S. Midwest Region
Often referred to as American's Heartland, anyone that has ever really explored the Midwest region of the United States will tell you, there is much more to it than just agriculture and expansive farmland. Yes, you will find farms, but what you will also find is the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, the Great Lakes. You will also find one of the most famous landmarks in America. George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln will forever live on in the Black Hills of South Dakota where their faces were carved into Mount Rushmore. Perhaps you are familiar with the Mall of America, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or the name Tornado Alley, all of which are associated with the Midwest. On this page we have listed relevant facts about the Midwest region of the US including which states make up the Midwest. You will also find links to pages with descriptions of each Midwest state. Whether you are a kid who is doing a research project or an adult who is looking for specific information, we hope you find the information both interesting and useful.

Click here for a great selection ofAmazon.com books about the Midwest.

Basic Midwest Region US State Facts

The 12 states that make up the mid-western region of the United States include Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Because there are no oceans in the Midwestern United States, temperatures can often be extreme with fluctuations in temperature throughout the year sometimes exceeding 100 degrees or more. Summers can be brutally hot, while winters can be downright bone chilling.

Although Tornado Alley does not have any clearly defined borders, the most severe and frequent tornadoes usually occur in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and the Midwest states of Missouri and Iowa.

Midwest Region Points of Interest

Using mostly dynamite and the manpower of approximately 400 people Mount Rushmore, located near Keystone South Dakota, was completed in 1941 and became one of the Midwest most amazing points of interest.

Bloomington, Minnesota is home to the Mall of America, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States. With over 400 events each year and over 400 stores as well as a waterpark, aquarium, mini-golf course and much, much more, it's easy to see why over 35 million people visit the mall each year.

Saint Louis, Missouri is where you will find the world's tallest arch; the Gateway Arch. It towers 630 feet (192 meters) tall, is made of stainless steel and was completed in 1965.

Interesting Midwest Region US State Facts

Chicago, Illinois is the most populated city in the Midwest US states and the third largest city in the nation.

Some of the major cities in the Midwest include Detroit, St. Paul, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St. Louis.

The deadliest tornado in U.S. history ripped through Missouri, Illinois and Indiana killing 695 people in March of 1925.

The Ohio River, Upper Mississippi River and Missouri River are the major rivers that flow through the Midwest.

The Midwestern states are nestled between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian Mountains, right in the middle of the U.S.

Major crops in the Midwest are wheat, corn and oats; giving rise to the nickname the "Breadbasket of America".

MENU
Home Illinois Facts Indiana Facts Iowa Facts Kansas Facts Michigan Facts Minnesota Facts Missouri Facts Nebraska Facts North Dakota Facts Ohio Facts South Dakota Facts Wisconsin Facts

Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
U.S. STATE FACTS Often referred to as American's Heartland, anyone that has ever really explored the Midwest region of the United States will tell you, there is much more to it than just agriculture and expansive farmland. Yes, you will find farms, but what you will also find is the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, the Great Lakes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SOUTHEAST U.S. REGION - over 20 interesting key facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Click here for a list of interesting facts about the Southeast U.S. which includes all the important information you need to know.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
U.S. STATE FACTS

The Grand Canyon

Introduction - Southwest U.S. Region
What comes to mind when you picture the Southwest Region of the United States? Maybe it's the miles of deserts found there or perhaps you think of one or more of the natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley. You also may think about the numerous Native American Indian tribes that live there. On this page you will find lists of interesting facts and information about the Southwest Region of the US which encompasses the four large states of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. There are links on this page to information about each state in the Southwest geographical region written for both adults and kids.

Click here for a great selection ofAmazon.com books about the Southwest.

Basic Southwest Region Facts

List of states in the Southwest U.S.

Arizona (AZ)

New Mexico (NM)

Oklahoma (OK)

Texas (TX)

The major (largest) cities (highest population) in this region are:

Phoenix Arizona

El Paso Texas

Albuquerque New Mexico

Tucson Arizona

Mesa Arizona

The Southwest is generally a region of wide open, sparsely populated spaces, a lot of which is desert, with a few densely populated cities.

The geography of the Southwest includes deserts, mountains, plateaus, mesas, broad basins, and plains.

The climate in this region of the US is basically semi-arid to arid; however areas in this region with a high elevation can get very cold and receive significant snowfall.

Some of the common types of plants found in the Southwest Region of the US include yucca plants, sagebrush, barrel cactus, and saguaro cactus.

This region is inhabited by many different types of animals; most of which have adapted to survival in the hot dry climate that dominates the region. Examples of some of these animals include the rattlesnake, coyote, bobcat, jackrabbit, gray wolf, prairie dog, American bison, Coral snake, and Elk.

Interesting Southwest Region US State Facts

There is a large population of Hispanic Americans living in every major city in the Southwest.

A large number of American Indian tribes use to inhabit the southwestern United States. When Europeans arrived in the region many of these Native Americans were pushed off their land or died from the many disease brought by the European settlers. These indigenous tribes include the Apache, Comanche, Ute, Navajo, and the Hopi.

The construction of numerous dams on the Colorado and other rivers in this region have allowed once small towns such as Phoenix Arizona and Albuquerque New Mexico to thrive and become major cities.

Southwest Region Points of Interest

Grand Canyon: Located in Arizona this amazing canyon was carved by the Colorado River over millions of years. This amazing natural attraction is visited by approximately 5 million visitors every year.

The Four Corners Marker: This Southwest Region point of interest is a monument where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all meet. It is the only place in the United States where four states meet and is considered the heart of the Southwest. The monument is in a remote area where very few tourists visit it.

Monument Valley: Located near the Four Corners Marker on the border of Arizona and Utah this Southwest point of interest has numerous sandstone buttes that tower above the valley floor.

MENU
Home Arizona Facts New Mexico Facts Oklahoma Facts Texas Facts

Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SOUTHWEST U.S. - over 20 interesting key facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Click here for a list of interesting facts about the U.S. Southwest which includes all the important information you need to know.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Southwest: Southwest, region, southwestern United States, historically denoting several geographic areas in turn and changing over the years as the nation expanded. After the War of 1812, the Southwest generally meant Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana; after Texas was annexed, it, too, was included. In the

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, El Paso, Albuquerque, Denver and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México's Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

While the region's boundaries are not officially defined, there have been attempts to do so. One such definition is from the Mojave Desert in California in the west (117° west longitude) to Carlsbad, New Mexico in the east (104° west longitude); another says that it extends from the Mexico-United States border in the south to the southern areas of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada in the north (39° north latitude). In another definition, the core Southwestern U.S. includes only the states of Arizona and New Mexico; others focus on the land within the old Spanish and Mexican borders of the Nuevo México Province or the later American New Mexico Territory.

