- United States of America
- Dialing code: +1
- Founded: July 4, 1776
- ISO code: USA
nited States, officially United States of America, abbreviations U.S. or U.S.A., bynameAmerica, country of North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 contiguous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The coterminous states are bounded on the north by Canada, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. The United States is the fourth largest country in the world in area (after Russia, Canada, and China). The national capital is Washington, which is coextensive with the District of Columbia, the federal capital region created in 1790.
The major characteristic of the United States is probably its great variety. Its physical environment ranges from the Arctic to the subtropical, from the moist rain forest to the arid desert, from the rugged mountain peak to the flat prairie. Although the total population of the United States is large by world standards, its overall population density is relatively low; the country embraces some of the world’s largest urban concentrations as well as some of the most extensive areas that are almost devoid of habitation.
The United States contains a highly diverse population. Unlike a country such asChina that largely incorporated indigenous peoples, the United States has a diversity that to a great degree has come from an immense and sustained global immigration. Probably no other country has a wider range of racial, ethnic, and cultural types than does the United States. In addition to the presence of surviving Native Americans (including American Indians, Aleuts, and Eskimos) and the descendants of Africans taken as slaves to the New World, the national character has been enriched, tested, and constantly redefined by the tens of millions of immigrants who by and large have come to America hoping for greater social, political, and economic opportunities than they had in the places they left. (It should be noted that although the terms “America” and “Americans” are often used as synonyms for the United States and its citizens, respectively, they are also used in a broader sense for North, South, and Central America collectively and their citizens.)
The United States is the world’s greatest economic power, measured in terms of gross national product (GNP). The nation’s wealth is partly a reflection of its rich natural resources and its enormous agricultural output, but it owes more to the country’s highly developed industry. Despite its relative economic self-sufficiency in many areas, the United States is the most important single factor in world trade by virtue of the sheer size of its economy. Its exports and imports represent major proportions of the world total. The United States also impinges on the global economy as a source of and as a destination for investment capital. The country continues to sustain an economic life that is more diversified than any other on Earth, providing the majority of its people with one of the world’s highest standards of living.
The United States is relatively young by world standards, being barely more than 200 years old; it achieved its current size only in the mid-20th century. America was the first of the European colonies to separate successfully from its motherland, and it was the first nation to be established on the premise that sovereignty rests with its citizens and not with the government. In its first century and a half, the country was mainly preoccupied with its own territorial expansion and economic growth and with social debates that ultimately led to civil war and a healing period that is still not complete. In the 20th century the United States emerged as a world power, and sinceWorld War II it has been one of the preeminent powers. It has not accepted this mantle easily nor always carried it willingly; the principles and ideals of its founders have been tested by the pressures and exigencies of its dominant status. Although the United States still offers its residents opportunities for unparalleled personal advancement and wealth, the depletion of its resources, contamination of its environment, and continuing social and economic inequality that perpetuates areas of poverty and blight all threaten the fabric of the country.
The District of Columbia is discussed in the article Washington. For discussion of other major U.S. cities, see the articles Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans,New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Political units in association with the United States include Puerto Rico, discussed in the article Puerto Rico, and several Pacific islands, discussed in Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.
The land
The two great sets of elements that mold the physical environment of the United States are, first, the geologic, which determines the main patterns of landforms, drainage, and mineral resources and influences soils to a lesser degree, and, second, the atmospheric, which dictates not only climate and weather but also in large part the distribution of soils, plants, and animals. Although these elements are not entirely independent of one another, each produces on a map patterns that are so profoundly different that essentially they remain two separate geographies. (Since this article covers only the coterminous United States, see also the articles Alaskaand Hawaii.)
Relief
The centre of the coterminous United States is a great sprawling interior lowland, reaching from the ancient shield of central Canada on the north to the Gulf of Mexico on the south. To east and west this lowland rises, first gradually and then abruptly, to mountain ranges that divide it from the sea on both sides. The two mountain systems differ drastically. The Appalachian Mountains on the east are low, almost unbroken, and in the main set well back from the Atlantic. From New York to the Mexican border stretches the low Coastal Plain, which faces the ocean along a swampy, convoluted coast. The gently sloping surface of the plain extends out beneath the sea, where it forms the continental shelf, which, although submerged beneath shallow ocean water, is geologically identical to the Coastal Plain. Southward the plain grows wider, swinging westward in Georgia and Alabama to truncate the Appalachians along their southern extremity and separate the interior lowland from the Gulf.
