Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic

International University of Kyrgyz Republic Department Philology and

Communication

COURSE PAPER
Theme: Traditions regions of the United States”

Done by: Salamatova S.

Group: FO-1
Checked by: Koichumanova G.

Bishkek 2022
 Introduction

The United States is a country located in North America bordering the Atlantic
Ocean and Pacific Ocean. Neighboring countries are Canada and Mexico. The
geography of the United States is varied with mountains in the west, a broad
central plain and low mountains in the east. The government system is a
constitution-based federal republic with a strong democratic tradition; the chief of
state and head of government is the president. The United States has an advanced
mixed economy in which there is a variety of private freedom, combined with
centralized economic planning and government regulation. United States is a
member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Although Christopher Columbus is often credited with “discovering” America, it
is critical to understand that the landmass was inhabited long before
Europeans made contact. With many areas having complex cultures and
civilizations. Most likely, early migrants to the Americas traveled from Asia
through the Beringia land bridge that once connected Siberia and Alaska over
10,000 years ago. These indigenous peoples, known as First Nations in
Canada or Native Americans in the United States, were divided into several
different groups, some consisting only of a few small families and others
encompassing vast territories and empires. Some groups practiced hunting
and gathering, but many practiced settled agriculture. Before European
contact, an estimated 50 million indigenous people were living in North and
South America. European colonization completely changed the cultural
landscape of North America. In 1492 CE, Columbus made contact with what
are now the Bahamas, Cuba, and the island of Hispaniola, spurring Spanish
and Portuguese colonization of the Americas. The term “Indian” was initially
used by Columbus who thought he had arrived in the East Indies, what we
now refer to as East and Southeast Asia. Early French and English
settlements were not successful, but over time, they too gained control of
territory and founded permanent colonies. The easternmost indigenous
groups were the first to experience the impacts of European invasion. Many
were relocated, often forcibly, to the interior of North America to free up land
for European settlement. Disease and war would have a devastating effect on
the indigenous groups of the Americas. European settlers and explorers
brought smallpox, measles, and cholera – diseases previously unknown to
North America. In some areas, 90 percent of the indigenous population died.
Traditional regions of the United States

The differences among America’s traditional regions, or culture areas, tend to be

slight and shallow as compared with such areas in most older, more stable
countries. The muted, often subtle nature of interregional differences can be
ascribed to the relative newness of American settlement, a perpetually high degree
of mobility, a superb communications system, and the galloping centralization of
economy and government. It might even be argued that some of these regions are
quaint vestiges of a vanishing past, of interest only to antiquarians.

Yet, in spite of the nationwide standardization in many areas of American thought

and behaviour, the lingering effects of the older culture areas do remain potent. In
the case of the South, for example, the differences helped to precipitate the gravest
political crisis and bloodiest military conflict in the nation’s history. More than a
century after the Civil War, the South remains a powerful entity in political,
economic, and social terms, and its peculiar status is recognized in religious,
educational, athletic, and literary circles.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Even more intriguing is the appearance of a series of essentially 20th-century
regions. Southern California is the largest and perhaps the most distinctive region,
and its special culture has attracted large numbers of immigrants to the state.
Similar trends are visible in southern Florida; in Texas, whose mystique has
captured the national imagination; and to a certain degree in the more ebullient
regions of New Mexico and Arizona as well. At the metropolitan level, it is
difficult to believe that such distinctive cities as San Francisco, Las
Vegas, Dallas, Tucson, and Seattle have become like all other American cities. A
detailed examination, however, would show significant if sometimes subtle
interregional differences in terms of language, religion, diet, folklore, folk
architecture and handicrafts, political behaviour, social etiquette, and a number of
other cultural categories.
The hierarchy of culture areas

A multitiered hierarchy of culture areas might be postulated for the United States;
but the most interesting levels are, first, the nation as a whole and, second, the five
to 10 large subnational regions, each embracing several states or major portions
thereof. There is a remarkably close coincidence between the political United
States and the cultural United States. Crossing into Mexico, the traveler passes
across a cultural chasm. If the contrasts are less dramatic between the two sides of
the U.S.-Canadian boundary, they are nonetheless real, especially to the Canadian.
Erosion of the cultural barrier has been largely limited to the area that stretches
from northern New York state to Aroostook county, Maine. There, a
vigorous demographic and cultural immigration by French-Canadians has gone far
toward eradicating international differences.
While the international boundaries act as a cultural container, the interstate
boundaries are curiously irrelevant. Even when the state had a
strong autonomous early existence—as happened with Massachusetts, Virginia, or
Pennsylvania—subsequent economic and political forces have tended to wash
away such initial identities. Actually, it could be argued that the political divisions
of the 48 conterminous states are anachronistic in the context of contemporary
socioeconomic and cultural forces. Partially convincing cases might be built for
equating Utah and Texas with their respective culture areas because of exceptional
historical and physical circumstances, or perhaps Oklahoma, given its very late
European occupation and its dubious distinction as the territory to which
exiled Indian tribes of the East were relegated. In most instances, however, the
states either contain two or more distinctly different culture and political areas or
fragments thereof or are part of a much larger single culture area. Thus sharp
North–South dichotomies characterize California, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
and Florida, while Tennessee advertises that there are really three Tennessees.
In Virginia the opposing cultural forces were so strong that actual fission took
place in 1863 (with the admission to the Union of West Virginia) along one of
those rare interstate boundaries that approximate a genuine cultural divide.

Much remains to be learned about the cause and effect relations between economic
and culture areas in the United States. If the South or New England could at one
time be correlated with a specific economic system, this is no longer easy to do.
Cultural systems appear to respond more slowly to agents of change than do
economic or urban systems. Thus the Manufacturing Belt, a core region for many
social and economic activities, now spans parts of four traditional culture areas—
New England, the Midland, the Midwest, and the northern fringes of the South.
The great urban sprawl, from southern Maine to central Virginia, blithely ignores
the cultural slopes that are still visible in its more rural tracts.
The cultural hearths

The culture areas of the United States are generally European in origin, the result
of importing European colonists and ways of life and the subsequent adaptation of
social groups to new habitats. The aboriginal cultures have had relatively little
influence on the nation’s modern culture. In the Southwestern and the indistinct
Oklahoman subregions, the Indian element merits consideration only as one of
several ingredients making up the regional mosaic. With some exceptions, the map
of American culture areas in the East can be explained in terms of the genesis,
development, and expansion of the three principal colonial cultural hearths along
the Atlantic seaboard. Each was basically British in character, but their
personalities remain distinct because of, first, different sets of social and political
conditions during the critical period of first effective settlement and, second, local
physical and economic circumstances. The cultural gradients between them tend to
be much steeper and the boundaries more distinct than is true for the remainder of
the nation.
New England
United States: New England
New England was the dominant region during the century of rapid expansion
following the American Revolution and not merely in terms of demographic or
economic expansion. In social and cultural life—in education, politics, theology,
literature, science, architecture, and the more advanced forms of mechanical and
social technology—the area exercised its primacy. New England was the leading
source of ideas and styles for the nation from about 1780 to 1880; it furnishes an
impressive example of the capacity of strongly motivated communities to rise
above the constraints of a harsh environment.

During its first two centuries, New England had an

unusually homogeneous population. With some exceptions, the British immigrants
shared the same nonconformist religious beliefs, language, social organization, and
general outlook. A distinctive regional culture took form, most noticeably in terms
of dialect, town morphology, and folk architecture. The personality of the people
also took on a regional coloration both in folklore and in actuality; there is sound
basis for the belief that the traditional New England Yankee is self-reliant, thrifty,
inventive, and enterprising. The influx of immigrants that began in the 1830s
diluted and altered the New England identity, but much of its early personality
survived.