Regional geography

The most northwest portion of the American Southwest is covered by the Mojave Desert. Bordered on the south by the Sonoran Desert and the east by the Colorado Plateau, its range within the region makes up the southeast tip of Nevada, the southwestern corner of Utah and the northwestern corner of Arizona. In terms of topography, the Mojave is very similar to the Great Basin Desert, which lies just to its north. Within the region, Las Vegas is the most populous city; other significant population centers include Laughlin and Pahrump in Nevada, St. George and Hurricane in Utah, and Lake Havasu City, Kingman, and Bullhead City in Arizona. The Mojave is the smallest, driest and hottest desert within the United States. The Mojave gets less than 6 in (150 mm) of rain annually, and its elevation ranges from 3,000 to 6,000 feet (900 to 1,800 meters) above sea level. The most prolific vegetation is the tall Joshua tree, which grow as tall as 40 ft (12 m), and are thought to live almost 1000 years. Other major vegetation includes the Parry saltbush and the Mojave sage, both only found in the Mojave, as well as the creosote bush.

Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Vegas dominate the westernmost metropolitan areas in the Southwest, while Albuquerque, and El Paso dominate the easternmost metropolitan areas.

Pre-European contact

Not long after the Hohokam reached the height of their culture, all three major cultures in the Southwest began to decline for unknown reasons, although severe drought and encroachment from other peoples have been postulated. By the end of the 15th century, all three cultures had disappeared. The modern Indian tribes of the Isleta, Hopi, Zuni, Sandia, Cochiti, Santa Ana, Taos, Acoma, and Laguna trace their ancestry back to the ancestral Puebloans, while the Akimel O'odham and Tohono O'odham claim descent from Hohokam. The area previously occupied by the Mogollon was taken over by an unrelated tribe, the Apache. While it is unclear whether any of the modern Indian tribes are descended from the Mogollon, some archeologists and historians believe that they mixed with Ancestral Puebloans and became part of the Hopi and Zuni.

Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Southwestern United States was inhabited by a very large population of American Indian tribes. The area once occupied by the ancestral Puebloans became inhabited by several American Indian tribes, the most populous of which were the Navajo, Ute, Southern Paiute, and Hopi. The Navajo, along with the Hopi, were the earliest of the modern Indian tribes to develop in the Southwest. Around AD 1100 their culture began to develop in the Four Corners area of the region. The Navahos migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, where the majority of Athabaskan speakers reside. The Ute were found over most of modern-day Utah and Colorado, as well as northern New Mexico and Arizona. The Paiutes roamed an area which covered over 45,000 square miles of southern Nevada and California, south-central Utah, and northern Arizona. The Hopi settled the lands of the central and western portions of northern Arizona. Their village of Oraibi, settled in approximately AD 1100, is, along with Acoma Sky City in New Mexico, one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in the United States. The Mogollon area became occupied by the Apaches and the Zuni. The Apache migrated into the American Southwest from the northern areas of North America at some point between 1200 and 1500. They settled throughout New Mexico, eastern Arizona, northern Mexico, parts of western Texas, and southern Colorado. The Zuni count their direct ancestry through the ancestral Puebloans. The modern-day Zuni established a culture along the Zuni River in far-eastern Arizona and western New Mexico. Both major tribes of the O'odham tribe settled in the southern and central Arizona, in the lands once controlled by their ancestors, the Hohokam.

Arrival of Europeans

The first European intrusion into the region came from the south. In 1539, a Jesuit Franciscan named Marcos de Niza led an expedition from Mexico City which passed through eastern Arizona. The following year Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, based on reports from survivors of the Narváez expedition (1528-36) who had crossed eastern Texas on their way to Mexico City, led an expedition to discover the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola. The 1582-3 expedition of Antonio de Espejo explored New Mexico and eastern Arizona; and this led to Juan de Oñate's establishment of the Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México in 1598, with a capital founded near Ohkay Oweenge Pueblo, which he called San Juan de los Caballeros. Oñate's party also attempted to establish a settlement in Arizona in 1599, but were turned back by inclement weather. In 1610, Santa Fe was founded, making it the oldest capital in United States.

In 1664 Juan Archuleta led an expedition into what is now Colorado, becoming the first European to enter. A second Spanish expedition was led into Colorado by Juan Ulibarrí in 1706, during which he claimed the Colorado territory for Spain.

In 1768, the Spanish created the Provincia de las Californias, which included California and the Southwest US. Over approximately the next 50 years, the Spanish continued to explore the Southwest, and in 1776 the City of Tucson was founded when the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson was created, relocating the presidio from Tubac.

In 1776, two Franciscan priests, Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, led an expedition from Santa Fe heading to California. After passing through Colorado, they became the first Europeans to travel into what is now Utah. Their journey was halted by bad weather in October, and they turned back, heading south into Arizona before turning east back to Santa Fe.

In 1804 Spain divided the Provincia de las Californias, creating the province Alta California, which consisted primarily of what would become California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. In 1821 Mexico achieved its independence from Spain and shortly after, in 1824, developed its constitution, which established the Alta California territory, which was the same geographic area as the earlier Spanish province.

In 1851, San Luis became the first European settlement in what is now Colorado.

Becoming states

Of the states of which at least a portion make up the Southwest, Texas was the first to achieve statehood. On December 29, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed, bypassing the status of becoming a territory, and immediately became a state. Initially, its borders included parts of what would become several other states: almost half of New Mexico, a third of Colorado, and small portions of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Texas current borders were set in the Compromise of 1850, where Texas ceded land to the federal government in exchange for $10 million, which would go to paying off the debt Texas had accumulated in its war with Mexico.