West of the Central Lowland is the mighty Cordillera, part of a global mountain system that rings the Pacific Basin. The Cordillera encompasses fully one-third of the United States, with an internal variety commensurate with its size. At its eastern margin lie the Rocky Mountains, a high, diverse, and discontinuous chain that stretches all the way from New Mexico to the Canadian border. The Cordillera’s western edge is a Pacific coastal chain of rugged mountains and inland valleys, the whole rising spectacularly from the sea without benefit of a coastal plain. Pent between the Rockies and the Pacific chain is a vast intermontane complex of basins, plateaus, and isolated ranges so large and remarkable that they merit recognition as a region separate from the Cordillera itself.
These regions—the Interior Lowlands and their upland fringes, the Appalachian Mountain system, the Atlantic Plain, the Western Cordillera, and the Western Intermontane Region—are so various that they require further division into 24 major subregions, or provinces (see map).
THE INTERIOR LOWLANDS AND THEIR UPLAND FRINGES
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Andrew Jackson is supposed to have remarked that the United States begins at the Alleghenies, implying that only west of the mountains, in the isolation and freedom of the great Interior Lowlands, could people finally escape Old World influences. Whether or not the lowlands constitute the country’s cultural core is debatable, but there can be no doubt that they comprise its geologic core and in many ways its geographic core as well.
This enormous region rests upon an ancient, much-eroded platform of complex crystalline rocks that have for the most part lain undisturbed by major orogenic (mountain-building) activity for more than 600,000,000 years. Over much of central Canada, these Precambrian rocks are exposed at the surface and form the continent’s single largest topographical region, the formidable and ice-scouredCanadian Shield.
In the United States most of the crystalline platform is concealed under a deep blanket of sedimentary rocks. In the far north, however, the naked Canadian Shieldextends into the United States far enough to form two small but distinctive landform regions: the rugged and occasionally spectacular Adirondack Mountains of northern New York; and the more subdued but austere Superior Uplands of northernMinnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. As in the rest of the shield, glaciers have stripped soils away, strewn the surface with boulders and other debris, and obliterated preglacial drainage systems. Most attempts at farming in these areas have been abandoned, but the combination of a comparative wilderness in a northern climate, clear lakes, and white-water streams has fostered the development of both regions as year-round outdoor recreation areas.
Mineral wealth in the Superior Uplands is legendary. Iron lies near the surface and close to the deepwater ports of the upper Great Lakes. Iron is mined both north and south of Lake Superior, but best known are the colossal deposits of Minnesota’sMesabi Range, for more than a century one of the world’s richest and a vital element in America’s rise to industrial power. In spite of depletion, the Minnesota and Michigan mines still yield a major proportion of the country’s iron and a significant percentage of the world’s supply.
South of the Adirondack Mountains and Superior Uplands lies the boundary between crystalline and sedimentary rocks; abruptly, everything is different. The core of this sedimentary region—the heartland of the United States—is the great Central Lowland, which stretches for 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from New York to centralTexas and north another 1,000 miles to the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. To some, the landscape may seem dull, for heights of more than 2,000 feet (600 metres) are unusual, and truly rough terrain is almost lacking. Landscapes are varied, however, largely as the result of glaciation that directly or indirectly affected most of the subregion. North of the Missouri–Ohio river line, the advance and readvance of continental ice left an intricate mosaic of boulders, sand, gravel, silt, and clay and a complex pattern of lakes and drainage channels, some abandoned, some still in use. The southern part of the Central Lowland is quite different, covered mostly with loess (wind-deposited silt) that further subdued the already low relief surface. Elsewhere, especially near major rivers, postglacial streams carved the loess into rounded hills, and visitors have aptly compared their billowing shapes to the waves of the sea. Above all, the loess produces soil of extraordinary fertility. As the Mesabi iron was a major source of America’s industrial wealth, its agricultural prosperity has been rooted in Midwestern loess.