By virtue of location, wealth, and seniority, the Boston metropolitan area has
become the cultural economic center of New England. This sovereignty is shared
to some degree, however, with two other old centers, the lower Connecticut Valley
and the Narragansett Bay region of Rhode Island.

The early westward demographic and ideological expansion of New England was
so influential that it is justifiable to call New York, northern New Jersey,
northern Pennsylvania, and much of the Upper Midwest “New England Extended.”
Further, the energetic endeavors of New England whalers, merchants, and
missionaries had a considerable impact on the cultures of Hawaii, various other
Pacific isles, and several points in the Caribbean. New Englanders also were active
in the Americanization of early Oregon and Washington, with results that are still
visible. Later, the overland diffusion of New England natives and practices meant a
recognizable New England character not only for the Upper Midwest, from Ohio to
the Dakotas, but also in the Pacific Northwest in general, though to a lesser degree.
The South of the United States

United States: The Upper South

United States: Deep South

Study the settlement of the American South and the evolution of music in the
region from gospel to country
See all videos for this article
By far the largest of the three original Anglo-American culture areas, the South is
also the most idiosyncratic with respect to national norms—or slowest to accept
them. The South was once so distinct from the non-South in almost every
observable or quantifiable feature and so fiercely proud of its peculiarities that for
some years the question of whether it could maintain political and social unity with
the non-South was in serious doubt. These differences are still observable in
almost every realm of human activity, including rural economy, dialect, diet,
costume, folklore, politics, architecture, social customs, and recreation. Only
during the 20th century can an argument be made that it has achieved a decisive
convergence with the rest of the nation, at least in terms of economic behaviour
and material culture.

A persistent deviation from the national mainstream probably began in the first
years of settlement. The first settlers of the South were almost purely British, not
outwardly different from those who flocked to New England or the Midland, but
almost certainly distinct in terms of motives and social values and
more conservative in retaining the rurality and the family and social structure of
premodern Europe. The vast importation of enslaved Africans was also a major
factor, as was a degree of contact with the Indians that was less pronounced farther
north. In addition, the unusual pattern of economy (much different from that of
northwestern Europe), settlement, and social organization, which were in part
an adaptation to a starkly unfamiliar physical habitat, accentuated the South’s
deviation from other culture areas.

In both origin and spatial structure, the South has been characterized by
diffuseness. In the search for a single cultural hearth, the most plausible choice is
the Chesapeake Bay area and the northeastern corner of North Carolina, the earliest
area of recognizably Southern character. Early components of Southern population
and culture also arrived from other sources. A narrow coastal strip from North
Carolina to the Georgia–Florida border and including the Sea Islands is decidedly
Southern in character, yet it stands apart self-consciously from other parts of the
South. Though colonized directly from Great Britain, it had also significant
connections with the West Indies, in which relation the African cultural
contribution was strongest and purest. Charleston and Savannah, which nurtured
their own distinctive civilizations, dominated this subregion. Similarly,
French Louisiana received elements of culture and population—to be stirred into
the special Creole mixture—not only, putatively, from the Chesapeake Bay hearth
area but also indirectly from France, French Nova Scotia, the French West Indies,
and Africa. In south-central Texas, the Germanic and Hispanic influx was so heavy
that a special subregion can be designated.

It would seem, then, that the Southern culture area may be an example of
convergent, or parallel, evolution of a variety of elements arriving along several
paths but subject to some single general process that could mold one larger
regional consciousness and way of life.

Because of its slowness in joining the national technological mainstream, the South
can be subdivided into a much greater number of subregions than is possible for
any of the other older traditional regions. Those described above are of lesser order
than the two principal Souths, variously called Upper and Lower (or Deep) South,
Upland and Lowland South, or Yeoman and Plantation South.

The Upland South, which comprises the southern Appalachians, the upper
Appalachian Piedmont, the Cumberland and other low interior plateaus, and the
Ozarks and Ouachitas, was colonized culturally and demographically from the
Chesapeake Bay hearth area and the Midland; it is most emphatically white Anglo-
Saxon Protestant (WASP) in character. The latter area, which contains a large
Black population, includes the greater part of the South Atlantic and Gulf coastal
plains and the lower Appalachian Piedmont. Its early major influences came from
the Chesapeake Bay area, with only minor elements from the coastal Carolina–
Georgia belt, Louisiana, and elsewhere. The division between the two subregions
remains distinct from Virginia to Texas, but each region can be further subdivided.
Within the Upland South, the Ozark region might legitimately be detached from
the Appalachian; and, within the latter, the proud and
prosperous Kentucky Bluegrass, with its emphasis on tobacco and Thoroughbreds,
certainly merits special recognition.

Mason and Dixon Line

Toward the margins of the South, the difficulties in delimiting subregions become
greater. The outer limits themselves are a topic of special interest. There seems to
be more than an accidental relation between these limits and various climatic
factors. The fuzzy northern boundary, definitely not associated with the
conventional Mason and Dixon Line or the Ohio River, seems most closely
associated with length of frost-free season or with temperature during the winter.
As the Southern cultural complex was carried to the West, it not only retained its
strength but became more intense, in contrast to the influence of New England and
the Midland. But the South finally fades away as one approaches the 100th
meridian, with its critical decline in annual precipitation. The apparent correlation
between the cultural South and a humid subtropical climatic regime is in many
ways valid.
Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, Texas
The Texas subregion is so large, distinctive, vigorous, and self-assertive that it
presents some vexing classificatory questions. Is Texas simply a subregion of the
Greater South, or has it acquired so strong and divergent an identity that it can be
regarded as a major region in its own right? It is likely that a major region has been
born in a frontier zone in which several distinct cultural communities confront one
another and in which the mixture has bred the vigorous, extroverted, aggressive
Texas personality so widely celebrated in song and story. Similarly,
peninsular Florida may be considered either within or juxtaposed to the South but
not necessarily part of it. In the case of Florida, an almost empty territory began to
receive significant settlement only after about 1890, and if, like Texas, most of it
came from the older South, there were also vigorous infusions from elsewhere.
The Midland

United States: Middle Atlantic region

The significance of this region has not been less than that of New England or the
South, but its characteristics are the least conspicuous to outsiders as well as to its
own residents—reflecting, perhaps, its centrality in the course of U.S.
development. The Midland (a term not to be confused with Midwest) comprises
portions of Middle Atlantic and Upper Southern states: Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Serious European settlement of the Midland
began a generation or more after that of the other major cultural centres and after
several earlier, relatively ineffectual trials by the Dutch, Swedes, Finns, and
British. But once begun late in the 17th century by William Penn and his
associates, the colonization of the area was a success. Within southeastern
Pennsylvania this culture area first assumed its distinctive character: a prosperous,
sober, industrious agricultural society that quickly became a mixed economy as
mercantile and later industrial functions came to the fore. By the mid-18th century
much of the region had acquired a markedly urban character, resembling in many
ways the more advanced portions of the North Sea countries. In this respect, at
least, the Midland was well ahead of neighbouring areas to the north and south.