Following the Mexican Cession, the lands of what had been the Mexican territory of Alta California were in flux: portions of what is now New Mexico were claimed, but never controlled, by Texas. With the Compromise of 1850, the states of Texas and California were created (Texas as a slave state, and California as a free state), as well as the Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory. The New Mexico Territory consisted of most of Arizona and New Mexico (excluding a strip along their southern borders), a small section of southern Colorado, and the very southern tip of Nevada; while the Utah Territory consisted of Utah, most of Nevada, and portions of Wyoming and Colorado. The New Mexico Territory was expanded along its southern extent, to its current border, with the signing of the Gadsden Purchase Treaty on December 30, 1853, which was ratified by the U.S. Congress, with some slight alterations, in April 1854.

Utah, as shown above, evolved out of the Utah Territory, as pieces of the original territory created in 1850 were carved out: parts were ceded to Nevada, Wyoming, and Colorado in 1861; another section to Nevada in 1862; and the final section to Nevada in 1866. In 1890, the LDS church issued the 1890 Manifesto, which officially banned polygamy for members of the church. It was the last roadblock for Utah entering the Union, and on January 4, 1896, Utah was officially granted statehood, becoming the 45th state.

In 1869, John Wesley Powell led a 3-month expedition which explored the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. In 1875, he would publish a book describing his explorations, Report of the Exploration of the Columbia River of the West and Its Tributaries, which was later republished as The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons.

In 1877 silver was discovered in southeastern Arizona. The notorious mining town of Tombstone, Arizona was born to service the miners. The town would become immortalized as the scene of what is considered the greatest gunfight in the history of the Old West, the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

Copper was also discovered in 1877, near Bisbee and Jerome in Arizona, which became an important component of the economy of the Southwest. Production began in 1880 and was made more profitable by the expansion of the railroad throughout the territory during the 1880s.

The early 1880s also saw the completion of the second transcontinental railroad, which ran through the heart of the Southwest, called the "Santa Fe Route". It ran from Chicago, down through Topeka, then further south to Albuquerque, before heading almost due west through northern Arizona to Los Angeles.

The repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893 led to the decline of the silver mining industry in the region.

In 1901, the Santa Fe Railroad reached the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, opening the way for a tourism boom, a trend led by restaurant and hotel entrepreneur Fred Harvey.

The last two territories within the Southwest to achieve statehood were New Mexico and Arizona. By 1863, with the splitting off of the Arizona Territory, New Mexico reached its modern borders. They became states within forty days of one another. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state in the Union. Arizona would shortly follow, becoming the last of the 48 contiguous United States on February 14, 1912.

Since statehood

The 1930s saw the beginning of the ski industry in the Southwest. Resorts were established in Colorado in areas such as Estes Park, Gunnison, and on Loveland Pass. New Mexico's oldest ski area is Sandia Peak Ski Area at the eastern edge of Albuquerque, which opened to skiers in 1936. At the end of the decade, in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah's skiing began to be developed.

Due to the ski conditions in the state, during WWII, the 10th Mountain Division established Camp Hale in Colorado to train elite ski troops.

Origins of the term and historical/cultural variations

Geographer D. W. Meinig defines the Southwest in a very similar fashion to Reed: the portion of New Mexico west of the Llano Estacado and the portion of Arizona east of the Mojave- Sonoran Desert and south of the "canyon lands" and also including the El Paso district of western Texas and the southernmost part of Colorado. Meinig breaks the Southwest down into four distinct subregions. He calls the first subregion " Northern New Mexico", and describes it as focused on Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It extends from the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado to south of Socorro and including the Manzano Mountains, with an east-west breadth in the north stretching from the upper Canadian River to the upper San Juan River. The area around Albuquerque is sometimes called Central New Mexico.

Meinig calls the third subregion "El Paso, Tucson, and the Southern Borderlands". While El Paso and Tucson are distinctly different cities, they serve as anchor points to the hinterland between them. Tucson occupies a large oasis at the western end of the El Paso-Tucson corridor. The region between the two cities is a major transportation trunk with settlements serving both highway and railway needs. There are also large mining operations, ranches, and agricultural oases. Both El Paso and Tucson have large military installations nearby; Fort Bliss and White Sands Missile Range north of El Paso in New Mexico, and, near Tucson, the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. About 70 miles (110 km) to the southeast are the research facilities at Fort Huachuca. These military installations form a kind of hinterland around the El Paso-Tucson region, and are served by scientific and residential communities such as Sierra Vista, Las Cruces, and Alamogordo. El Paso's influence extends north into the Mesilla Valley, and southeast along the Rio Grande into the Trans-Pecos region of Texas.

The fourth subregion Meinig calls the "Northern Corridor and Navajolands", a major highway and railway trunk which connects Albuquerque and Flagstaff. Just north of the transportation trunk are large blocks of American Indian land.

Historical/archeological

As the US expanded westward, the country's western border also shifted westward, and consequently, so did the location of the Southwestern and Northwestern United States. In the early years of the United States, newly colonized lands lying immediately west of the Appalachian Mountains were detached from North Carolina and given the name Southwest Territory. During the decades that followed, the region known as "the Southwestern United States" covered much of the Deep South east of the Mississippi River.

However, as territories and eventual states to the west were added after the Mexican-American War, the geographical "Southwest" expanded, and the relationship of these new acquisitions to the South itself became "increasingly unclear."

However, archeologist, Erik Reed, gives a description which is the most widely accepted as defining the American Southwest, which runs from Durango, Colorado in the north, to Durango, Mexico, in the south, and from Las Vegas, Nevada in the west to Las Vegas, New Mexico in the East. Reed's definition is roughly equivalent to the western half of the Learning Center of the American Southwest's definition, leaving out any portion of Kansas and Oklahoma, and much of Texas, as well as the eastern half of New Mexico. Since this article is about the Southwestern United States, the areas of Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico will be excluded. The portion left includes Arizona and western New Mexico, the very southernmost part of Utah, southwestern Colorado, the very tip of west Texas, and triangle formed by the southern tip of Nevada. This will be the defined scope that is used in this article unless otherwise specified in a particular area.

Geological/topographical

Parts of the other states make up the various areas that can be included in the Southwest, depending on the source. The Learning Center of the American Southwest (LCAS) does not rely on current state boundaries, and defines the American Southwest as parts of Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. From this perspective, almost all of the region's physiographical traits, geological formations, and weather are contained within a box between 26° and 38° northern latitude, and 98° 30' and 124° western longitude.

Ecological

When looking at the fauna of the region, there is a broader definition of the American Southwest. The Southwestern Center for Herpetological Research defines the Southwest as being only the states of Arizona, New Mexico, with parts of California, Nevada, Texas, and Utah; although they include all of those six states in their map of the region, solely for ease of defining the border.