The Central Lowland resembles a vast saucer, rising gradually to higher lands on all sides. Southward and eastward, the land rises gradually to three major plateaus. Beyond the reach of glaciation to the south, the sedimentary rocks have been raised into two broad upwarps, separated from one another by the great valley of theMississippi River. The Ozark Plateau lies west of the river and occupies most of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas; on the east the Interior Low Plateausdominate central Kentucky and Tennessee. Except for two nearly circular patches of rich limestone country—the Nashville Basin of Tennessee and the Kentucky Bluegrass region—most of both plateau regions consists of sandstone uplands, intricately dissected by streams. Local relief runs to several hundreds of feet in most places, and visitors to the region must travel winding roads along narrow stream valleys. The soils there are poor, and mineral resources are scanty.
Eastward from the Central Lowland the Appalachian Plateau—a narrow band of dissected uplands that strongly resembles the Ozark Plateau and Interior Low Plateaus in steep slopes, wretched soils, and endemic poverty—forms a transition between the interior plains and the Appalachian Mountains. Usually, however, theAppalachian Plateau is considered a subregion of the Appalachian Mountains, partly on grounds of location, partly because of geologic structure. Unlike the other plateaus, where rocks are warped upward, the rocks there form an elongated basin, wherein bituminous coal has been preserved from erosion. This Appalachian coal, like the Mesabi iron that it complements in U.S. industry, is extraordinary. Extensive, thick, and close to the surface, it has stoked the furnaces of northeastern steel mills for decades and helps explain the huge concentration of heavy industry along the lower Great Lakes.
The western flanks of the Interior Lowlands are the Great Plains, a territory of awesome bulk that spans the full distance between Canada and Mexico in a swath nearly 500 miles wide. The Great Plains were built by successive layers of poorly cemented sand, silt, and gravel—debris laid down by parallel east-flowing streams from the Rocky Mountains. Seen from the east, the surface of the Great Plains rises inexorably from about 2,000 feet near Omaha, Neb., to more than 6,000 feet atCheyenne, Wyo., but the climb is so gradual that popular legend holds the GreatPlains to be flat. True flatness is rare, although the High Plains of western Texas,Oklahoma, Kansas, and eastern Colorado come close. More commonly, the land is broadly rolling, and parts of the northern plains are sharply dissected into badlands.
The main mineral wealth of the Interior Lowlands derives from fossil fuels. Coal occurs in structural basins protected from erosion—high-quality bituminous in the Appalachian, Illinois, and western Kentucky basins; and subbituminous and lignite in the eastern and northwestern Great Plains. Petroleum and natural gas have been found in nearly every state between the Appalachians and the Rockies, but the Midcontinent Fields of western Texas and the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma, and Kansas surpass all others. Aside from small deposits of lead and zinc, metallic minerals are of little importance.
THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN SYSTEM
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The Appalachians dominate the eastern United States and separate the Eastern Seaboard from the interior with a belt of subdued uplands that extends nearly 1,500 miles from northeastern Alabama to the Canadian border. They are old, complex mountains, the eroded stumps of much greater ranges. Present topography results from erosion that has carved weak rocks away, leaving a skeleton of resistant rocks behind as highlands. Geologic differences are thus faithfully reflected in topography. In the Appalachians these differences are sharply demarcated and neatly arranged, so that all the major subdivisions exceptNew England lie in strips parallel to the Atlantic and to one another.
The core of the Appalachians is a belt of complex metamorphic and igneous rocks that stretches all the way from Alabama to New Hampshire. The western side of this belt forms the long slender rampart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, containing the highest elevations in the Appalachians (Mount Mitchell, N.C., 6,684 feet [2,037 metres]) and some of its most handsome mountain scenery. On its eastern, or seaward, side the Blue Ridge descends in an abrupt and sometimes spectacular escarpment to the Piedmont, a well-drained, rolling land—never quite hills, but never quite a plain. Before the settlement of the Midwest the Piedmont was the most productive agricultural region in the United States, and several Pennsylvaniacounties still consistently report some of the highest farm yields per acre in the entire country.
West of the crystalline zone, away from the axis of primary geologic deformation, sedimentary rocks have escaped metamorphism but are compressed into tight folds. Erosion has carved the upturned edges of these folded rocks into the remarkableRidge and Valley country of the western Appalachians. Long linear ridges characteristically stand about 1,000 feet from base to crest and run for tens of miles, paralleled by broad open valleys of comparable length. In Pennsylvania, ridges run unbroken for great distances, occasionally turning abruptly in a zigzag pattern; by contrast, the southern ridges are broken by faults and form short, parallel segments that are lined up like magnetized iron filings. By far the largest valley—and one of the most important routes in North America—is the Great Valley, an extraordinary trench of shale and limestone that runs nearly the entire length of the Appalachians. It provides a lowland passage from the middle Hudson valley to Harrisburg, Pa., and on southward, where it forms the Shenandoah and Cumberland valleys, and has been one of the main paths through the Appalachians since pioneer times. In New England it is floored with slates and marbles and forms the Valley of Vermont, one of the few fertile areas in an otherwise mountainous region.