It differed also in its polyglot ethnicity. From almost the beginning, the various
ethnic and religious groups of the British Isles were joined by immigrants from the
European mainland. This diversity has grown and is likely to continue. The mosaic
of colonial ethnic groups has persisted in much of Pennsylvania, New York, New
Jersey, and Maryland, as has the remarkable variety of nationalities and churches
in coalfields, company towns, cities, and many rural areas. Much of the same
ethnic heterogeneity can be seen in New England, the Midwest, and a few other
areas, but the Midland stands out as perhaps the most polyglot region of the nation.
The Germanic element has always been notably strong, if irregularly distributed, in
the Midland, accounting for more than 70 percent of the population of many
towns. Had the Anglo-American culture not triumphed, the area might well have
been designated Pennsylvania German.

Physiography and migration carried the Midland culture area into the Maryland
Piedmont. Although its width tapers quickly below the Potomac, it reaches into
parts of Virginia and West Virginia, with traces legible far down the Appalachian
zone and into the South.

The northern half of the greater Midland region (the New York subregion, or New
England Extended) cannot be assigned unequivocally to either New England or
this Midland. Essentially it is a hybrid formed mainly from two regional strains of
almost equal strength: New England and the post-1660 British element moving up
the Hudson valley and beyond. There has also been a persistent, if slight, residue of
early Dutch culture and some subtle filtering northward of Pennsylvanian
influences. Apparently within the New York subregion occurred the first major
fusion of American regional cultures, especially within the early 19th-
century “Burned-Over District,” around the Finger Lakes and Genesee areas of
central and western New York. This locality, the seedbed for a number of
important social innovations, was a major staging area for westward migration and
possibly a major source for the people and notions that were to build the
Midwestern culture area.

Toward the west the Midland retains its integrity for only a short distance—
certainly no further than eastern Ohio—as it becomes submerged within the
Midwest. Still, its significance in the genesis of the Midwest and the national
culture should not be minimized. Its success in projecting its image upon so much
of the country may have drawn attention away from the source area. As both name
and location suggest, the Midland is intermediate in character in many respects,
lying between New England and the South. Its residents are much less concerned
with, or conscious of, a strong regional identity (excepting the Pennsylvania Dutch
caricatures) than is true for the other regions, and, in addition, the Midland lacks
their strong political and literary traditions, though it is unmistakable in its
distinctive townscapes and farmsteads.
The newer culture areas

The Midwest

United States: The Midwest

There is no such self-effacement in the Midwest, that large triangular region justly
regarded as the most nearly representative of the national average. Everyone within
or outside of the Midwest knows of its existence, but no one is certain where it
begins or ends. The older apex of the eastward-pointing triangle appears to rest
around Pittsburgh, while the two western corners melt away somewhere in
the Great Plains, possibly in southern Manitoba in the north and
southern Kansas in the south. The eastern terminus and the southern and western
borders are broad, indistinct transitional zones.

Serious study of the historical geography of the Midwest began only in the 20th
century, but it seems likely that this culture region was the combination of all three
colonial regions and that this combination first took place in the upper Ohio valley.
The early routes of travel—the Ohio and its tributaries, the Great Lakes, and the
low, level corridor along the Mohawk and the coastal plains of Lake
Ontario and Lake Erie—converge upon Ohio. There, the people and cultural traits
from New England, the Midland, and the South were first funneled together. There
seems to have been a fanlike widening of the new hybrid area into the West as
settlers worked their way frontierward.

Two major subregions are readily discerned, the Upper and Lower Midwest. They
are separated by a line, roughly approximating the 41st parallel, that persists as far
west as Colorado in terms of speech patterns and indicates differences in
regional provenance in ethnic and religious terms as well. Much of the Upper
Midwest retains a faint New England character, although Midland influences are
probably as important. A rich mixture of German, Scandinavian, Slavic, and other
non-WASP elements has greatly diversified a stock in which the British element
usually remains dominant and the range of church denominations is great. The
Lower Midwest, except for the relative scarcity of Blacks, tends to resemble the
South in its predominantly Protestant and British makeup. There are some areas
with sizable Roman Catholic and non-WASP populations, but on the whole the
subregion tends to be more WASP in inclination than most other parts of the
nation.
The problem of “the West”

Examine how Native Americans, Spanish explorers, and Mormons have influenced
the U.S. Mountain Region
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The foregoing culture areas account for roughly the eastern half of the
conterminous United States. There is a dilemma in classifying the remaining half.
The concept of the American West, strong in the popular imagination, is reinforced
constantly by romanticized cinematic and television images of the cowboy. It
is facile to accept the widespread Western livestock complex as epitomizing the
full gamut of Western life, because although the cattle industry may have once
accounted for more than one-half of the active Western domain as measured in
acres, it employed only a relatively small fraction of the total population. As a
single subculture, it cannot represent the total regional culture.

It is not clear whether there is a genuine, single, grand Western culture region.
Unlike the East, where virtually all the land is developed and culture areas and
subregions abut and overlap in splendid confusion, the eight major and many lesser
nodes of population in the western United States resemble oases, separated from
one another by wide expanses of nearly unpopulated mountain or arid desert. The
only obvious properties these isolated clusters have in common are, first, the
intermixture of several strains of culture, primarily from the East but with
additions from Europe, Mexico, and East Asia, and, second, except for one
subregion, a general modernity, having been settled in a serious way no earlier than
the 1840s. Some areas may be viewed as inchoate, or partially formed, cultural
entities; the others have acquired definite personalities but are difficult to classify
as first-order or lesser order culture areas.

There are several major tracts in the western United States that reveal a genuine
cultural identity: the Upper Rio Grande region, the Mormon region, southern
California, and, by some accounts, northern California. To this group one might
add the anomalous Texan and Oklahoman subregions, which have elements of
both the West and the South.

United States: The Southwest

Explore the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Plateau, Grand Canyon, and Sonoran
Desert in the U.S. Southwest
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The term Upper Rio Grande region was coined to denote the oldest and strongest
of the three sectors of Hispanic-American activity in the Southwest, the others
being southern California and portions of Texas. Although covering the valley of
the upper Rio Grande, the region also embraces segments of Arizona and Colorado
as well as other parts of New Mexico. European communities and culture have
been present there, with only one interruption, since the late 16th century. The
initial sources were Spain and Mexico, but after 1848 at least three distinct strains
of Anglo-American culture were increasingly well represented—the Southern,
Mormon, and a general undifferentiated Northeastern culture—plus a distinct
Texan subcategory. For once this has occurred without obliterating the Indians,
whose culture endures in various stages of dilution, from the strongly
Americanized or Hispanicized to the almost undisturbed.

The general mosaic is a fabric of Indian, Anglo, and Hispanic elements, and all
three major groups, furthermore, are complex in character. The Indian component
is made up of Navajo, Pueblo, and several smaller groups, each of which is quite
distinct from the others. The Hispanic element is also diverse—modally Mexican
mestizo, but ranging from pure Spanish to nearly pure pre-Spanish aboriginal.
United States: The northern Mountain region

United States: southern Mountain region

The Mormon region is expansive in the religious and demographic realms, though
it has ceased to expand territorially as it did in the decades after the first settlement
in the Salt Lake valley in 1847. Despite its Great Basin location and
an exemplary adaptation to environmental constraints, this cultural complex
appears somewhat non-Western in spirit: the Mormons may be in the West, but
they are not entirely of it. Their historical derivation from the Midwest and from
ultimate sources in New York and New England is still apparent, along with the
generous admixture of European converts to their religion.

As in New England, the power of the human will and an intensely cherished
abstract design have triumphed over an unfriendly habitat. The Mormon way of
life is expressed in the settlement landscape and economic activities within a
region more homogeneous internally than any other U.S. culture area.