Lawrence Clark Powell, a major bibliographer whose emphasis is on the Southwest, defined the American Southwest in a 1958 Arizona Highways article as, "the lands lying west of the Pecos, north of the [Mexican] Border, south of the Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon, and east of the mountains which wall off Southern California and make it a land in itself."

Texas has long been the focal point of this dichotomy, and is often considered, as such, the core area of "the South's Southwest." While the Trans-Pecos area is generally acknowledged as part of the desert Southwest, most of Texas and large parts of Oklahoma are often placed into a sub-region of the South, which some consider southwestern in the general framework of the original application, meaning the "Western South". This is an area containing the basic elements of Southern history, culture, politics, religion, and linguistic and settlement patterns, yet blended with traits of the frontier West. While this particular Southwest is notably different in many ways from the classic "Old South" or Southeast, these features are strong enough to give it a separate southwestern identity quite different in nature from that of the interior southwestern states to the west.

One of these distinguishing characteristics in Texas-in addition to having been a Confederate state during the Civil War-is that Indigenous and Spanish American culture never played a central role in the development of this area in relative comparison to the others, as the vast majority of settlers were Anglo and blacks from the South. Although the present-day state of Oklahoma was Indian Territory until the early 20th century, many of these American Indians were from the southeastern United States and became culturally assimilated early on. The majority of members of these tribes also allied themselves with the Confederacy during the Civil War. Combined with that, once the territory was open for settlement, southeastern pioneers made up a disproportionate number of these newcomers. All this contributed to the new state having a character that differed from other parts of the Southwest with large American Indian populations.

The fact that a majority of residents of Texas and Oklahoma-unlike those in other "southwestern" states-self-identify as living in the South and consider themselves southerners rather than the West and westerners-also lends to treating these two states as a somewhat distinct and separate entity in terms of regional classification.

Vegetation and terrain

The region has an extremely diverse bird population, with hundreds of species being found in the American Southwest. In the Chiricahua Mountains alone, in southeastern Arizona, there can be found more than 400 species. Species include Canadian ( Branta canadensis) and snow geese, sandhill cranes ( Grus canadensis), and the roadrunner, the state bird of New Mexico and most famous bird in the region, is found in all states of the Southwest. Birds of prey include the red-tailed hawk ( Buteo jamaicensis), Cooper's hawk ( Accipiter cooperii), the osprey ( Pandion haliaetus), golden eagles ( Aquila chrysaetos), Harris's hawk ( Parabuteo unicinctus), American kestrel ( Falco sparverius), peregrine falcon ( Falco peregrinus), the gray hawk ( Buteo plagiatus), the barn owl ( Tyto alba), the western screech owl ( Megascops kennicottii), the great horned owl ( Bubo virginianus), the elf owl ( Micrathene whitneyi), and the burrowing owl ( Athene cunicularia)

Other bird species include the turkey vulture ( Cathartes aura), the black vulture ( Coragyps atratus), the northern cardinal ( Cardinalis cardinalis), the blue grosbeak ( Passerina caerulea), the house finch ( Haemorhous mexicanus), the lesser goldfinch ( Spinus psaltria), the broad-billed hummingbird ( Cynanthus latirostris), the black-chinned hummingbird ( Archilochus alexandri), Costa's hummingbird ( Calypte costae), Gambel's quail ( Callipepla gambelii), the common raven ( Corvus corax), the Gila woodpecker ( Melanerpes uropygialis), the gilded flicker ( Colaptes chrysoides), the cactus wren ( Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus), and the rock wren ( Salpinctes obsoletus). Four types of doves call the Southwest home: the white-winged dove ( Zenaida asiatica), the mourning dove ( Zenaida macroura), the common ground dove ( Columbina passerina), and the Inca dove ( Columbina inca).

There is a large contingent of snakes native to the region. Among them include the rosy boa ( Lichanura trivirgata); several sub-species of the glossy snake ( Arizona elegans); the Trans-Pecos ratsnake ( Bogertophis subocularis); several sub-species of shovel-nosed snakes; several sub-species of kingsnake, including the desert kingsnake ( Lampropeltis getula splendida) and the Arizona mountain kingsnake ( Lampropeltis pyromelana); the Arizona coral snake ( Micruroides euryxanthus); the western diamondback rattlesnake ( Crotalus atrox); the Trans-Pecos copperhead ( Agkistrodon contortrix pictigaster); the Sonoran sidewinder ( Crotalus cerastes cercobombus); the Arizona black rattlesnake ( Crotalus oreganus cerberus); the western rattlesnake ( Crotalus viridis); the Grand Canyon rattlesnake ( Crotalus oreganus abyssus), found only in Arizona; several sub-species of the ridge-nosed rattlesnake ( Crotalus willardi), the most recent rattlesnake species to be discovered in the United States, including the New Mexico ridge-nosed rattlesnake ( Crotalus willardi obscurus), and the Arizona ridge-nosed rattlesnake, the state reptile of Arizona; and the desert massasauga ( Sistrurus catenatus edwardsii).

Other reptiles in the region include lizards and turtles. Lizards are highly represented in the region, the most distinctive denizen being the Gila monster, native only to the American Southwest and the state of Sonora in Mexico. The New Mexico whiptail is the state reptile of New Mexico. Other lizards include: Sonoran collared lizard ( Crotaphytus nebrius); several types of geckos, including western banded gecko ( Coleonyx variegatus), the common house gecko ( Hemidactylus frenatus), and the Mediterranean house gecko ( Hemidactylus turcicus), the last two species being non-native to the region but have been introduced; the desert iguana ( Dipsosaurus dorsalis); the chuckwalla ( Sauromalus ater); the greater earless lizard ( Cophosaurus texanus scitulus); several sub-species of horned lizards ( Phrynosoma); numerous species of spiny lizards ( Sceloporus); Gilbert's skink ( Plestiodon gilberti); the western skink ( Plestiodon skiltonianus); Trans-Pecos striped whiptail ( Aspidoscelis inornata heptagrammus); and the Arizona night lizard ( Xantusia arizonae). Turtles are less numerous than their other reptilian counterparts, but several are found in the region, including: the western painted turtle ( Chrysemys picta bellii); the Rio Grande cooter ( Pseudemys gorzugi); the desert box turtle ( Terrapene ornata luteola); the Big Bend slider ( Trachemys gaigeae gaigeae); the Sonora mud turtle ( Kinosternon sonoriense); and the desert tortoise ( Gopherus agassizii).