Topography much like that of the Ridge and Valley is found in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, an area generally thought to be a detached continuation of Appalachian geologic structure, the intervening section buried beneath the sediments of the lower Mississippi valley.
The once-glaciated New England section of the Appalachians is divided from the rest of the chain by an indentation of the Atlantic. Although almost completely underlain by crystalline rocks, New England is laid out in north–south bands, reminiscent of the southern Appalachians. The rolling, rocky hills of southeastern New England are not dissimilar to the Piedmont, while, farther northwest, the rugged and lofty White Mountains are a New England analogue to the Blue Ridge. (Mount Washington, N.H., at 6,288 feet [1917 metres], is the highest peak in the northeastern United States.) The westernmost ranges—the Taconics, Berkshires, and Green Mountains—show a strong north–south lineation like the Ridge and Valley. Unlike the rest of the Appalachians, however, glaciation has scoured the crystalline rocks much like those of the Canadian Shield, so that New England is best known for its picturesque landscape, not for its fertile soil.
Typical of diverse geologic regions, the Appalachians contain a great variety of minerals. Only a few occur in quantities large enough for sustained exploitation, notably iron in Pennsylvania’s Blue Ridge and Piedmont and the famous granites, marbles, and slates of northern New England. In Pennsylvania the Ridge and Valley region contains one of the world’s largest deposits of anthracite coal, once the basis of a thriving mining economy; many of the mines are now shut, oil and gas having replaced coal as the major fuel used to heat homes.
THE ATLANTIC PLAIN
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The eastern and southeastern fringes of the United States are part of the outermost margins of the continental platform, repeatedly invaded by the sea and veneered with layer after layer of young, poorly consolidated sediments. Part of this platform now lies slightly above sea level and forms a nearly flat and often swampy coastal plain, which stretches fromCape Cod, Mass., to beyond the Mexican border. Most of the platform, however, is still submerged, so that a band of shallow water, the continental shelf, parallels the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, in some places reaching 250 miles out to sea.
The Atlantic Plain slopes so gently that even slight crustal upwarping can shift the coastline far out to sea at the expense of the continental shelf. The peninsula ofFlorida is just such an upwarp; nowhere in its 400-mile length does the land rise more than 350 feet above sea level; much of the southern and coastal areas rise less than 10 feet and are poorly drained and dangerously exposed to Atlantic storms. Downwarps can result in extensive flooding. North of New York City, for example, the weight of glacial ice depressed most of the Coastal Plain beneath the sea, and the Atlantic now beats directly against New England’s rock-ribbed coasts. Cape Cod,Long Island (N.Y.), and a few offshore islands are all that remain of New England’s drowned Coastal Plain. Another downwarp lies perpendicular to the Gulf coast and guides the course of the lower Mississippi. The river, however, has filled with alluvium what otherwise would be an arm of the Gulf, forming a great inland salient of the Coastal Plain called the Mississippi Embayment.
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South of New York the Coastal Plain gradually widens, but ocean water has invaded the lower valleys of most of the coastal rivers and has turned them into estuaries. The greatest of these is Chesapeake Bay, merely the flooded lower valley of the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, but there are hundreds of others. Offshore a line of sandbars and barrier beaches stretches intermittently the length of the Coastal Plain, hampering entry of shipping into the estuaries but providing the eastern United States with a playground that is more than 1,000 miles long.
Poor soils are the rule on the Coastal Plain, though rare exceptions have formed some of America’s most famous agricultural regions—for example, the citrus country of central Florida’s limestone uplands and the Cotton Belt of the Old South, once centred on the alluvial plain of the Mississippi and belts of chalky black soils of eastern Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi. The Atlantic Plain’s greatest natural wealth derives from petroleum and natural gas trapped in domal structures that dot theGulf Coast of eastern Texas and Louisiana. Onshore and offshore drilling have revealed colossal reserves of oil and natural gas
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