California

Meet diverse immigrants in the Pacific Region and follow an immigrant

Vietnamese family in California
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In contrast, northern California has yet to gain its own strong cultural coloration.
From the beginning of the great 1849 gold rush the area drew a diverse population
from Europe and Asia as well as the older portions of the United States. Whether
the greater part of northern California has produced a culture amounting to more
than the sum of the contributions brought by immigrants is questionable. San
Francisco, the regional metropolis, may have crossed the qualitative threshold. An
unusually cosmopolitan outlook that includes an awareness of the Orient stronger
than that of any other U.S. city, a fierce self-esteem, and a unique townscape may
be symptomatic of a genuinely new, emergent local culture.Southern California is
the most spectacular of the Western regions, not only in terms of economic and
population growth but also for the luxuriance, regional particularism, and general
avant-garde character of its swiftly evolving cultural pattern. Until the coming of a
direct transcontinental rail connection in 1885, the region was remote, rural, and
largely inconsequential. Since then, the invasion by persons from virtually every
corner of North America and by the world has been massive, but since the 1960s
in-migration has slackened perceptibly, and many residents have begun to question
the doctrine of unlimited growth. In any event, a loosely articulated series of urban
and suburban developments continue to encroach upon what little is left of arable
or habitable land in the Coast Ranges and valleys from Santa Barbara to the
Mexican border.

Although every major ethnic and racial group and every other U.S. culture area is
amply represented in southern California, there is reason to suspect that a process
of selection for certain types of people, attitudes, and personality traits may have
been at work at both source and destination. The region is distinct from, or perhaps
in the vanguard of, the remainder of the nation. One might view southern
California as the super-American region or the outpost of a postindustrial future,
but its cultural distinctiveness is very evident in landscape and social behaviour.
Southern California in no way approaches being a “traditional region,” or even the
smudged facsimile of such, but rather the largest, boldest experiment in creating a
“voluntary region,” one built through the self-selection of immigrants and their
subsequent interaction.

United States: The northern Pacific Coast

The remaining identifiable Western regions—the Willamette valley of Oregon,
the Puget Sound region, the Inland Empire of
eastern Washington and adjacent tracts of Idaho and Oregon, central Arizona, and
the Colorado Piedmont—can be treated jointly as potential, or emergent, culture
areas, still too close to the national mean to display any cultural distinctiveness. In
all of these regions is evident the arrival of a cross section of the national
population and the growth of regional life around one or more major metropolises.
A New England element is noteworthy in the Willamette valley and Puget Sound
regions, while a Hispanic-American component appears in the
Colorado Piedmont and central Arizona. Only time and further study will reveal
whether any of these regions, so distant from the historic sources of U.S.
population and culture, have the capacity to become an independent cultural area.
The United States is often divided up into geographical regions. Using these
regions can help to describe a larger area and also helps to group together states
that are similar in features such as geography, culture, history, and climate.
While there are some official government regions, such as those used by the U.S.
Census Bureau and the Standard Federal Regions, most people use five major
regions when dividing up the states. They are the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest,
Southwest, and West.
Because these aren't officially defined regions, some border states may appear in
different regions depending on the document or map you are looking at. For
example, sometimes Maryland is considered part of the Southeast, but we include
it in the Northeast on our map.We define regions by looking at the areas’ climate,
landscape, and location. The regions of the US are very vast, so much that
sometimes it can be difficult to tell where one state ends and another begins. Each
region may also have a unique culture and accent. Southerners have the most
distinct regional accent in the country.The Northeast is the most populated region
in America, followed by the Southeast. Then comes the Midwest, located between
the East and West coasts, and known for its agriculture.The least populated regions
are the Southwest and West. Let’s take a more in-depth look at the 5 regions of the
United States.
Northeast

The Northeast region is also known as the ‘North East’ or simply as ‘The
Northeast’. This regional division has some of the country’s most populated and
heavily industrialized cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston.
The Northeast is also one of the wealthiest parts of the United States in terms of
per capita income and average household disposable income.Forestry is here,
especially in Maine and Pennsylvania – where they produce a large amount of
paper. Fishing and shellfish also have importance in the economy of this region.
Boston and New York City are big players in the region’s economy. The biggest
industries are pharmaceuticals, technology, and education, while the service
industry grows rapidly. Tourism also plays a big part in this region’s income as
many people flock to New York all year.Name brands like Dunkin’ Donuts,
Baskin Robbins, and Krispy Kreme started in this region. The Northeast also has
some of the top higher education institutions in the world. Harvard University,
Yale University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology host top
students.The dense population, high production capability, and first-class
infrastructure of this region mean that the Northeast is home to some of the largest
seaports in the world.It has access to waterways via the Hudson River, which runs
through New York City and is connected to states in the Northeast by major rivers,
including the Potomac River.

The states of this region include:

 Massachusetts
 Rhode Island
 Connecticut
 Vermont
 New Hampshire
 Maine
 Pennsylvania
 New Jersey
 New York
Key Cities: Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore;

Weather/Climate
This part of the country has all four seasons. Summers are hot and humid, while
winters are cold with lots of snowfall. Leaves change color in the fall. Hurricanes
sometimes hit the coasts in the late summer.

Southeast

The Mason-Dixon line, which was agreed upon in the 1760s, divided the North
from the South. States like Maryland and Delaware that are close to this line have a
more northern climate, with colder winters and less extreme heat in the summer.
Maryland and Delaware also make up a subregion known as the Mid-Atlantic area.

Related: US Southeast Map

For a long time, the primary industry of this area was agriculture. Its fertile soil,
flat ground, and long growing season are all factors that contribute to its great
growth potential. Most of the year, farmers here can produce crops. Citrus,
peaches, rice, cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, and peanuts are just a few examples of
the plants that come from this region.

It is also a popular tourist destination due to its climate, beaches, and history. Some
of the most popular beaches include Siesta Key, Miami Beach, Myrtle Beach, and
Hampton Beach. Let’s not forget about the Outer Banks of North Carolina – the
only barrier islands off the east coast of the US.This region has lower costs of
living than the Northeast or the West Coast but is more expensive than other parts
of the South. The Southeast is also home to many national parks, such as the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park and Everglades National Park.

The states of this region include:

 Washington DC ( federal district)

 Georgia
 North Carolina
 South Carolina
 Virginia
 West Virginia
 Kentucky
 Tennessee
 Mississippi
 Alabama
 Delaware
 Maryland
 Florida
 Louisiana
 Arkansas
Key Cities: Atlanta, Tampa, Miami, New Orleans, Raleigh, Charlotte

Weather/Climate

The climate of the Southeast is humid subtropical. The area has hot, humid
summers and mild to cool winters. It receives abundant rainfall all year long.
Hurricanes are also common in the summer and fall.

Midwest

The Midwest is often described as “America’s Heartland.” Some of the largest

cities in the country, such as Chicago and Minneapolis, are here.This region has
agriculture and mining. Aside from the Great Lakes, which is where most of the
biodiversity is located within this region, it is also home to important ecosystems
such as the Western Prairie and Eastern Woodlands.The Midwest sits midway
between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians. It is also north of the Ohio
River and the 37th parallel. This region has also produced groundbreaking musical
acts such as B.B. King, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer James Brown, The Jacksons,
Prince, and Motown Music Studios.