Amphibians include numerous toads and frogs in the American Southwest. Toads which can be found in the region include the Great Plains toad ( Anaxyrus cognatus); the green toad ( Anaxyrus debilis); the Arizona toad ( Anaxyrus microscaphus); the New Mexico spadefoot ( Spea multiplicata stagnalis); and the Colorado River toad ( Incilius alvarius), also known as the Sonoran Desert toad. Frog representation includes: western barking frog ( Craugastor augusti); the canyon tree frog ( Hyla arenicolor); the Arizona treefrog ( Hyla wrightorum); the western chorus frog ( Pseudacris triseriata); Chiricahua leopard frog ( Lithobates chiricahuensis); and the relict leopard frog ( Lithobates onca). There are quite a few salamanders throughout the region, including: the Arizona tiger salamander ( Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum) and the painted ensatina ( Ensatina eschscholtzii picta).

The southwestern United States features a semi-arid to arid climate, depending on the location. Much of the Southwest is an arid desert climate, but higher elevations in the mountains in each state, with the exception of West Texas, feature alpine climates with very large amounts of snow. The metropolitan areas of Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, and El Paso hardly ever receive any snow at all, as they are strictly desert lands with mountains. Albuquerque receives less snow than other cities, but still receives significant snowfalls occasionally in the winter. Although it snows in this region, the snow in this part of the United States melts rapidly, often before nightfall. This is due mainly to the higher altitude and abundant sunshine in these states.

Nevada and Arizona are both generally arid with desert lands and mountains, and receive large amounts of snow in the higher elevations in and near the mountains. New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado are generally arid, with desert lands and mountains as well. They all receive decent amounts of snow and large amounts of snow in the high elevations in the mountains, although some areas in far southwestern and southern New Mexico do not receive much snow at all at lower elevations. West Texas is generally arid as well but does not receive the same amount of snow that the other southwestern states receive at their high elevations. The terrain of western Texas in the Southwest is the flat, rolling land of the plains, which eventually turns into a desert with some hills. There are significant mountains as well in west Texas upon reaching the Trans-Pecos area.

During El Niño, winters and springs are generally colder and wetter across southern portions of the region, while the northern portion stays warmer and drier due to a southern jet stream. Under La Niña, the opposite happens, meaning the cool and wet weather tends to stay farther north. The Southwest also experiences multi-year and multi-decade episodes of severe drought, including the ongoing southwestern North American megadrought which emerged starting year 2000.

National parks, monuments and forests

Colorado parks and monuments include Great Sand Dunes, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, and Mesa Verde national parks; the national monuments of Browns Canyon, Canyons of the Ancients, Colorado, Hovenweep, and Yucca House. Other federal areas include Curecanti National Recreation Area and Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site; as well as the national forests of San Isabel, San Juan, and Uncompahgre.

Utah national parks include Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion. National monuments include Bears Ears, Cedar Breaks, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Hovenweep (also in Colorado), Natural Bridges, and Rainbow Bridge. Other federal areas include Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Dixie National Forest, and Manti-La Sal National Forest.

The largest African American populations in the Southwest can be found in Las Vegas (10%), San Antonio (7%), and Phoenix (5%).

Cities and urban areas

The area also contains many of the nation's largest cities and metropolitan areas, despite relatively low population density in rural areas. Phoenix is the fifth most populous city in the country, and Albuquerque and Las Vegas were some of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. Also, the region as a whole has witnessed some of the highest population growth in the United States, and according to the US Census Bureau, in 2008-2009, Utah was the fastest-growing state in America. As of the 2010 Census, Nevada was the fastest-growing state in the United States, with an increase of 35.1% in the last ten years. Additionally, Arizona (24.6%), Utah (23.8%), Texas (20.6%), and Colorado (16.9%) were all in the top ten fastest-growing states as well.

The five largest cities of the American Southwest (2020 census)

Largest cities and metropolitan areas (2020 census)

Professional

In 1997, the Phoenix Mercury were one of the original eight teams to launch the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Indoor American football is represented by the Arizona Rattlers located in Phoenix. The region is also host to several major professional golf events: the LPGA's Founder's Cup; the Phoenix Open and the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open (in Las Vegas) of the PGA; and the Tucson Conquistadores Classic (in Tucson), and the Charles Schwab Cup Championship (in Scottsdale) on the Champions Tour of the PGA.

The Southwest is also home to some of the most prominent rodeos in North America. The Professional Bull Riders association has its headquarters in Pueblo, Colorado. The PBR World Finals are held annually in Las Vegas, which also hosts the National Finals Rodeo, which is the nation's premier rodeo event. Other major rodeo events include the week-long Fiesta de los Vaqueros in Tucson, the World's Oldest Rodeo in Prescott, Arizona, the Southwestern International PRCA Rodeo in El Paso, Texas, and the Rodeo de Santa Fe, one of the nation's premier rodeos.

The Southwest is home to a rich tradition of college sports. The Pac-12 Conference has two teams in the region, the Arizona State Sun Devils and the University of Arizona Wildcats. The Mountain West Conference also has two teams, the UNLV Rebels and the University of New Mexico Lobos. Conference USA is represented by the University of Texas at El Paso Miners. The Big Sky Conference has two teams: the Lumberjacks of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Southern Utah University Thunderbirds in Cedar City, Utah. The Western Athletic Conference also has two representatives, the New Mexico State University Aggies in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and the Grand Canyon University Antelopes in Phoenix.

The Southwest is the site of six college football bowl games: the TicketCity Cactus Bowl, formerly known as the Insight Bowl, in Tempe; the Arizona Bowl in Tucson; the Fiesta Bowl, played at the University of Phoenix Stadium; the Las Vegas Bowl; the New Mexico Bowl in Albuquerque; and the Sun Bowl in El Paso, Texas.

In Spanish: Suroeste de Estados Unidos para niños

Pacific Southwest

Southwest Conference (for a different division of the US for sports)

Water Education Foundation

Western United States

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Southwestern United States Facts for Kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn Southwestern United States facts for kids

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
the West, region, western U.S., mostly west of the Great Plains and including, by federal government definition, Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Virtually every part of the United States except the Eastern Seaboard has been "the West" at some point in American history, linked in popular imagination with the last frontier of American settlement. But especially it is that vast stretch of plains, mountains, and deserts west of the Mississippi that has loomed so large in American folklore, a region of cowboys, Indians, covered wagons, outlaws, prospectors, and a whole society operating just outside the law.