The states of this region include:

 Minnesota
 Wisconsin
 Illinois
 Ohio
 Indiana
 Michigan
 Missouri
 Iowa
 Kansas
 Nebraska
 North Dakota
 South Dakota

Weather/Climate

The summers are hot and humid in this region. Winters are usually cold, with lots
of snowfall. The region is known for its tornado outbreaks, too.Key Cities:
Minneapolis, Chicago, Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis

Southwest
The Southwest region is home to some beautiful landscapes, from arid deserts to
canyons and plateaus. This region is also known for its ghost towns, which were
once homes to hearty pioneers who settled the area.National parks include the
Grand Canyon National Park, Chaco Culture National Historical Park, and
Petrified Forest National Park, to name a few.Albuquerque, Phoenix, and Tucson
are all popular tourist destinations. The red sand of Sedona in Arizona, which was
formed by the erosion of red rocks, is another famous tourist spot.Texas, a state in
this region, is known for its famous music scene. Austin City Limits or South by
Southwest are very popular music festivals.

The states of this region include:

 New Mexico
 Arizona
 Oklahoma
 Texas
Weather/Climate

Most of this region is an arid desert, so it is usually hot and dry. However, in
higher altitudes, you can see snow in the mountains.Key Cities: Phoenix,
Oklahoma City, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Salt Lake City in the Western states,
most of the water is used for irrigation. The West has plenty of mineral reserves,
including coal and uranium ore. This region also produces oil and gas. The Alaska
pipeline carries oil from the North Slope of Alaska all the way to market in
Valdez.This region is also home to many national parks such as Yellowstone
National Park, Glacier National Park, the Grand Canyon, Crater Lake National
Park, and Bryce Canyon National Park.Silicon Valley is located in California and
is one of the most bustling tech hubs in the world. This region also has a major
influence on culture, especially Hollywood and other forms of media such as rock
and roll and country music.States such as Alaska and Hawaii are also politically
part of the West but are geographically isolated. Those two states are part of the
non-continental US.

The states of this region include:

 California
 Colorado
 Nevada
 Hawaii
 Alaska
 Oregon
 Utah
 Idaho
 Montana
 Wyoming
  Washington
Weather/Climate

Most of the region is arid, except for the Northwest, which has heavy rain and lush
vegetation. The summers are typically hot, but winters are mild to cold, depending
on the state. Colorado and Wyoming have cold and snowy weather. Southern
California has hot weather all year. Mudslides and earthquakes are also common in
California.Key Cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu, San Diego,
Las Vegas, Denver, Billings, Phoenix, Salt Lake City

Census Map

As we look at the 5 regions of the United States, one can see how they differ.
However, when we look at the Census map, we don’t see 5 regions of the United
States – we only see 4 regions:Map of the United States split into Census regions
and divisions. Region definition, widely used for data collection and analysis.The
standout difference on the Census Map is in the southern region. Instead of
dividing the South into the Southeast and the Southwest, it is only one southern
region.US 4 Regions Map: West, Midwest, South, Northeast.The census map notes
the regional subdivisions such as The Mid-Atlantic and New England regions that
make up the Northeast. The Midwest has the East North and West North Central
divisions. The South contains the South Atlantic, East South Central, and West
South Central Divisions. Mountain and Pacific divisions make you the Western
states. The West Coast Pacific States include California, Oregon, and
Washington.In conclusion, the United States is a massive country with regions and
subdivisions. Regarding climate, economy, and geographical changes, you can
expect something different based on what part you’re in.

Comprised of some 3.7 million square miles, the United States is the third biggest
nation in the world and nearly the third largest in terms of population. Bordered by
Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, the contiguous 48 states are in
between. Alaska is at the northwestern end of North America, separated from the
Lower 48 by Canada, while Hawaii lies far to the southwest of the mainland in the
Pacific Ocean.
The United States is made up of 50 states, which are often grouped into different
regions with each region having its own geographic characteristics, such as climate
and natural resources, culture, and other unique features that set it apart from other
regions.

Over time, eight distinct regions, encompassing 48 states, emerged in the

continental United States: New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, the Midwest,
the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, and the West Coast. Alaska
and Hawaii are not physically joined to the other 48 states, but they are part of the
political region of the United States.Government agencies have different ways of
grouping the states based on geography, culture, and other factors. This grouping
of regions is based on the Core Knowledge Sequence that describes the shared
knowledge that all children should learn in U.S. schools. Across the nation, the
landscape varies widely from tropical beaches in Florida, rolling prairies in the
Midwest, high peaks in the Rocky Mountains, barren deserts in the West and dense
wilderness areas in the Northeast and Northwest. Interspersed in between are the
Great Lakes and the Mississippi River in the Midwest, the Grand Canyon in
the Southwest, the majestic Yosemite Valley and Yellowstone in the West, and
numerous other natural wonders. And, like its geography, the weather of the
United States also varies widely from tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic
in Alaska, semiarid in the plains west of the Mississippi River and arid in the Great
Basin of the southwest.

The country is divided into six regions: New England, Mid Atlantic, the Southeast,
the Midwest, the Southwest, and the West.

New England — Comprised of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New

Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, the geography of this region is diverse for
such a small area, which includes coastal plains, rolling hills, and the northern end
of the Appalachian Mountains. It was here that the first Europeans settled in what
would become the United States, including the pilgrims at Plymouth Harbor,
Massachusetts who celebrated the nation’s first Thanksgiving in 1620. New
England is home to Acadia National Park in Maine and the Cape Cod National
Seashore in Massachusetts. Rhode Island is the nation’s smallest state and Boston
is the largest city in the region.
Its climate has cold winters and warm summers in the northernmost states and in
the more southerly areas, milder winters and warmer summers. The region’s
economy is primarily based on industry, trade, commercial fishing, commercial
farming.

Mid-Atlantic – Including the states of New York, New

Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington D.C., this region has a
varied geography with a broad, flat coastal plain lining the Atlantic shores. With
the exception of Pennsylvania, these states border the Atlantic Ocean, hence the
name.
It was in this region that much of the American Revolution was fought and
the Declaration of Independence signed in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. The
Nation’s capitol, Washington D.C. is located here along the Potomac River. With
numerous industrial areas, this region attracted millions of European immigrants
and gave rise to some of the East Coast’s largest cities: New York, Baltimore, and
Philadelphia. The climate in the northwest is humid with cool summers in the
northernmost areas. Snow falls during the winter as the temperatures are regularly
below freezing. Major geographical areas of the region include the Appalachian
Mountains, Atlantic Ocean, Great Lakes and the border with Canada to the north.
Much of the economy is based on industry, trade, commercial farming, and some
commercial fishing. New York City is the most populated city in the United States.
South –
Including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, the
Southeast is a region of subtropical forests and, near the gulf coast, wetlands,
especially in Florida. This region is home to Shenandoah National Park in
Virginia, Smoky Mountain National Park in North Carolina and Tennessee, the
Everglades in Florida, and more. Virginia was the birthplace of eight presidents.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport is the busiest in the world. These states all struggled
after the Civil War. The climate in the Southern region is humid subtropical with
hot summers. Hurricanes can reach landfall in the summer and fall months along
the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Major geographical features include the Appalachian
Mountains, Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi River. Much of its
economy is based on commercial farming, areas of industry, and oil drilling.

Midwest – Called the “Nation’s Breadbasket,” this region

includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio,
and Wisconsin. West of the Appalachian Mountains lies the Mississippi River
basin and two large eastern tributaries, the Ohio River and the Tennessee River.
The Ohio and Tennessee Valleys and the Midwest consist largely of rolling hills
and productive farmland. The climate here is generally humid throughout the
region with snow common during the winter, especially in the northern areas. The
region is known for Chicago — “the Windy City” and the beginning of the meat-
packing industry, Detroit, the motor city, the five Great Lakes, and St. Louis and
the Gateway Arch. The region’s economy is primarily based on major commercial
farming and manufacturing.

Great Plains – Comprised of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota,

and Oklahoma, this region occupies the northern central part of the United States.
This broad expanse of flat land lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the
Rocky Mountains. Before the general conversion to farmland, the Great Plains
were noted for extensive grasslands. Elevation rises gradually from less than a few
hundred feet near the Mississippi River to more than a mile high in the High
Plains. The climate includes cold winters and warm summers and the precipitation
varies from year to year with much of the winter precipitation in the form of snow.
Much of the economy is based on commercial farming and cattle ranching. The
region is associated with “Tornado Alley” and dust storms, buffalo, Native
Americans hunting on horseback, the last Indian wars, cattle trails, the Homestead
Act, and western expansion.
Rocky Mountains – Home of rolling plains, high mountain peaks, the cowboy,
and the pioneering spirit of the United States, this region
includes Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. Here, the climate
includes cold winters with much snow and warm summers. The economy is mostly
based on tourism and some commercial farming. Early settlers came here working
in the fur trade and to mine valuable metals. The region is known for skiing,
growing potatoes in Idaho, the Mormon Church in Utah, and beautiful parks
including Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Park. The Rockies also
extend into northern New Mexico and Washington state as well as Canada. The
region is best known for its numerous recreational opportunities including skiing
and snowboarding in the winter, and road and mountain biking, hiking, camping,
kayaking, horse-back riding, and white water rafting in the summer.

Southwest – Including Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas the Southwest is
known for its beautiful stark landscape of prairie and desert. However, the
geography of the Southwest is actually varied, made up of Coastal Plains, Great
Plains, and the Rocky Mountains. The Southwest is drier than the adjoining
Midwest in the weather. The population is less dense and, with strong Spanish-
American and Native-American components, more ethnically varied than
neighboring areas. Two major rivers flow through this region — the Rio Grande
flows out of the Rocky Mountains, forming the border between the United States
and Mexico; and the Colorado River flows through the Grand Canyon, falling
more than 1,000 feet in elevation. Major geographical features include the southern
Rocky Mountains, Colorado River, Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Gulf of
Mexico, and the Mexico border to the south.
West Coast – Home of rolling plains, high mountain peaks, and deserts, this
region includes Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. This diverse
region ranges from endless wilderness to barren desert, coral reefs to Arctic tundra,
and Hollywood to great national parks. Along the Pacific coast is a series of low
mountain ranges and much of the Pacific Northwest coast is inhabited by some of
the densest vegetation outside of the Tropics, and also the tallest trees in the world
(the Redwoods). Alaska also features rugged mountains as well as river valleys
and much of Hawaii’s landscape is dominated by volcanic topography. The west is
home to the highest place in the United States – Denali (Mt. McKinley) at 20,320
feet and the lowest place at Death Valley with an elevation of 282 feet below sea
level.
The region displays a range of climates including semiarid and alpine mountain
areas, hot summers and cool winters along the southern coast, mild winters and
summers but with much rain year-round in the northwest. The economy is
primarily based on mining, cattle ranching, light industry, lumbering, and dairy
products. The coast is known for the California Gold Rush, mining towns, Spanish
influences in architecture, and a broad diversity of people.

The Northeastern Core

The Northeastern Core includes the upper Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and
Michigan); the mid-Atlantic states of Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and
New Jersey plus northern Virginia; and the southern New England states of
Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. It also includes southern Ontario,
Canada’s capital (Ottawa), and its largest city (Toronto). The physical
environments of the Northeastern Core are quite diverse, including the northern
Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain, the northern Appalachians, and the area surrounding
the Great Lakes. This region, anchored by North America’s largest metropolis,
New York, is the economic heart of the United States and Canada and home to
more than a third of each country’s population. The megalopolis—the built-up area
from Washington, DC, to Boston—is part of this region. The core region contains
the Manufacturing/Rust Belt, which was once the main manufacturing region for
North America but suffered decline with the advent of the information age. The
core region hosts the headquarters of countless corporations, banks, financial
markets (e.g., Wall Street), universities (from community colleges to the Ivy
League), cultural institutions (e.g., Broadway, world-class museums, dance and
music organizations), and even global organizations such as the United Nations.

This large region includes geographic swaths of both wealth and economic
suffering. Eight of the United States’ ten wealthiest counties are in this region,
most of them in the Washington, DC, area, and a number of billionaires live in
New York City. Meanwhile, cities such as Detroit and Cleveland have suffered
from deindustrialization and have experienced a major population decline since the
1950s. Detroit, for instance, has lost 61 percent of its population since 1950, and
the decline continues. The city decreased in population by 25 percent just between
2000 and 2010. While manufacturing is not dead in the Northeastern Core, heavy
industry has been in long-term decline.

New England and the Canadian Maritimes

New England and the Canadian Maritimes overlap with the Northeastern Core
because its major city—Boston—is considered the northern edge of the
megalopolis. South of Boston, the low-lying states of New England were the center
of colonial settlement in the region and were the birthplace of America’s Industrial
Revolution. Southern New England began as an agricultural and fishing colony,
and as industry developed in the nineteenth century, the region attracted European
immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and elsewhere to work in its factories. The highly
skilled workforce helped maintain a strong economy in southern New England,
although there have been times of increased unemployment and economic
hardship. Today the region has a more diverse economic base, including recreation
and tourism, finance, telecommunications, and health care. The mountains of
western New England have been particularly attractive for the development of ski
resorts, and the coasts of New England are popular for summer vacationing.

As you move north from Boston, the terrain becomes more rugged and the soil less
fertile. There are fewer economic reasons for people to live in northern New
England, and the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine have always been
less densely populated than the southern New England states. Maine is the least
densely populated state in this region; about 90 percent of its land is forested,
making it the most forested of the fifty United States. The vast Empty Quarter in
western Maine consists of five million acres of privately owned forest and no
permanent human inhabitants. Maine’s leading economic activity is
manufacturing, and the bulk of it is oriented around paper and other wood
products.

Northern New England transitions to the even more rugged and remote uplands of
the Canadian Maritimes: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and
Newfoundland and Labrador. The soil quality is quite poor, as glaciers removed
most of it during the various ice ages. The region has a harsh climate and is
removed from the major population centers of Canada and the eastern United
States. The Maritime Provinces have always been oriented to the sea. Fishing and
other sea-oriented businesses have historically been strong here, but in recent
decades overfishing of the North Atlantic has caused a decline in the fishing
economy. Tourism has been increasing as a source of revenue, especially in places
such as Prince Edward Island, in which tourism is the dominant economic activity.
Newfoundland, including Labrador, is Canada’s poorest province.

French Canada

West of the Canadian Maritimes lies the province of Quebec, the heart of which is
the St. Lawrence River valley, a lowland separating the Appalachian Mountains to
the south from the inhospitable Canadian Shield to the north. As explained
in Section 4.4.3 "British versus French Canada", France was the first European
country to colonize the coastal regions of what is now Canada, the St. Lawrence
River Valley, most of the land surrounding the Great Lakes, and the Ohio and
Mississippi River valleys, south to the Gulf of Mexico. Although Great Britain
obtained all that land from France in 1763 following the French and Indian War,
enough French inhabitants occupied part of that territory that the region did not
automatically become English speaking. The core of French Canada today is the
St. Lawrence Valley from Montreal to the Atlantic coast and west of Montreal to
Ottawa and north to the Hudson Bay. These French speakers, the descendants of
the early French settlers, created a vibrant French-Canadian culture. About 21
percent of Canadians speak French as their mother tongue, including about 80
percent of Canadians living in the province of Quebec.