As with other sections of the United States, regional boundaries are somewhat imprecise. The West of the cowboy and the cattle drive covered many non-Western states, including Kansas and Nebraska. Much of the West's fiercest Indian fighting took place in the Dakotas, both of which are now considered to be part of the Midwest. Alaska and Hawaii, geographically the most western of all the states, are really no part of the popularly conceived West at all.

Furthermore, though the West was the last region of the United States to be settled and developed, its modern history predates that of the British colonies of the Eastern Seaboard. The Spaniards reached the Grand Canyon in 1540, what is presently Kansas in 1541, and San Francisco in 1542. Santa Fe was founded in 1610, only three years after the British founding of Jamestown. Extensive settlement, however, was still hundreds of years away.

Much of the West became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803; the Southwest, however, was a Mexican possession until 1848. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-06 established much of what would become the Oregon Trail and thereby facilitated settlement of the Pacific Northwest, an area soon known for its richness in furs, timber, and salmon. The Mormons, fleeing from harassment in Midwestern states, reached Utah in 1847, built Salt Lake City, and began a vigorous colonization of all parts of the Rocky Mountain West. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 brought a burst of migration to the West Coast and led to California's admission to the union in 1850, barely two years after it had been ceded from Mexico.

The rest of the West, however, remained sparsely populated. For many decades, most Americans knew of the Great Plains simply as the Great American Desert, an inhospitable area of poor soil, little water, hostile Indians, and general inaccessibility. But the years following the American Civil War changed that conception. In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed by Congress; in 1869 the first transcontinental railroad was completed; and in 1873 barbed-wire fencing was introduced. Coupled with improvements in dry farming and irrigation and the confinement of American Indians (after much brutal and costly warfare) to reservations, the Great American Desert grew steadily in population.

In the 20th century the rapid growth of the West continued. In every census decade but one from 1850 to 1960, the West's population growth rate was more than twice the national average, although the rate diminished thereafter. While the several Mountain states account for only a small percentage of the nation's manufacturing, the preponderance of the industrial strength in the West lies in the few Pacific states, which have shown a dramatic increase in the number of manufacturing establishments (1940 to the late 1970s) and nearly doubled the West's percentage of the national value added by manufacture. No longer merely a land of "wide, open spaces," cattle, mines, and mountains, the West has become famous for other things: for example, the motion-picture industry in southern California, gambling in Nevada, aerospace production in Washington and California, environmental protection in Oregon, and retirement communities in Arizona.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The West | Definition, States, Map, & History

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The West, region, western U.S., mostly west of the Great Plains and including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Virtually every part of the U.S. except the Eastern Seaboard has been 'the West' at some point in American history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
U.S. STATE FACTS

Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs

Introduction - U.S. Western Region
The western region of the United States is a huge area where a wide range of landforms, climates, and people can be found. What you will find in the U.S. States that comprise this vast region are some of the most beautiful beaches in the US, temperate rainforests stretching from California up along the coast to Washington, huge mountains like Pikes Peak in Colorado, and natural wonders like the stone arches in Utah's Arches National Park. Below you will find a list of interesting facts about the western region of the US. There are also links to the states that make up this region all with a list of facts about that state. Whether you are kid working on a school project or an adult interested in learning more about the West read on for more interesting facts.

Click here for a great selection ofAmazon.com books about the western United States.

On this site we will not count Alaska and Hawaii as part of the U.S. West Region but will rather include them in the non-Contiguous states section.
List of States in the U.S. Western Region

California

Oregon

Washington

Colorado

Idaho

Montana

Nevada

Utah

Wyoming

Interesting Facts about the States in the West Region

The western region of the United States is often further broken down into the West Coast Region consisting of the three states that border the Pacific Ocean; California, Oregon, and Washington and the Mountain States, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.

Parts of what was to become the western states of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado were acquired in 1818 from France in the Louisiana Purchase.

This region has both the least populous state in the United States, which is Wyoming, and the most populous U.S. State, California.

The West Region has numerous large cities. In fact the second largest city in the U.S., which is Los Angeles, is located there. Other large cities include San Diego (California), San Francisco (California), Las Vegas (Nevada), Denver (Colorado), and Portland (Oregon).

The city of Hollywood California is the center of the film industry in the United States.

Numerous Indian tribes have inhabited the western region of the U.S.; living there hundreds of years before white settlers arrived. In fact California has more Indian tribes than any other U.S. state.

The Oregon Trail, which passed through several current day western states, was traveled by settlers from the east to the western territories. At first it was only passable by walking or on horseback but in the 1840s it was cleared enough for wagons to travel and enabled hundreds of thousands of settlers to reach the West; especially during the California Gold Rush of 1849.

The Transcontinental Railroad connecting the railroad lines in the east to the west coast of the United States was completed in 1869. What once took months, to travel from the east to the west, was reduced to less than a week. The impact on the development of the West was huge.

U.S. Highway Route 66, which stretches from Chicago, Illinois to California was opened in 1926 and resulted in increased tourism and business for the western states. Later in the 20th century several interstate highways were built resulting in even more tourism and business.

MENU
Home California Facts Colorado Facts Idaho Facts Montana Facts Nevada Facts Oregon Facts Utah Facts Washington Facts Wyoming Facts

Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
WESTERN U.S. - over 20 interesting key facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
U.S. STATE FACTS The western region of the United States is a huge area where a wide range of landforms, climates, and people can be found. What you will find in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
United States

The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed. Before about 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West.

The U.S. Census Bureau's definition of the 13 westernmost states includes the Rocky Mountains and the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast, and the mid-Pacific islands state, Hawaii. To the east of the Western United States is the Midwestern United States and the Southern United States, with Canada to the north, and Mexico to the south.