Throughout most of its history, the people of Quebec have been rural farmers,
eking out a living on less-than-ideal land in a place with a short growing season.
One unique characteristic of the farms in French Canada is their size and shape.
Early on, the farms were laid out as long lots, maximizing the number of farms that
would have access to the transportation artery—usually a river, but sometimes a
road. Each farm was about ten times longer than it was wide and had a small
access point to the river, some fertile riverfront land, and a woodlot at the rear of
the farm. This land-use pattern was common throughout French Canada and can
even be seen today in the United States in former French colonies such as
Tennessee and Louisiana.

Since then, Quebec’s economy has developed to include a manufacturing sector

(fueled by abundant hydroelectricity), tourism, and a variety of tertiary and
quaternary industries. Montreal, Canada’s second-largest metropolitan area with
3.9 million residents, is the largest French-speaking city in the Western
hemisphere. It developed as the region’s most important city in the mid-nineteenth
century, as it controlled access through the St. Lawrence River and the Great
Lakes. It became a diverse industrial center, with oil refineries, steel mills, flour
and sugar refineries, and shop yards for railroad companies. Montreal attracted
English speakers as well as the local Francophones, and at times in its history it
has even had more English speakers than French speakers, despite being
surrounded by a Francophone countryside. Most of northern Quebec is sparsely
populated because of the lack of quality soil for agriculture, but a paper and pulp
industry based on its forests has developed over the twentieth century, as well as
hydroelectric power generation.

The American South

The South includes the entire southeastern portion of the United States from
Kentucky south to Louisiana, east to Florida, and north to Virginia. The South
consists of most of the Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain and the southern portion of the
Appalachian Highlands.

Before the Civil War, the coastal plain was dedicated to plantation agriculture
using African slave labor. Land not used for plantation crops such as tobacco,
cotton, and rice was typically farmed by poor whites and later by poor blacks.
Some were sharecroppers, while others farmed their own small plots, especially on
the lesser-quality land in Appalachia. The South had little urbanization or
industrialization at the time of the Civil War. Well into the twentieth century, the
region remained rural and economically deprived.

Coal mining was a major source of employment in places such as West Virginia
and eastern Kentucky for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, but increased
mechanization of mining methods, as well as new mining techniques such as
mountaintop removal mining, decreased the number of miners needed, even as coal
production increased.

The Appalachian South is perennially plagued by high unemployment, poverty,

and difficult social conditions. Other areas of the rural South are also among the
poorest in the nation, including the Mississippi Delta and the lower Mississippi
River valley. Despite the continued swaths of poverty in the South, parts of the
region have prospered in the past generation as Sun Belt migrants have moved to
southern places such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, Miami, and dozens of smaller
cities. This has fueled a period of urbanization and economic growth, and the
newfound prosperity has helped integrate the South into the nation’s economy.
The Midwest and Great Plains

The center of the continent contains a relatively level agricultural region: the
Midwest and the Great Plains. This land includes some of the most fertile
agricultural land in the entire world and has been dubbed America’s breadbasket.
The climate gets progressively more arid as you move to the west within this
region, and the type of agriculture changes with the decrease in precipitation.
Closer to the Rocky Mountains, the land is typically used for raising cattle, but
enormous grain farms are found where water is available (especially through
irrigation). The water for irrigation comes from the continent’s largest aquifer,
the Ogallala Aquifer. Water is often pumped to the surface using a system
called center pivot irrigation. The heart of the spring wheat belt is North Dakota,
and the crop is also common in eastern Montana and in Canada’s Prairie Provinces
of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Winter wheat is common in Kansas and
surrounding states. Farther to the east, where precipitation is more abundant, is the
Corn Belt, focused in Iowa and Illinois.

The dominant city in this region is Chicago, which developed as a market town for
the livestock and grain produced in the surrounding states and was linked to its
hinterland through a complex network of rail lines. In fact, nearly all the major
cities of this region developed as places for the buying, selling, and processing
agricultural products. Today the Midwest and the Great Plains remain the most
important food-producing areas in North America, although as agriculture has
become increasingly mechanized and farms have gotten larger, the number of
farmers has decreased. This region, especially the Great Plains, is experiencing a
period of long-term population decline and aging.

The American Southwest

The states of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona are considered the Southwest. The
climate of the Southwest is more arid and receives a high amount of sunlight
throughout the year. Desert conditions are integrated with higher elevations in the
mountainous areas. Eastern Texas receives more rainfall from the Gulf of Mexico,
and western Texas and the states of New Mexico and Arizona are quite arid and
receive less rainfall. These conditions are more favorable to cattle ranching than to
other agricultural activities. Large farming operations exist where water is
available for irrigation. The warmer climate has been attractive for development
and people emigrating from the colder regions of the north.

The Southwest has a strong Hispanic heritage and was part of Spain’s Mexican
colony before England established colonies on the East Coast (the first Spanish
settlers arrived in New Mexico in 1598). All three states have a large contingency
of Hispanic residents, some of whom have descended from early pre–United States
settlers, while others have come into the United States more recently across the
long desert border between Mexico and the United States. According to the 2010
census, about 46 percent of New Mexico’s population was Hispanic or Latino, and
in Texas and Arizona the figures were 37 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

In Arizona, strong centrifugal forces have been in play because of its tough legal
measures against illegal immigration. This issue exposes the social rift between the
more European population of the state and the Hispanic immigrants. In 2008, the
US Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics estimated
that Arizona had one of the fastest-growing illegal immigrant populations in the
country at 8.4 percent of the population. This was the second-highest percentage of
undocumented residents in the country, after Nevada. In April 2010, the New York
Times reported that Arizona’s governor signed the nation’s toughest bill on illegal
immigration into law, designed to identify, prosecute, and deport illegal
immigrants. At the same time, Reuters reported that the when the bill was debated
in the Arizona senate, the number of illegal immigrants was listed at 10 percent of
the population. Some opponents of the tough illegal immigration laws claimed that
law enforcement officials would use racial profiling to target Hispanic residents,
and the federal government took the state to court to halt its enforcement.

The Southwest also has a strong Native American presence, especially in New
Mexico and Arizona. Twenty-one federally recognized tribes with more than
250,000 people (4.9 percent of the state’s population) live in Arizona, and their
reservations and traditional communities make up more than one-fourth of the
state’s land. The Navajo tribe is the largest in the United States, with more than
100,000 members in Arizona alone and others in surrounding states. The
considerable Native American and Hispanic population in the Southwest means
that non-Hispanic whites make up a minority of the population in New Mexico and
Texas.One of the Pollen Trail Dancers, a Navajo group near Joseph City, Arizona,
performs the Eagle Dance on September 21, 2010, on the scenic South Rim of
Grand Canyon National Park between Hopi House and Verkamp’s Visitor Center.

The three Southwestern states have been recipients of Sun Belt migrations over the
past few decades, as people have moved to the Southwest for tertiary-sector jobs
and for the region’s warm climate. The region is quite urbanized, and most of the
new migrants are moving to cities. Three-fourths of Arizona’s population live in
the Phoenix or Tucson metropolitan area. The most populous metropolitan area in
the Southwest is Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas, with 6.4 million residents in 2010,
making it the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. The Houston
metropolitan area is not far behind with 6.1 million residents. The economy of
Texas used to be based on oil and natural gas, but it has since become more
diversified. Residents of these cities work in high-tech manufacturing, health care,
business, and information. One of the most famous high-tech industries in Texas is
space: Houston is home to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s
(NASA) Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, where astronauts and thousands of
others work in the space industry.