Defining the West

The Western U.S. is the largest region of the country, covering more than half the land area of the United States. It is also the most geographically diverse, incorporating geographic regions such as the, the temperate rainforests of the Northwest, the highest mountain ranges (including the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada, the Great Plains, and all of the desert areas located in the United States (the Mojave, Sonoran, Great Basin, and Chihuahua deserts). Given this expansive and diverse geography it is no wonder the region is difficult to specifically define. Sensing a possible shift in the popular understanding of the West as a region in the early 1990s, historian Walter Nugent conducted a survey of three groups of professionals with ties to the region: a large group of Western historians (187 respondents), and two smaller groups, 25 journalists and publishers and 39 Western authors. A majority of the historian respondents placed the eastern boundary of the West east of the Census definition out on the eastern edge of the Great Plains or on the Mississippi River. The survey respondents as a whole showed just how little agreement there was on the boundaries of the West.

Subregions

Within a region as large and diverse as the Western United States, smaller areas with more closely shared demographics and geography have developed as subregions. The region is split into two smaller units, or divisions, by the U.S. Census Bureau:

Other classifications distinguish between Southwest and Northwest. Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Utah are typically considered to be part of the Southwest, though Texas and Oklahoma are frequently considered part of the Southwest as well. Meanwhile, the states of Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington can be considered part of the Northwest or Pacific Northwest.

The term West Coast is commonly used to refer to just California, Oregon and Washington, whereas Alaska and Hawaii are more geographically isolated from the other states of the region and don't necessarily fit in any of these subregions.

Outlying areas

Demographics

The population distribution by race in the Western United States (2010):

As defined by the United States Census Bureau, the Western region of the United States includes 13 states, with a total 2020 population of 78,588,572.

The West is one of the most sparsely settled areas in the United States with 49.5 inhabitants per square mile (19/km ²). Only Texas with 78.0 inhabitants/sq mi. (30/km ²), Washington with 86.0 inhabitants/sq mi. (33/km ²), and California with 213.4 inhabitants/sq mi. (82/km ²) exceed the national average of 77.98 inhabitants/sq mi. (30/km ²).

The West also contains much of the Native American population in the U.S., particularly in the large reservations in the Mountain and Desert States.

The largest concentrations for African-Americans in the West can be found in San Diego, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Fresno, San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and Colorado Springs.

The Western United States has a higher sex ratio (more males than females) than any other region in the United States.

Because the tide of development had not yet reached most of the West when conservation became a national issue, agencies of the federal government own and manage vast areas of land. (The most important among these are the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management within the Interior Department, and the U.S. Forest Service within the Agriculture Department.) National parks are reserved for recreational activities such as fishing, camping, hiking, and boating, but other government lands also allow commercial activities like ranching, logging, and mining. In recent years, some local residents who earn their livelihoods on federal land have come into conflict with the land's managers, who are required to keep land use within environmentally acceptable limits.

Natural geography

Along the Pacific Ocean coast lie the Coast Ranges, which, while not approaching the scale of the Rocky Mountains, are formidable nevertheless. They collect a large part of the airborne moisture moving in from the ocean. East of the Coast Ranges lie several cultivated fertile valleys, notably the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys of California and the Willamette Valley of Oregon.

Beyond the valleys lie the Sierra Nevada in the south and the Cascade Range in the north. Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) the tallest peak in the contiguous 48 states, is in the Sierra Nevada. The Cascades are also volcanic. Mount Rainier, a volcano in Washington, is also over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Mount St. Helens, a volcano in the Cascades erupted explosively in 1980. A major volcanic eruption at Mount Mazama around 4860 BC formed Crater Lake. These mountain ranges see heavy precipitation, capturing most of the moisture that remains after the Coast Ranges, and creating a rain shadow to the east forming vast stretches of arid land. These dry areas encompass much of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. The Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert along with other deserts are found here.

Beyond the deserts lie the Rocky Mountains. In the north, they run almost immediately east of the Cascade Range, so that the desert region is only a few miles wide by the time one reaches the Canada-US border. The Rockies are hundreds of miles (kilometers) wide, and run uninterrupted from New Mexico to Alaska. The Rocky Mountain Region is the highest overall area of the United States, with an average elevation of above 4,000 feet (1,200 m). The tallest peaks of the Rockies, 54 of which are over 14,000 feet (4,300 m), are found in central and western Colorado.

The West has several long rivers that empty into the Pacific Ocean, while the eastern rivers run into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River forms the easternmost possible boundary for the West today. The Missouri River, a tributary of the Mississippi, flows from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains eastward across the Great Plains, a vast grassy plateau, before sloping gradually down to the forests and hence to the Mississippi. The Colorado River snakes through the Mountain states, at one point forming the Grand Canyon.

The Colorado River is a major source of water in the Southwest and many dams, such as the Hoover Dam, form reservoirs along it. So much water is drawn for drinking water throughout the West and irrigation in California that in most years, water from the Colorado River no longer reaches the Gulf of California. The Columbia River, the largest river in volume flowing into the Pacific Ocean from North America, and its tributary, the Snake River, water the Pacific Northwest. The Platte runs through Nebraska and was known for being a mile (2 km) wide but only a half-inch (1 cm) deep. The Rio Grande forms the border between Texas and Mexico before turning due north and splitting New Mexico in half.

According to the United States Coast Guard, "The Western Rivers System consists of the Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Cumberland, Arkansas, and White Rivers and their tributaries, and certain other rivers that flow towards the Gulf of Mexico."

Climate and agriculture

Most of the public land held by the U.S. National Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management is in the Western states. Public lands account for 25 to 75 percent of the total land area in these states.

As a generalization, the climate of the West can be described as semiarid; however, parts of the West get extremely high amounts of rain and/or snow, and still other parts are true desert and get less than 5 inches (130 mm) of rain per year. Also, the climate of the West is quite unstable, as areas that are normally wet can be very dry for years and vice versa.

The seasonal temperatures vary greatly throughout the West. Low elevations on the West Coast have warm to very hot summers and get little to no snow. The desert southwest has very hot summers and mild winters. While the mountains in the southwest receive generally large amounts of snow. The Inland Northwest has a continental climate of warm to hot summers and cold to bitter cold winters.

Annual rainfall is greater in the eastern portions, gradually tapering off until reaching the Pacific Coast where it increases again. In fact, the greatest annual rainfall in the United States falls in the coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest. Drought is much more common in the West than the rest of the United States. The driest place recorded in the U.S. is Death Valley, California.

Agriculture varies depending on rainfall, irrigation, soil, elevation, and temperature extremes. The arid regions generally support only livestock grazing, chiefly beef cattle. The extends from Texas through the Dakotas, producing most of the wheat and soybeans in the U.S. and exporting more to the rest of the world. Irrigation in the Southwest allows the growing of great quantities of fruits, nuts, and vegetables as well as grain, hay, and flowers. Texas is a major cattle and sheep raising area, as well as the nation's largest producer of cotton. Washington is famous for its apples, and Idaho for its potatoes. California and Arizona are major producers of citrus crops, although growing metropolitan sprawl is absorbing much of this land.

Local and state government officials started to understand, after several surveys made during the latter part of the 19th century, that only action by the federal government could provide water resources needed to support the development of the West. Starting in 1902, Congress passed a series of acts authorizing the establishment of the United States Bureau of Reclamation to oversee water development projects in seventeen western states.

During the first half of the 20th century, dams and irrigation projects provided water for rapid agricultural growth throughout the West and brought prosperity for several states, where agriculture had previously only been subsistence level. Following World War II, the West's cities experienced an economic and population boom. The population growth, mostly in the Southwest states of New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada, has strained water and power resources, with water diverted from agricultural uses to major population centers, such as the Las Vegas Valley and Los Angeles.

The Pacific states are the most geologically active areas in the United States. Earthquakes cause damage every few to several years in California. While the Pacific states are the most volcanically active areas, extinct volcanoes and lava flows are found throughout most of the West.

The Western United States has been populated by Native Americans since at least 11,000 BC, when the first Paleo-Indians arrived. Pre-Columbian trade routes to kingdoms and empires such as the Mound Builders existed in places such as Yellowstone National Park since around 1000 AD. Major settlement of the western territories developed rapidly in the 1840s, largely through the Oregon Trail and the California Gold Rush of 1849. California experienced such a rapid growth in a few short months that it was admitted to statehood in 1850 without the normal transitory phase of becoming an official territory.

One of the largest migrations in American history occurred in the 1840s as the Latter Day Saints left the Midwest to build a theocracy in Utah.

The 1850s were marked by political battles over the expansion of slavery into the western territories, issues leading to the Civil War.

The history of the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries has acquired a cultural mythos in the literature and cinema of the United States. The image of the cowboy, the homesteader, and westward expansion took real events and transmuted them into a myth of the west which has shaped much of American popular culture since the late 19th century.

Writers as diverse as Bret Harte and Zane Grey celebrated or derided cowboy culture, while artists such as Frederic Remington created western art as a method of recording the expansion into the west. The American cinema, in particular, created the genre of the western movie, which, in many cases, use the West as a metaphor for the virtue of self-reliance and an American ethos. The contrast between the romanticism of culture about the West and the actuality of the history of the westward expansion has been a theme of late 20th and early 21st century scholarship about the West. Cowboy culture has become embedded in the American experience as a common cultural touchstone, and modern forms as diverse as country and western music have celebrated the sense of isolation and independence of spirit inspired by the frontiersmen on virgin land.

20th century

The advent of the automobile enabled the average American to tour the West. Western businessmen promoted U.S. Route 66 as a means to bring tourism and industry to the West. In the 1950s, representatives from all the western states built the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center to showcase western culture and greet travelers from the East. During the latter half of the 20th century, several transcontinental interstate highways crossed the West bringing more trade and tourists from the East. Oil boom towns in Texas and Oklahoma rivaled the old mining camps for their rawness and wealth. The Dust Bowl forced children of the original homesteaders even further west.

The movies became America's chief entertainment source featuring western fiction, later the community of Hollywood in Los Angeles became the headquarters of the mass media such as radio and television production.

California has emerged as the most populous state and one of the top 10 economies in the world. Massive late 19th-20th century population and settlement booms created two megalopolis areas of the Greater Los Angeles/ Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area/ Northern California regions, one of the nation's largest metropolitan areas and in the top 25 largest urban areas in the world. Four more metropolitan areas of San Bernardino- Riverside, San Diego, Denver, Phoenix, and Seattle have over a million residents, while the three fastest growing metro areas were the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, the Las Vegas metropolitan area; and the Portland metropolitan area.

Although there has been segregation, along with accusations of racial profiling and police brutality towards minorities due to issues such as illegal immigration and a racial shift (i.e. White flight and now black flight) in neighborhood demographics, sometimes leading to racially based riots (i.e. the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and 1965 Watts Riots), the West has a continuing reputation for being open-minded and for being one of the most racially progressive areas in the United States.

The border states-California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas-and other southwestern states such as Colorado, Utah, and Nevada all have large Hispanic populations, and the many Spanish place names attest to their history as former Spanish and Mexican territories. Mexican-Americans have also had a growing population in Northwestern states of Oregon and Washington, as well as the southern states of Texas and Oklahoma.

Alaska-the northernmost state in the Union-is a vast land of few people, many of them native, and of great stretches of wilderness, protected in national parks and wildlife refuges. Hawaii's location makes it a major gateway between the U.S. and Asia, as well as a center for tourism.

Oregon and Washington have also seen rapid growth with the rise of Boeing and Microsoft along with agriculture and resource based industries. The desert and mountain states have relatively low population densities, and developed as ranching and mining areas which are only recently becoming urbanized. Most of them have highly individualistic cultures, and have worked to balance the interests of urban development, recreation, and the environment.

Culturally distinctive points include the large Mormon population in the Mormon Corridor, including southeastern Idaho, Utah, Northern Arizona, and Nevada; the extravagant casino resort towns of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada; and the numerous American Indian tribal reservations.

Major metropolitan areas

These are the largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) with a population above 500,000 in the 13 Western states with population estimates as of July 1, 2015 as defined by the United States Census Bureau:

Rank
(West)

Rank
(USA)

MSA

Population

State(s)

8

23
2,389,228 Oregon
Washington

Other population centers

The MSA of El Paso, Texas, although belonging to a state considered part of the Southern United States, is sometimes also considered part of the Western United States. Its estimated population is 838,972.

The Mexican border cities of Tijuana (part of the San Diego MSA) and Mexicali (part of the Yuma, AZ-El Centro, CA MSA) in the Mexican state of Baja California.

The Canadian border cities of Vancouver, British Columbia (the nearest US cities are Bellingham and Port Angeles, both in Washington) and Victoria in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The largest MSA in Alaska is Anchorage; it has an estimated population of 399,790, as of July 2015.

Images for kids

In Spanish: Oeste de Estados Unidos para niños

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn Western United States facts for kids