The Mountain West

From the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades and
the Intermontane Basins and Plateaus in between, this part of North America has
gone from the old Wild West to an area of rapid economic and population growth.
The region encompasses western Colorado; western Wyoming; western Montana;
Idaho; Nevada; Utah; the eastern portions of Washington, Oregon, and California;
and the southern portion of the Canadian Rockies.
The population of the Mountain West is growing much faster than the population
of the United States as a whole. For example, Nevada’s population grew 32.3
percent from 2000 to 2009, which is more than three times as much as the United
States as a whole (9.1 percent). All US states in this region, except for Montana,
grew at faster rates than the US average. Utah grew 24.7 percent, Idaho grew 19.5
percent, and Colorado grew 16.8 percent. What is fueling this growth? It is part of
the larger pattern of Americans flocking to the Sun Belt, searching for an attractive
climate and lifestyle. Jobs have been created in recreation (gambling, skiing), in
high-tech firms, and in other tertiary sector industries. Many of the migrants come
from southern California because the housing in the Mountain West is more
affordable and the region is much less crowded. Nearly all the growth is occurring
in urban and suburban areas.

However, the rapid growth of the West since 1990 has come at a cost. In some
areas the large population is putting a strain on physical resources, such as water.
Water is a hot-button political issue, particularly in the more arid states such as
Nevada. Las Vegas, for example, is a desert city that gets 90 percent of its water
from a Colorado River reservoir: Lake Mead. This water comes from snowmelt in
the Rocky Mountains far to the east, and due to drought and high water demand,
Lake Mead’s water level has been dropping. If current patterns persist, Las Vegas
will have a water crisis soon. The water shortage is happening even though Las
Vegas has managed to reduce per capita water usage by raising prices for water
and creating incentives to remove grass lawns. Las Vegas recycles 94 percent of all
sewage water, which is the highest rate in the United States.

As the West’s population increased rapidly, the region’s urban areas became part
of the real estate bubble of the early 2000s. Real estate prices grew and the housing
industry built one residential subdivision after another in the suburbs surrounding
cities such as Las Vegas, Denver, and Salt Lake City. However, in the late 2000s
the real estate market collapsed in many parts of the country, and Western cities
were hard hit. As of early 2011, three of the five states with the highest foreclosure
rates were in this region (Nevada, Utah, and Idaho), and the others were bordering
states (Arizona and California).

The Pacific Coast

The Pacific Coast includes the coastal portions of California, Oregon, and
Washington, plus the southwestern portion of British Columbia in Canada. This
region is typically thought of as two subregions: California and the Pacific
Northwest. The two areas are quite different from each other in terms of climate
and economy. However, both areas are part of the so-called Ring of Fire that
encircles the Pacific Ocean. The Ring of Fire is a zone of earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions that occur near where the Pacific tectonic plate meets the surrounding
plates. In the United States, two areas of concern are the San Andreas Fault in
California and Mount St. Helens in Washington. The 1906 earthquake that
destroyed San Francisco was a result of activity on the San Andreas Fault, and
scientists predict that strong earthquakes will reappear along the fault in the future.
Thousands of small earthquakes occur along the fault every year. Mount St.
Helen’s is a volcano in the Cascades that erupted in 1980, killing fifty-seven
people and destroying hundreds of square miles of forest.

The Pacific Coast represents a large population center a continent away from what
we consider the North American core. Most of the region’s population is urban,
and Los Angeles and its metropolitan area is by far the largest area of settlement.
Twelve percent of the US population lives in California (thirty-seven million
people), and the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area has nearly eighteen million
people. Los Angeles is the second-largest US city after New York. Los Angeles is
the quintessential automobile city. It developed into a major city in the mid-
twentieth century at the time that automobile ownership had become common, and
people who lived in the area tended to move to suburbs that were connected to
each other by an extensive highway system. Los Angeles is a highly decentralized
city, unlike cities in other parts of North America that formed during other
transportation regimes.
The Pacific Coast region is also famous for its agriculture. California’s Central
Valley lies between the Coast Ranges to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east
and is among the most productive agricultural areas in the world. The irrigated
farmland in the valley produces all types of nontropical crops and is the largest US
producer of tomatoes, grapes, almonds, and other foods. When other parts of the
country are still frozen in the winter months, the fields of the Central Valley are
already producing bountiful harvests. California is also famous for its wine
production, especially in Napa Valley near San Francisco.

Besides agriculture, the economic base of the Pacific Coast is quite diverse and
rich. If it were an independent country, California would be the world’s sixth-
largest economy. Los Angeles is considered the capital of the US entertainment
industry, and other major industries include aerospace, manufacturing, and foreign
trade. The port of Los Angeles is the busiest in North America, receiving
shipments of goods from China and other Asian countries. Silicon Valley, near San
Francisco, is a key area for high-tech research and Internet commerce. The Pacific
Northwest is home to major corporations such as Boeing (whose headquarters
recently moved to Chicago), Microsoft, and other famous companies such as
Starbucks, Amazon.com, REI, T-Mobile, Costco, and Eddie Bauer. One of the
richest Americans, Bill Gates, lives near Seattle.

Across the border to the north, Vancouver is Canada’s third-largest metropolitan

area with over two million residents. Vancouver is unlike any other city in North
America. Nearly one-third of its residents are of Chinese origin, and more than half
its population speak a language other than English at home. Vancouver began as a
logging town but developed into its position as the Asian gateway to Canada
because of its port, the busiest in Canada. Vancouver is a popular location for the
film industry and is sometimes dubbed as “Hollywood North.” It is also growing in
the biotechnology and software industries.

The North

The North is the least densely populated of any region in North America due to its
brutally cold winters, short growing season, and poor soils. It includes the boreal
forests of the upper Great Lakes region and the Canadian Shield and the territory to
the north of the tree line that extends beyond the Arctic Circle. Physically, this
region is immense, including the state of Alaska plus most of Canada. The climate
is similar to that of Russia: cold continental and arctic climates, arctic air masses
swooping down from the north, and long winters. Most inhabitants of the northern
portions of North America live in the forested areas rather than in the frozen
Arctic.

Two groups of people live in this region. First are the native peoples who have
always lived there. They are small in number and traditionally make a living by
hunting and fishing. More recently, the native populations such as the Inuit and the
First Nations in Canada subsist by combining wage employment with their
traditional means of living off the land. American Indians or Alaskan natives make
up about 15 percent of Alaska’s population, for a total of roughly 106,000 people.
In Canada’s Northwest Territories, First Nations people make up just over half the
population, but the total population is quite small—only about 41,000 in the entire
territory. In Nunavut, the native population is about 85 percent of the total 30,000
residents, living in a territory the size of Western Europe.

The other residents are more recent immigrants who are there to exploit the land’s
natural resources. The economy is dominated by the primary economic sector:
forestry, oil and natural gas extraction, and mining. In the Canadian Shield,
metallic ores such as copper, gold, nickel, silver, and uranium are found in the
rocks and diamond mines are in operation, as are mines producing rare earth
elements used in computer screens, electric car batteries, and computer hard drives.
These elements include metals such as cerium, terbium, dysprosium, and
neodymium. Alaska is an oil-producing state, and the decision of whether to open
additional areas of Alaska’s Arctic to oil drilling remains controversial and
uncertain.